Thoughts about: An Introduction to Language (Fromkin et al)
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams - An Introduction to Language I thought i better read a linguistics textbook before i start studying it formally. Who wud want to look…
Methods for discovering which language is the hardest to learn
Languages differ in how hard they are to learn, they are not just 'different' or some other relativistic nonsense. Aside from intuitve estimates, is there some systematic way to measure…
Vocab size of non-native english speakers by country
http://testyourvocab.com/blog/2011-09-10-Results-by-country.php Somewhat surprising Denmark and Norway (difference perhaps not statistically significant) are at the top. I was expecting to see France because most english words have french or latin (both…
Review of New Spelling
Because of clarity, I feel that I should write this review in standard English. (How boring!) The book can be downloaded here: http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/books/books.php or from my mirror (in one file)…
The French languaj
Wikipedia pajes of interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Peletier_du_Mans <-- he is a prety kool guy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_%28typography%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigesimal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#Mathematical_usage wich system is the best? I tend to kopy the US/EN system…
Danish (and other languajes with the definit article as a sufix) and abreviations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_%28grammar%29 I noticed one thing today wile reeding Wikipedia articles (a hoby of mine that consumes a surprisingly larj amount of time). Supose one wanted to abreviate “konsentration” (equiv. of…
Comment to Women, Fire, Dangerous things
Lakoff, p. 148 “Let us consider a simple example of a presupposition. (a) I regret that Harry left. (b) I don't regret that Harry left. (c) Harry left. Normally, the…
Ebook: Lakoff – Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
Somone requested this. George Lakoff - Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
Review: Seth Lerer, Inventing English: A portable history of the language, 2007
It has been some time since I read this book but I got distracted about writing my review of it. Basically, I set out to learn something about the history…