Talkman for PSP

Sony has released a language translation "game" for the Playstation Portable. It's called Talkman and translates between English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Check out this review for details - be sure to scroll down and watch the Japanese ads, especially the "Buy you a drink?" one.

Endangered Secret Women's Language

Feminist group Guerilla Girls has a short blurb about Nushu, an endangered written language used exclusively by women in China. Ancient Scripts has a brief article about Nushu here. Japanese University Professor Orie Endo's research project can be found at World of Nushu.

Professor Role Model

After taking some online quizzes tonight that said I am an Interpersonal Thinker, I have a female brain, and I make a lousy superhero*, I chased down a story about Gaak, a rogue robot that escaped from his enclosure.

And discovered Gaak's creator, Noel Sharkey, a multi-disciplinary Professor who dropped out of school at 15, dropped acid, and played in rock bands before pursuing a successful academic career. (Okay, so I didn't drop out of school at 15, but I did wag a few days and go to the beach). Oh, and he's on his third marriage!

Here is Noel's homepage at the University of Sheffield, and here is a neat article about him by the American Society for Engineering Education.

*Please note, being a lousy superhero has little to do with having a female brain, but more to do with my lack of motivation to save the world right now.

Fundoshi fun

Unable (or maybe just unwilling) to explain how my brain works sometimes and thus the thought processes leading to this post, I would like to share with you the kind of fun you, too, can have in Sapporo in the Winter - in your underwear. Well, Japanese underwear. More like a piece of cloth that may or may not cover your privates, especially while ice-climbing.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the first page and click on Fundoshi '98.

Orfogramma

Awful grammar? Languagehat has a great post about a Russian term, "orfogramma", which means a point of uncertainty in the spelling of a word, a place where you can't tell from the sound alone how to write it.

One comment stated that which was obvious to me:

I suppose though that in English "letter which must be determined by
orthographic rules rather than sound alone" is almost synonymous with
"letter".

In other words, English spelling sucks. Or as Mizuki says, "English is crazy business!"

A Japanese rooster says "kokekokkou"

Here's a handy dandy link to the sounds animals make in Japanese. (Please note that in Japan a rooster makes the same noise as it does in the U.S. or Australia, but people express this sound differently in Japanese and in English). There are even links to pronunciation samples, and a groovy little song about frogs!

For true animal polyglotism, check out Sounds of the World's Animals, sponsored by the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University.

Be the first to spell the sound a zebra makes - in any language! (A zebra vocalization sample is provided. It sounds like a faulty laser gun to me).

English is crazy business!

One of my dear students, Mizuki, shook her head in resignation today and stated "English is crazy business" (a phrase learned from yours truly). She had tried unsuccessfully to find the meaning of the word "creu" in her electronic dictionary. "Creu" is how she heard the word - which turned out to be "clue". Despite the Japanese R/L distinction (or lack thereof), there is still the issue of spelling the sound "oo" - is it "ew", "ue", "oo", "u" or something else?

This situation led to me to search online for electronic dictionaries that accept phonetic spelling. I followed a tangent, as I usually do when surfing the internets, and found what purports to be the original version of the somewhat-known poem about the chaos of English spelling and pronunciation.

Four yer paruzil: The Chaos

Whose Line

One of my favourite TV shows is Whose Line Is It Anyway?. The American version, hosted by Drew Carey, invited special guest Richard Simmons to join the frivolity. Here's the result: Whose JetSki Is It Anyway?

(My other favourite TV show is The Daily Show with John Stewart. He wants me. I can tell).