Tag: French

Medieval Help Desk . . . or Bomgar Through the Ages

Medieval Help Desk or . . . 
Bomgar Through the Ages . . .  

THE best part of working for The Computer Help Desk is … talking with people! Every day is different, every person is different and we get to help students, staff, faculty and people from around the entire world!

And this post is definitely on the lighter side of what happens at a Computer Help Desk!

If you haven’t heard of ‘The IT Crowd‘, then that is mandatory viewing for anyone even ‘remotely connected‘ to any Help Desk! (Cheeky pun there .. hehe!).

You can get more information about each episode at ‘Next Episode‘ and my ALL TIME Favourite Episode has Moss introducing the Internet to Jen! So many clips can be found at YouTube as well! I will put a couple of clips at the bottom of this post!

And of course, The IT Crowd is at Netflix!

Another hilarious clip is when a Medieval monk introduces new technology to one of the other monks at their monastery. There are a few versions of them, so I will put a few of them at the bottom too, in English as well as with subtitles!

All in good fun and for me, the best parts of them all – you get to talk to people and solve their problems! And I have solved SO many computer problems in CALL and elsewhere – even recommending to my own brother – ‘Have you tried turning it off and on?‘ .. and it solves the problem! LOL!

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

The IT Crowd
Have You Tried Turning it Off and On?

Moss Introduces Jen
to . . . The Internet

Medieval Help Desk
(with English subtitles)

Medieval Help Desk
English Version

Medieval Help Desk
Funnier Subtitles

‘For the 80th time, you cannot get rid of viruses by pouring bleach down the back of your computer!’

 

 

 

 

The Most Beautiful Words in the World

The Most Beautiful . . . 
Words in the World . . .  

Some words just sound beautiful! As if you are singing them, just by pronouncing them! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but … it could also be in the … ear!

My favourite word in the English language is probably Serendipity. I say probably because … there are so many beautiful words! Even the word ‘beautiful’ is literally … beautiful!

 

Where does serendipity come from?
In the mid-1700s, English author Horace Walpole stumbled upon an interesting tidbit of information while researching a coat of arms. In a letter to his friend Horace Mann he wrote: “This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of….” Walpole’s memory of the tale (which, as it turns out, was not quite accurate) gave serendipity the meaning it retains to this day.

 

And there is a very good chance that beautiful words from other languages do not have an English translation, then I have that covered already with a previous blog post entitled “Untranslatable Words or … The Mystery and Beauty of Communication“. I got you covered!

A list of the ‘23 of the Most Beautiful Words in the World” will make it very difficult to choose your favourite word, in both sound and meaning!

A very tough choice for me, but I will go with “Mångata“, a Swedish word that means ‘the reflection of the moon on water‘. There was a Super Moon here a few weeks ago and it was absolutely spectacular!

But, a very close second is the Japanese word for ‘light filtering through the trees‘, ‘Komorebi’, as I like biking through Mystic Vale each day to and from work!

And a few more great lists AND some images, are at:

And in my brief research this morning I came across what J.R.R. Tolkien thought was “The Most Beautiful Word in the World“! And there is probably a translation of it in … Sindarin! 

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

10 Stunningly Beautiful
English Words

15 Beautiful Words
That Will Soothe Your Brain

Beautiful Untranslatable Words
From Around the World

Beautiful Foreign Words
With No English Translation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Longest Words in the World

The Longest . . . 
Words in the World . . .  

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a word that once you hear it, or at least, the singing of it from Mary Poppins, just rolls off your tongue quite easily!

Guilty pleasure – I enjoy saying this word to students when the topic of fun, strange, different and long words comes up! LOL! And don’t forget about the The ABC Song from Sesame Street, although whether the alphabet ITSELF qualifies as a word … is a debatable point!

The obvious contender is …. Antidisestablishmentarianism ! Who hasn’t heard of this word before! But, it only holds the record because it is considered a “non-medical, non-coined, nontechnical word” and it does have an interesting history! 

The longest word in the world has …. 189,819 letters. Yes, that is right, 189, 819 letters. And it could be surpassed due to the chemical components required to ‘name’ strands of DNA. This is mind boggling to me that a single strand of DNA could have so many letters!

