Tag: UVIC

Untranslatable Idioms

Untranslatable Idioms!

What the heck IS an … Idiom?

Well, according to Dictionary.com (my personal favourite on-line dictionary, along with my personal favourite on-line thesaurus Thesaurus.com!) ….

idiom [ id-ee-uh m ]
SEE SYNONYMS FOR idiom ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

    1. an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one’s head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics.
    2. a language, dialect, or style of speaking peculiar to a people.
    3. a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language.
    4. the peculiar character or genius of a language.
    5. a distinct style or character, in music, art, etc.: the idiom of Bach.

My favourite of ALL the above is #4! Anytime you can use the words ‘peculiar, genius and language’ in a single phrase or sentence, you grab my immediate attention! 👍

All of us use idioms each and every day, without even thinking about them! There are so many examples, and I bet you will have used at least ONE of the ‘15 Most Common English Idioms and Phrases” listed below, maybe even before your first cup of coffee this morning!

  1. ‘The best of both worlds’
  2. ‘Speak of the devil’
  3. ‘See eye to eye’
  4. ‘Once in a blue moon’
  5. ‘When pigs fly’
  6. ‘To cost an arm and a leg’
  7. ‘A piece of cake’
  8. ‘Let the cat out of the bag’
  9. ‘To feel under the weather’
  10. ‘To kill two birds with one stone’
  11. ‘To cut corners’
  12. ‘To add insult to injury’
  13. ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover’
  14. ‘Break a leg’
  15. ‘To hit the nail on the head’
  16. ‘A blessing in disguise’
  17. ‘Call it a day’
  18. ‘Let someone of the hook’
  19. ‘No pain no gain’
  20. ‘Bite the bullet’
  21. ‘Getting a taste of your own medicine’
  22. ‘Giving someone the cold shoulder’
  23. ‘The last straw’
  24. ‘The elephant in the room’
  25. ‘Stealing someone’s thunder’

Oh, and yes, this is a site listed at ZOHO! LOL! And English is not alone in the use of Idioms:

And, of course, these and MANY MORE CALL Facility links are at, you guessed it (insert shameless promotion here!) … ZOHO! And my FAVOURITE language idiom is the cartoon below, in Japanese about ‘Wearing a cat on your head’ !! Click HERE to find out what it means!

TTFN!

 

Somewhat Daily Poster of the Day – Languages of The World

‘Somewhat Misleading’
Daily 🤣 Poster of the Day
Languages of The World

So, how many countries are there in the world? There are 195 countries in the world today, at least according to WorldoMeter. They also seem to have a running count of a variety of metrics for the world too, here. Very cool!

And how many languages are there in the world? According to Ethnologue – Languages of the World, there are 7,117 languages in the world! That is just a WOW kind of number! Just the list of ‘A’ languages, in alphabetical order takes a full page! WOW!

And you can see the Language of the Day too! At one language per day, and 7117 languages, you are now set for 19.49 YEARS (including weekends!) of daily language information! MORE WOW! Now THAT is a homework assignment!

Yup, feeling a bit overwhelmed right about now! Douglas Adams, author of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy‘ had the best solution, WAY ahead of the Internet and Google Translate ….

And a cool infographic about distribution of the major languages of the World!

 

TTFN!

Language Poster of the Day – Japanese Words You Absolutely Positively Probably Might Need to Know

Language Poster of the Day

(But not necessarily Daily!)

Japanese Words
You Absolutely Positively Probably
Might Need to Know

I am bringing back my Language Poster of the Day! Even though I might not do it every day! LOL! There are so many words in different languages that have absolutely NO translation to English, and that is a great loss for speakers of English. Fortunately virtually every single culture and language HAS fascinating words, INCREDIBLE words,BEAUTIFUL words that describe something that cannot expressed in English! 

Today, a poster of Japanese words that have no real translation in English! And don’t think that there aren’t any ENGLISH ONLY words that have no other translations! Take for instance ….. Serendipity!

And that will be a subject for a future post!

My favourite word below is …. YUGEN! Which one is YOUR favourite?

TTFN!

