Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Word Nerds and Linguistic Fancies

I've been listening to word nerds, a podcast that I found on itunes. I like their discussions, though at times, I feel that the conversations could be as fluid as NPR's Car Talk's Tappet brothers's conversations. Below are some links to things that they highlighted in December and November. I haven't listened for a couple of months.

If you do not have time to listen to a whole podcast, but you can take a minute or two to read a blog on language and linguistics, I highly recommend Language Log. The posts are fun and interesting. They had one speculating how fluent President Obama was in Indonesian, which he learned as a child. They also had a post charting "That's Greek to me" phrasing in different languages, where some languages pointed to Greek, Chinese, Arabic, and even Heavenly Script as being the more unintelligible language.

In the end, check language log out. It's fun.

The other links suggested by the word nerds, but...language log is better.

Word Nerds: http://thewordnerds.org/
Nature Magazine Article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/full/nature06176.html
Dead Words: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/11/zounds-nixonian-skedaddle-and-other-dead-words/

1 comment:

blueeyedfreckle said...

you are so cute with all those podcasts you love:) I really did think the "that's Greek to me" thing was cool. oh and where is your usual quiz? you should have one dealing with words/linguistics....