METHIONYLTHREONYLTHREONYGLUTA . . . ISOLEUCINE 

Note the ellipses. All told, the full chemical name for the human protein titin is 189,819 letters, and takes about three-and-a-half hours to pronounce. The problem with including chemical names is that there’s essentially no limit to how long they can be. For example, naming a single strand of DNA, with its millions and millions of repeating base pairs, could eventually tab out at well over 1 billion letters.

And the other 11 long words can be found at ” What’s the Longest Word in the World? Here are 12 of Them, By Category” for your Spelling Bee practice!

And growing up, The Reader’s Digest was always a source of humour, articles and .. WORDS with their Word Power pages. And they too have an article on the longest word in the world. And they agree!

And you can certainly fill your boots with an alphabetical list of the longest words in the English language at “A-Z List of Long Words and Their Meanings That’ll Leave You Baffled” !

But what about … the rest of the world! There are so many languages in the world, surely, there must be longer words! And… THERE ARE!

So the answer lies within “What Is The Longest Word In The World?” And the funniest, longest word in the World is from Vietnam, and that word is nghiêng.  What? That isn’t long AT ALL! Ah, but it is the SHORTEST LONGEST WORD in the world! Yes, the longest word in Vietnamese is only 7 letters long! 

nghiêng

This clearly isn’t the longest word in the world, but this Vietnamese word at just seven letters long has the distinction of being the longest word in Vietnamese. That also means it’s the shortest longest word that exists. Arguably, nghiêng is a single morpheme, not a word, but Vietnamese is an “isolating language.” Instead of combining prefixes and suffixes to create new words, Vietnamese uses multiple small words that combine to change the meaning. This only works if your definition of a “word” is any combination of letters surrounded by spaces, however.

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

18 Super Long Words
From Around the Globe

The Longest Words
in Any Language

Pronouncing the Longest
Words in English

So Easy, a 7 Year Old
Can Spell It!!!

 

 

 

 

 

English Words That Don’t Translate Into OTHER Languages

English Words That . . . 
DON’T Translate Into . . . 
OTHER Languages . . . . 

English is considered to have the MOST words of any language … IN THE WORLD!

That is somewhat debatable and will be a future post. Previous posts have shown examples of the variety of words and phrases in other languages that don’t translate into English, but have beautiful, amazing and even profound meanings!

But what about the other way around? With SO many English words, there must be some that do not translate into any other languages! And …. there are!

Here are “10 Common Words That You’ll Only Find in English” and that you probably use each and every day! Serendipity is one of my own favourite words of All-Time (another future post!) and Silly is definitely in my Top 20 Word List! 😂

 

 

 

 

Another site shows just how many “English Words That Can’t Be Translated“. An especially nice word, is actually the word, Nice!

Another relatively new word, has long-term, time travel and alternate universe implications! At the very least, it will impact the next generation of Star Trek Fans! FacePalm!

And Canada is officially bilingual with English and French, but to me, the more the merrier! So what happens with subtle nuances in English, that do not necessarily translate into French! Well, you go and search the internet and find … “English Words and Nuances That Don’t Exist in French“! My old friend, the World Wide Web has grown up!

Usually, it is the other way around, but there ARE “10 English Words That Don’t Exist in Japanese“! And that includes the SHORTEST WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ‘I‘ ! Well, it is tied with some others, but I bet you don’t know them ALL! Another future post!

And of course, to include some YouTube demonstrating examples of English words that don’t exist in French and German! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

10 English Words
That Don’t Have an Exact Translation in French

9 English Words
That Don’t Exist in German

 

 

 

 

Unpronounceable Words or . . . I Didn’t Quite . . . Catch That . . .

Unpronounceable Words or . . . 
I Didn’t Quite . . . 
Catch That . . . . 

Unpronounceable Words!!!

And I am not talking about tongue twisters. More like tongue twisters ON STEROIDS! Even English words are sometimes hard to pronounce … even for English speakers!

I always have problems with … Worcestershire Sauce, and I still can’t pronounce it right, even today, even if Dictionary.com tells me how to pronounce it!!

And then throw in learning a new language where making new sounds that HAVE MEANING … IS THE BALL GAME!

