-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
Meta
Author Archives: Mirjam
Trump translators, stop moaning and get on with your work!
Recently, a number of articles and interviews have popped up online in which translators and interpreters – most prominently French translator Bérangère Viennot and German interpreter Norbert Heikamp – complained about the difficulties Donald Trump’s simplistic and unpredictable use of language poses to them. While … Continue reading
Because it’s language, everything goes!
Yesterday, I went to see Lilting at the cinema, a film about a Chinese-Cambodian mother living in London, whose homosexual son had died before coming out to her, and about her relationships with her son’s grieving lover as well as with … Continue reading
Posted in Language in general, Translation and Interpreting
Tagged biological gender, Filmhouse Edinburgh, gender, gendered languages, grammatical gender, in language studies everything goes, interpreting, Language, language and gender, panel discussion about language, Translation, University of Edinburgh, Watching Languages
Leave a comment
Japanese Challenge: Update
Charlette wrote a little write-up at the end of our Japanese Challenge. Moreover, she had a go at writing something about herself in Japanese. There may be mistakes. Check it out: And so, our time as language geeks with nothing … Continue reading
The Japanese Challenge: Assessment Day
So, today, we got assessed for what we achieved over the past week. Unfortunately, our teacher made the assessment far too easy, and it turns out that the assessment sheet she used is one for children. We may well have … Continue reading
The Japanese Challenge: Update Day 5
Here’s Charlette’s take on the experience: Japanese Challenge: Day Five We have come to the end of a five-day working week, but, unlike the ordinary businessman who can probably now put his feet up for a well-earned rest over the … Continue reading
The First 24 Hours
Konnichiwa! Yeah, that’s right: the Japanese Challenge began yesterday morning! We’ve had our first formal lesson with our Japanese teacher, tried to absorb the Hiragana writing system, labelled lots of objects in my language school in Japanese and crammed vocabulary … Continue reading
The Japanese Challenge: can you learn a language within a week?
Outrageous Claims? I tend to be a bit sceptical when I hear reports of people, even geniuses, who claim to have managed to learn a language within a week (just as much as I tend to be sceptical of people … Continue reading
Why the Giraffe Riddle is Interesting
Over the past few days, a silly riddle, the so-called “Giraffe Riddle”, has gone viral on Facebook. The riddle goes like this: “3:00 am, the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors. It’s your parents and they are there … Continue reading
THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
A lot of research into linguistic relativism revolves around questions which were once summarised in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This post consists of an essay I wrote a few years back when I was at university. It is a summary of … Continue reading
Posted in Science Stuff
Tagged different cultures, different languages, does language influence thought, does thought influence language, Eskimo language, Hopi language, Language, language and colour, language and colour perception, language and space, language and thought, language and time, Linguistic Relativism, linguistic relativity, Sapir, Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, spatial language, time perception, Whorf
Leave a comment
LANGUAGE WAS MY FIRST LOVE…
Language has always been with me. As long as I can remember. My earliest memory is that of my brother teaching me my first word – “Uhu”, the German word for “eagle owl” – showing me a picture of said … Continue reading
