Language Log has been getting me excited about the documentary The Linguists for quite some time now, but the DVD costs $300, and it didn’t seem to air on any local PBS stations. Luckily, the movie is finally available (for a short time) online at babelgum.com. I strongly encourage people to watch this movie, as [...]
Continue reading about Disappearing languages and documentaries
Rod Blagojevich, who is probably going to jail, is of Serbian ancestry. But his Serbian surname has a root visible in lots of Slavic languages. So, for the sake of the staggering level of pseudo-ironic coincidences available here, I present you a list with Russian words that begin with “Blago”: благо – blágo – good, [...]
I’m taking a day to catch up on some of my more neglected Google reader feeds, and that includes catching up on Language Log. Today I saw a post by Victor Mair that in strong language advocates for discarding character learning as a component of beginning Mandarin study. Amen. Though my ponderous doodles of Chinese [...]