Funny Language-Learning Scenes

The Funniest Language-Learning
Scenes of All Time!

Learning a new language should be fun! Challenging – CHECK! Different – CHECK! Exciting – CHECK! FUN – DOUBLE CHECK!

 Full Disclosure –  I once won a French scholarship out of Grade 12 and spent about 6 weeks in July-August of 1975, in a full French Immersion program! Outside of travelling for 3 months in Europe in 1979, it was my best summer ever! And my roommates were from Chicoutimi and the first day together, we spent teaching each other swear words! LOL! Yeah, okay .. Grade 12! So, yeah, FUN! I can neither confirm, nor deny … I remember them all!

 DOUBLE Full Disclosure – I am nowhere near as good in French NOW, as I was … THEN! LOL! I like to describe my French now as ‘Corn Flakes French‘! What?

On every box of Corn Flakes, each side panel has English and the corresponding ‘translated’ French on the other side! So if you throw away the ‘little words’ on each side .. YOU HAVE A PERFECT TRANSLATION TOOL! Who needs Google Translate anyways! Which will most certainly be another Bog Blog one day! LOL!

Now go and …… HAVE SOME FUN!

 

Top 10 Funniest Language Scenes


3 Funny Language Learning Commercials


Learning English Really Might be Helpful

TTFN!

Fonts and Typography

Fonts and Typography

There might be 26 letters in the ENGLISH language, but there are SO MANY MORE characters in SO MANY MORE LANGUAGES, that fonts become a very important consideration in everything from blogs to academic publications! And what could be better than FREE! Yes, there are countless professionally created fonts for very specific purposes, but sometimes FREE can be just as good.

At ZOHO I have included numerous free and informative sites for a very large selection of FREE FONTS:

Font Squirrel has a nice interface, a wide range of fonts and a searchable database. For instance, just typing in Halloween provided 8 different fonts!

And a recently posted article on the Best Free Fonts for Designers is here.

And Free Foreign Language Fonts is here!

And another Free Foreign Language Fonts is here!

And the Best Multilingual Fonts in 2020 is here!

And they are now both at ZOHO too!

And what would a Bog Blog be without a YouTube video! Stephen Fry is a constant source of language related videos! He is even at TED

Stephen Fry
Kinetic Typography – Language

TTFN!

 

Klingon on The Big Bang Theory!

Klingon is TAUGHT AT UVIC!!!
Well, at least Alien Languages !!

An update from a previous post where Sheldon needs to speak Klingon to thwart his (at the time) Arch Enemy, Wil Wheaton! And then a quick search provided more …. Klingon moments in TBBT! 

Klingon vs Ubbi Dubbi
(The Big Bang Theory S10E07)

The Big Bang Theory
Klingon Boggle

Big Bang Theory:
Sheldon and Leonard talking in Klingon (Extended)

 

TTFN!

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!

NEW CALL FACILITY FURNITURE !

! NEW !
The CALL Facility Furniture
HAS ARRIVED!
! NEW !

All the new furniture has arrived in CALL! Many thanks to Marcus and Adam for arranging all of this! Adam was up on campus yesterday, social/physical distancing of course, putting the new furniture into CALL, and taking these photos too! 

The students will certainly be in for a nice surprise when we are all back at UVic and their favourite lab now has spiffy furniture! We will work on the best layout and with wheels on the upright stations, students can move things around to suit their needs! I can hardly wait to get back to UVIC … for even more reasons than just new furniture! 

Thanks everyone who helped out on spiffing up The CALL Facility for students so they can colllaborate and thrive in their studies even MORE!! And a comfy chair suits the bill!

THANKS TO ALL
WHO HAVE HELPED!

GET – THE COMFY CHAIR!!!


TTFN!

 

Easy and Hard Hard and Easy – Which Languages are … Easy and Hard to Learn!

Easy and Hard … Hard and Easy
Which Languages are … Easy and Hard to Learn!

A few of my MUCH earlier posts will have expired links, expired videos or expired information! So I will be updating them, combining them and hopefully IMPROVING them for my daily Bog Blog!

 

Ten Easiest Languages to Learn

 

Top 10 Difficult Languages to Learn

 

TTFN!

