Today is English Language Day at the United Nations Organisation. It is celebrated today because it is the official birthday of William Shakespeare. Often referred to as a “world language” because it is so widely spoken, English is one of the six official…
Tag: language
25 words
We thought we’d covered this before, but evidently not: http://sobadsogood.com/2012/04/29/25-words-that-simply-dont-exist-in-english/ some marvellous words there. TOTD has long tried to introduce the word ‘dunk’ to the English language. (The u is pronounced less like an ‘uh’ and more like a very…
British Library Sounds
Explore the British Library’s extensive collection of recorded sounds, including music, oral history, wildlfe and dialects. http://sounds.bl.uk/
Posted in Thing of the Day Tagged with: archives, audio, collections, environment, history, language, music, natural history
Finnish tongue twisters
The Library has some Finns here as interns for three months which is a great opportunity for TOTD to brush up on the bits of Finnish language learned over 20 years ago. It is, of course, the language of heaven…
Graph Word
“This is rather fun!” write E contributing this: http://graphwords.com/ She’s right! For those who are visually oriented and love words.
Memrise
Here’s an interesting way to learn the vocabulary for a variety of languages. The site uses flashcards supported by video clips, mnemonics and samples of how each word is used. Anyone can add to the site by creating flashcards, adding…
Inky Fool
This is rather a fun blog if you’re interested in words and (English) language. http://blog.inkyfool.com/ There’s a particularly good entry on why prepositions at the end of a sentence aren’t a problem: http://blog.inkyfool.com/2010/05/prepositions-end-of-sentences-at.html# but there’s lots more to delight here…
Nigeria
Bawoni! Recently, Thing of the Day went to a very interesting workshop about Working with Nigerian Students. This workshop discussed the people, customs and culture of Nigeria and we also learned a few phrases in the Nigerian dialects of Yoruba, Hausa and Ibo,…
a Chinese story
TOTD has long had a fascination with languages and this delight is a story in Chinese in which every syllable is prounced ‘shi’. With different tones of course. If any Chinese speakers would like to drop by the office and…
Les Trois Petits Cochon do Gaga
In June of last year we reported on librarians doing Lady Gaga (http://www.liblog.port.ac.uk/blog/2010/06/2047/). Now it’s the turn of the three little pigs! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qxnpz0z_hg You might even learn some French watching this! Thanks to S for finding it.
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