I am simply in awe of EVERYONE that does speak more than one language! Sadly, my French is nowhere near where it once was, but …. I can still follow ‘La Soirée du hockey‘! Ah, hockey, the international language! “La Première Étoile .. GUY LAFLEUR!” 

Oh, and if you don’t think this is not going to happen to you …. how about this. You go out to a very nice Italian restaurant! And you decide to order some BRUSCHETTA as an appetizer, an early ESPRESSO to warm your palate taste buds, a main course of GNOCCI with free range raised GUANCIALE as the main ingredient.

Are you CERTAIN you pronounced ALL those words right?

If not, better check here:

Menu items you’re mispronouncing
(and how to say them)

And watch the YouTube Video below if you are curious about the three words/phrases below and how they are pronounced! GO FOR IT! And I dare you to say the phrase below, in English, FIVE TIMES REALLY FAST – the squirrel line!! LOL!

And a future post might just highlight even MORE English words that are hard to pronounce! So many Blog posts to do … not enough keyboards!

ENJOY!                TTFN!



Five hundred fifty five ice skating squirrels!

 

18 Words from around the World
You can’t pronounce

 

 

 

 

Untranslatable Words or … The Mystery and Beauty of Communication

Untranslatable Words or …
The Mystery and Beauty
of Communication

Untranslatable Words!!!

This doesn’t mean the word makes no sense, it just means the word has no equivalent in another language! It could be cultural, historical or even anecdotal ….  or just made up!

It does not lessen the meaning and I would argue, enhances the meaning OF a word, when another language or culture can actually embrace what might be described as …’There really is no word for (fill in the blank here) in English!” 

I found a wonderful site that not only lists 30 amazing words, but the artist has provided some amazing posters too! Check out “30 Untranslatable Words From Other Languages Illustrated By Anjana Iyer” and let me know which one is your favourite!

My FAVOURITE from these posters is the Norwegian word Utepils which means ‘to sit outside on a sunny day enjoying a beer‘!

Although the FUNNIEST word is the Japanese word Age-otori which means ‘to look worse after a haircut‘! 🤣 And with physical distancing necessary, just how ARE you going to get a good haircut in the foreseeable future! 🤷‍♂️

Maybe you have a different favourite from the “50 Untranslatable Words From Around the World” poster below!

Oh yeah, and shameless promotion – I did “Untranslatable Idioms” the other day! LOL!

ENJOY!!!

TTFN!

JAVA Programming or … How to Order Coffee in Other Languages!

JAVA Programming or …
How to Order Coffee
in Other Languages

JAVA! JAVA! JAVA!

import java.util.Scanner; class PrimeNumberDemo { public static void main(String args[]) { int n; int status = 1; int num = 3; //For capturing the value of n Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in); System.out.println(“Enter the value of n:”); //The entered value is stored in the var n n = scanner.nextInt(); if (n >= 1)

Well, not THAT kind of JAVA! That is part of ACTUAL JAVA CODE to “…display first n or first 100 prime numbers” .. SERIOUSLY!   I did not write that! 🤣

MY kind of JAVA is more of the magical liquid elixir that most of us rely on to not only start the day, but to make it through the day! LOL! Ah, is there anything it can’t do! (Apologies to Homer and Donuts in German and ‘anything they can’t do’!)

Victoria has SO MANY FINE COFFEE SHOPS, including at UVic too! Let’s not forget about my favourite coffee spot on campus – The Munchie Bar! 

Walking into a Starbucks is actually a language lesson with all those Venti, Grande and a size I just learned about … TRENTA! Be warned, it is actually a size that is larger than … the average STOMACH!!!!

And my old friend, Dictionary.com – Order Your Coffee Like A Boss has some background on all those wonderful names for the sizes and kinds of coffee that are out there! Learn something new today… about COFFEE! ENJOY!!!

TTFN!

 

How to Order Coffee in …

JAPANESE !

RUSSIAN !

FINNISH!

MANDARIN CHINESE !

GERMAN !

FRENCH !

And if you made it THIS far, a bit of movie humour! How would a Marvel Super Hero, oh, say, Ant Man, order his coffee! LOL! You just need to see the first 1:15 of this for the coffee scene!

 

And if you have not seen Airplane 2, then .. this is about the only good scene!