Top 10 ZOHO Links – The World According to Greg

The Top 10 ZOHO Links – According to Greg

NOTE: Unfortunately, I recently discovered that ZOHO is no longer free, at least for the purposes that The CALL Facility used it for. I still have access as an Admin, but I am researching how I might be able to continue to provide the same resources in perhaps a slightly different format. Options such as a website, pdf, Word, Excel or other kind of document, but so far, they are not as easy to use, create, support and maintain. But I am hopeful and optimistic!

MANY THANKS to everyone who supported The CALL Facility (& me!) in offering this very unique resource over the past many years, probably dating back about 15 years or more! ZOHO came about as a response to needing a quick way to access Language bookmarks in CALL! Way back when, and this is BEFORE GOOGLE, I would email an attached bookmark file for specific browsers such as Explorer (Mac!), Safari and even Netscape Navigator! Good times, good times!

ALL the bookmarks are  still ‘at’ ZOHO, and I can access them, and export them into a simple .pdf document if anyone wants them. I can subsort, or include them all in one document. Please let me know! But for now, I won’t be updating ZOHO on a regular basis while I research other, if any, similar resources for Instructors and students.

In the meantime, probably the best strategy, for Instructors, would be to Copy/Paste website inks directly into  Brightspace for students. Yeah, cludgy and inelegant, but … sometimes old school works! The first shift I had in the CALL Facility – was bulk erasing and then making copies of Spanish lessons .. on cassette tapes! Good times, good times!

AND, if you DO CLICK HERE or on the icon of a PDF to the left, then you can view and download a .PDF version of ALL of The CALL Facility ZOHO Bookmarks in alphabetical order. Yeah, not ideal, but … at least they are all in one document.

And many thanks to Mark vH who helped me set it up so very long ago!

As of this morning, there are 896 language related links at ZOHO! WHOA! So many!

So I will be editing them one day in the future, removing and/or updating many of them. Often, the links disappear, they become commercial, have too many pop-ups, are re-routed elsewhere, so they need to be attended to.

So I bring to you, the Hall of Fame ZOHO bookmarks that are the Top Ten of All Time! At least, in my opinion!

You turn to Youtube! I have had to update some of the videos as they have disappeared from Youtube for some reason! But found a few more! Needed an update anyways, from way back in about 2014!

#10 – Klingon Language Institute
Just for fun and I have been kidding about including Klingon as a language in The CALL Facility for … years! And there IS a connection to UVIC too! Just click … here! 

#9 – Tex’s French Grammar
Who would know that one of the best French websites is … deep in the heart of … TEXAS! And true love springs between Tex & Tammy – ARMADILLOS!

#8 – I’m Yan (Yan and the Japanese People)
THE most popular video series in CALL HISTORY! An original resource on VHS, no less, follow the adventures of Yan, a foreigner living and working in Japan! VHS? So not available anymore in CALL? Say it ain’t so … well … IT AIN’T SO! I have all 26 episodes digitized on a single DL-DVD! There is even a Wikipedia Page!

#7 – News and Media Sites such as CBC, BBC and CNN. There is also a single link for World Newspapers too! Many offer transcripts on a daily basis too.

#6 – CBC Digital Archives  are an excellent source for Canadian History with articles, texts, videos, etc.

#5 – DICTIONARY sites – all kinds of them! Merriam-Webster and Cambridge and even more here.

#4 – ThoughtCo. Lifelong Learning – once known as About, all kinds of language links and others too! 

#3 – Utilities – Another Filter where you can discover keyboard layouts, fonts, foreign characters, graphics, media conversions, Google Translate and even World CALL Language Links! One stop shopping for that hard to find font for the designer who has everything!

#2 – TED Talks! Bet you didn’t know there were Language based Ted Talks! Now …. you do!

#1 – UVIC SITES! Each Department has their own website with resources, links, tests, Instructor contacts and more! You might not need ZOHO for any of these, but they will be your single best resource for all the languages you are studying! Oh, and you can also download my CALL Orientation .pdf there too – which has all the Department links in it too!

TTFN!