Every wondered how elephants dated? Well, you’re not the only one and some folks have got together to figure the whole thing out. Since 1999 the Elephant Listening Project has been, funnily enough, listening to elephants.
They’ve learned that elephants use infrasonic calls – calls too low in frequency to be heard by the human ear [...]
Posts from ‘January, 2007’
The language of elephants
Free Resources
Here’s another section I’ve added that will grow with time. This will have all the free resources for language learning that I’ve managed to dig up on the Internet. Well, the ones I think are worth using anyway. So coming soon to your screen will be more resources and more languages. Send me your links [...]
Spanish Reviews
I’ve been a busy little bee over the weekend and written up two reviews for your reading pleasure. Both are for learning Spanish but I hope to be expanding into different languages as this website grows. And, as always, reader submissions are always welcome…
So head over and check out the Reviews section to read the reviews on [...]
Chinglish to be banned from Beijing Olympics
I found this article a while ago and use it for a laugh in my English classes. For those that don’t know, Chinglish is when Chinese gets poorly translated into English. It’s quite prevalent when you’re travelling round China and always amusing. Here is the BBC article about the preparation for the Beijing Olympics and also [...]
The Maori language
I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of this one before. It’s the native language of New Zealand and of course a very important part of my culture. If you’ve never travelled to New Zealand before, the only example you might have heard would probably come from any rugby match involving our national team, [...]
Lithuanian Frank Zappa fan club
Adding to the power of music I was talking about last week, even in a different language, is the story of the Frank Zappa fan club in Lithuania. If you visit Vilnius, you will see the only sculpture erected in celebration of the musician. The following article will tell you the entire story and I recommend stopping [...]
Cultural differences
Ok, so how truly liberal is your country? Would you ever find a politician, an elected politician even, with quite high standing in the party, pose nude? I was quite shocked when I saw this had happened in Spain, and the most amazing thing? No-one cares. It was a story that lasted one day. The [...]
Language use on the Internet
I found some interesting statistics of the languages used on the Internet and I’m sad to say it’s rather biased towards English at the moment. According to the research, 29.7% of internet users are English native speakers, 13.3% Chinese, 7.9% Japanese, 7.5% Spanish, 5.4% German, 4.6% French, 3.1% Portuguese, 3.1% Korean, 2.7% Italian, 2.2% Russian, [...]
When languages mix…badly
Words are often taken from other languages and imported into your own, sometimes with funny results. In Mexico, I’ve been told that it’s become increasing common to say “vacunar la carpeta.” Now to English speakers, you might not be surprised by this, thinking it simply means to “vacuum the carpet” and that is indeed what [...]
Changing your perspective
It’s hard to avoid some exposure to the media in your country. Whether you believe what they say or not is another question. An interesting example of this is a recent speech made by none other than the US’s beloved George W. Bush. The NY Times focuses almost exclusively on the decision to send more [...]