YouTube Language Translations of Popular Shows

YouTube Translations of 
Popular Shows

YouTube? Translations? Well not quite translations, but clips from popular media (TV and movies) in other languages! Not quite Google Translate (a future post is in the works!) but good for a different perspective of popular shows, iconic moments and just plain .. FUN!

So below are a bunch of YouTube clips from some of my favourite TV shows and movies, all in other languages such as German and Japanese! Just a quick search at YouTube and I found all of these in a short period of time! Most people will instantly know the setting, movie or moments AND the iconic lines, so they offer quite a teaching moment, as well as some fun in learning a new language!

Besides, UVic HAS taught a course in Klingon! Really and for true! Qapla’! Today IS a good day to …  learn a new language!


TTFN!

 

Anakin Obi-Wan Star Wars Japanese

Star Wars in Japanese

Beam Me Up, Scotty! German!

Clip “Ich bin der König der Welt!”
Titanic!

Doctor Who in Five Languages

Doctor Who in Japanese

 
 

 

 

 

The Funniest Languages in the World

The Funniest Languages
in the World

So the easiest and toughest languages were discussed in yesterday’s post. But learning should be fun and learning a new language SHOULD BE THE MOST FUN! And, as Haruki Murakami ponders, there IS another person inside of you:

What Is The Funniest Language?
Stephen Fry’s Planet World

Shakespeare’s Words that Failed to Catch On

And for me …..
The FUNNIEST English Language Skit
OF ALL TIME!


TTFN!

Working From Home

Most, if not all of us at CHD are now working from home or will be soon.

And that likely means everyone who also works at or attends UVIC.

Hopefully, EVERYONE will be at home soon to stay safe with social distancing and/or self-isolation. Take all the necessary precautions and keep checking back at the UVIC site and with colleagues! We are all in this together.

Many thanks to EVERYONE at CHD for setting us up with UVic laptops and resources so we can do the best possible work, from home, given the circumstances.  Clicking on the banner above takes you to the UVic home page where everyone will get the most recent updates. I would hope everyone is doing that on a regular basis.

One always neglected interest for me is expanding my knowledge of blogging using OAC or The Online Academic Community at UVic. I will try to do one blog each weekday, language related, (or maybe not) either with links, information or interesting topics, just to keep the resources that might be out there, available. I believe that OAC is one of THE MOST UNDERUTILZED RESOURCES on campus, especially so for language learning, so … here goes!

One of the best CALL Facility resources over the years has been ZOHO, or also known as CALL Facility Bookmarks!

Many years ago, I added/collected the best language sites to each browser in The CALL Facility – both Mac and WIN. It rapidly grew and grew in size and time requirements, yet students wanted all the links that I was finding, or had been requested by Instructors. So I attached the bookmarks file in an email. That quickly proved too time consuming as well!

So … to make a long story short, I now use ZOHO to add new websites, either from me, Instructors or students that hopefully prove useful to students! Big shoutout to Mark vH for helping me back then! THANKS MARK!

Available anywhere, any platform, 24/7, I have literally added a new website sent to me from an Instructor, even IN PERSON as their class arrived in CALL ….. and had it posted at ZOHO before the students even logged in at their computers! Then they searched for the key word(s) given to me by the Instructor and they had the link instantly in seconds for their homework, assigment or group project.

Yes, Google could probably find it too, but … just where is it ranked? Way down low? Middle? How many different ads might pop up? Located somewhere else in the Multiverse? Good luck getting ahold of Doctor Strange or even .. The Doctor!

At ZOHO, it is right there, with the keywords and titles that the Instructor wants, not just now …. but … RIGHT NOW! Oh yeah, and it is free too! Easy to maintain as well, which is what I will task myself with in the next few days – cleaning up old websites and maybe bumping into a few new ones!

To see for yourself, you can click on either graphic above to instantly go there, or you could search at Google for the keywords “CALL Facility ZOHO Bookmarks” and … Google is your friend!

Do a search for Klingon at CALL Facility Bookmarks and see what you find – you might be surprised to even find Hobbits once roamed UVIC! And everyone knows about the Vampires at UVic, right?

Greg

Stay safe. Stay at home. Stay healthy. Everyone.