Language Net

The Language of Music

littlehelpers — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 20:34:29 +0000

Setting up a website of classical music conductor Aviv Ron (MD of the Israel Chamber Orchestra of Ram-Gan) I wounder where to find good examples for discussing and describing music. Honestly this is an art lost somewhere in the last century. Music critics nowadays do not only lack musical taste but mainly the ability to describe a concert in a meaningful way. Many of them would be better of only describing the dresses worn the same evening than even writing one line about the music and it’s interpretation by the musicians.

So if you happen to know some good and worthy examples of “talking music” let me know -I would like to add a good link list to the conductor’s website.

Get a free Babylon License

littlehelpers — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:40:47 +0000

Attention Bloggers!
A friend of mine passed on a link to me to a Babylon promotional program that give a way free annual licenses of Babylon 7 in return for a short review on your blog. You can find me details about this here.

For those that to not know Babylon. It is a translation software with over 50 languages and more than 1000 dictionaries. It is known for its easy use and installation. You simply click on a word and Bablyons desktop application opens a window with the translation.

OED Word of the Day

littlehelpers — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:46:05 +0000

Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day

Description: Maybe less entertaining than the WOTD of Merriam-Webster, but certainly not less factual knowledge. Oxford adds to the basic definition of the word its pronunciation, etymology, a huge amount of quotations and a very interesting feature called Date chart, which highlights years of increased use of the word.

Example entry:

deboard

[< DE- prefix + BOARD v.]

1. a. trans. To get off (a train, aeroplane, etc.); to disembark from.

1960 Washington Post 28 Feb. E1/2 Sorry you got stuck with my hat in deboarding Eastern Airlines flight 614. 1981 Yale Law Jrnl. 90 1743 If a passenger was injured while boarding or deboarding a moving railroad car, the California Court,..ruled that it was not necessarily negligent. 1998 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 22 June 19 (cartoon) It’s time to deboard the plane when you see the navigator poring over a road map. 2002 T. MIRLL Children & Fools iv. 73 A group of college kids..had also deboarded the train and stood on the platform near us.

b. intr. To get off a train, aeroplane, etc.; to disembark.

1962 N.Y. Times 14 Jan. XX. 5/1 Wait at Idlewild, boarding plane..48 [minutes]… Flight Idlewild{em}London..370… Bus ride to East London Air Terminal..40… Deboarding and waiting for taxi..11. 1981 Yale Law Jrnl. 90 1744 As for the passenger who failed to look ahead while deboarding, the New Hampshire Court specified that if she was in a ‘flustered state of..mind’ because the railroad had overshot its station, a jury finding of no contributory negligence was appropriate. 1995 Boston Globe (Nexis) 21 June 25 About 600 passengers from three stranded inbound trains were forced to deboard and trudge through the steamy tunnel. 2005 J. BARNES Duke of Uraniam iv. 92 Everyone on board will deboard now.

2. trans. To remove from a train, aeroplane, etc.; to allow (passengers) to disembark.

1961 Alaskan & Hawaiian Transportation (U.S. Govt. Print Office) 220 The motor carriers freight is, by railroad policy, deboarded last and must be unloaded, and then reloaded on the trucks. 1965 Helicopter Air Service Program (Hearings U.S. Senate Commerce Comm.) 300 The cost of boarding and deboarding the passenger is the major cost of the trip regardless of what distance is covered. 1985 Arkansas Democrat-Gaz. (Nexis) 13 Oct., The ferry..pulls briefly into the port of Ithaca to deboard a few passengers with their cars. 1996 Jrnl. Commerce (Nexis) 7 Aug. 1A, Once you’ve landed, you’ve got to park your plane and deboard your passengers.

Availability: per email or RSS feed.

Note: No archive of the WOTD online

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day

littlehelpers — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:27:41 +0000

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day

Description: With whom better to start this series of posting on “Word of the Day” features than with Merriam-Webster, one of the great classics of the English dictionaries. Quality, authority and profoundness that is what you think when thinking Merriam-Webster. Also its Word of the Day gives reference to the great heritage of this dictionary. Beside the pronunciation and definition of the carefully chosen words, you will find here an example sentence (in my opinion always helpful to see a word in its “natural” environment) and learn more about the origin of the word.

The Word of the Day for December 08, 2008 is:
carpaccio• \kar-PAH-chee-oh\ • noun

: thinly sliced raw meat or fish served with a sauce — often used postpositively
Example Sentence:
“Though the menu is large, stick with the steaks and the beef carpaccio at this sleek, airy restaurant.” (The San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 2008)
Did you know?
Carpaccio is not the only dish named after a person, though its name might have the most artful origin. Created in 1950 by Venetian restaurateur Giuseppe Cipriani, carpaccio is named after Vittore Carpaccio, the Renaissance painter. Cipriani created the dish for the Countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo, who had been under doctor’s orders to avoid cooked meats. According to Cipriani’s memoir, he chose to name the dish after Carpaccio because the red in the beef matched the colors found in Carpaccio’s paintings. Recently, some restaurants have begun using the term for similarly prepared non-meat dishes (such as pear carpaccio).

Availability: onsite, per email, RSS feed and podcast.

Word of the Day

littlehelpers — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:20:33 +0000

They can be interesting, amusing, enlightening… those “Word of the Day” features you find all over the Internet. Some of them are available only online, others are sent to your inbox. And I believe they are worth a column on my Language Net. From the general to the most specific, I will try to point out some good sources that might become a daily stimulus.

One day only has 24 hours

littlehelpers — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:06:41 +0000

And that is not enough for me right now. I have to be realistic, and therefore I decided to give Dictionary Net the highest priority in my blogging. It is simple difficult otherwise.

So please be patient – I am not giving up!

Style Guide

littlehelpers — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:54:58 +0000

Just after I published earlier today what I envision for Language Net I am coming up with an additional idea. And I like it! How’s about collection sources that are Style Guides … Next one I was thinking of was…. yeah, Sites for word lovers… let’s improve, celebrate and enjoy our language!

Still trying to figure things out

littlehelpers — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:42:13 +0000

I was working a lot on Dictionary Net these last days and it took up all my time and energy. But while working on it slowly it became clearer to me how I will use this Trio of Dictionary Net, Language Net and Translation Net (just established no content so far, sorry)

Dictionary Net – clearly goes into direction of monolingual dictionaries.

Translation Net – will be what once was the ideas for Language Net, the place for foreign language dicitonaries.

Language Net – will be the place to discuss Meta Language sites such as Online Wörterbuch by Babylon, or Dictionary.com . It will also have rooms to give reference to outstanding link collection such as e.g. Glossarist.com

Well the plans are here, just give me time.

English Spanish Dictionaries

littlehelpers — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:00:08 +0000

The English Spanish language pair is one of the most searched for in the Internet. A fact that needs no further explanation, knowing about the strong Spanish speaking population the the U.S. One sign for the need to have translation made in these languages is for example the government websites are many time written in an English and a Spanish version in order to serve the public to its best. Recently Google started to offer an improved online translation (more about that in a seperate post), but is is most remarkable that the default setting of the language choice is set on Spanish >> English

So expect to see a lot of entries in this category

Hello world!

littlehelpers — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:29:09 +0000

I like it the way it is, so why changing it. I like the design I found and first of all I would like to thank wordpress (Mr. Word Press for their great service! Of course they have their way of making money, but I am truly thankful for this new online home of mine.

I will go back to my old file, will meet their many old friends, and whatever is still useful I will add to my blog.

Let’s get away with the dust!