Is this baby crying in German or French? A new study says we may be able to tell. The study was originally discussed on my sister pod, The World’s science podcast. It concludes that we begin language acquisition in the womb. At that stage, we are, well, a captive audience to mama’s words; researchers [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘German language’
October 16, 2009
Bilingual metaphors, the passion of place name changes, and interpreting for the Dodgers
Nobel literature prize winner Herta Mueller grew up in Romania. She spoke German at home, and Romanian at school. As a result her writing is infused with mixed metaphors. Not as in “he careened between lovers till his private life went completely off the rails.” No, Mueller’s metaphors are linguistically mixed. She connects Romanian images [...]
October 9, 2009
Gaddafi’s translator, Swedish fury at UNESCO, and Nazi slogans in English
Here are the 5 stories Carol Hills and I selected as our top five language-related stories for the past month or two:
5. The sad tale of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s translator at the United Nations General Assembly. Gaddafi spoke for 94 minutes, 79 minutes longer than he was alloted. At 90 minutes, his translator appeared [...]
June 9, 2008
podcast #7: jokes from near and far, and how one Finnish word sparked a global movement
The language of humor: is German humor really an oxymoron? Of course not, unless you don’t get the jokes. Germans are trying to break out of their unamusing — and unamused — past. They’re even making fun of the Nazis. On the subject of horrifying but ridiculous regimes, are Soviet jokes still funny? They certainly set the bar [...]
