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Barbara McClintock

Emergency Linguistics: The Translation of Public Health Information in Emergency Situations

August 4, 2020 by Barbara McClintock | 4 Comments on Emergency Linguistics: The Translation of Public Health Information in Emergency Situations

Every act of communication is an act of translation. Gregory Rabassa, translator of Spanish and Portuguese fiction The translation of public health information is critical in emergency situations, particularly in a country like Canada that welcomes thousands of immigrants every year whose mother tongue is not English or French. A new discipline has been proposed, […]

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James Harbeck

Do you want to use a Germanic feature, or do you prefer using a Celtic one?

April 10, 2018 by James Harbeck | 1 Comment on Do you want to use a Germanic feature, or do you prefer using a Celtic one?

Learning other languages is fun. And to learn another language is to learn more about your own language — especially when it takes on the aspect of learning more about your family tree. You’ve probably had the experience of meeting new relatives or learning about ancestors and thinking, “Oh, that explains something.” Well, consider this: […]

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Shalini Khan

“Broken” English

February 13, 2018 by Shalini Khan | 4 Comments on “Broken” English

Have you seen this meme? There is no such thing as American English. There is English and there are mistakes. First appearing on Twitter in June 2014, the original tweet was tongue-in-cheek, in keeping with the account’s satirical leaning. The words have since taken on a life of their own, and the resulting memes are shared […]

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James Harbeck

A Macaronic Feather in Our Cap

December 12, 2017 by James Harbeck | 2 Comments on A Macaronic Feather in Our Cap

English is gloriously macaronic. I don’t mean that it’s like a big bowl of elbow noodles, not exactly. But I also don’t mean that it’s like a macaron — well, maybe I do, but that’s not what the word means. Macaronic, linguistically, refers to something that’s a mixture of languages. Macaronic poetry, for instance, may […]

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James Harbeck

The Hardest Language

April 11, 2017 by James Harbeck | 2 Comments on The Hardest Language

What language is the hardest to learn? The hardest for whom to learn? The world has many languages of many different kinds, but one thing they all have in common is that kids grow up speaking them fluently and think of them as the natural way to say things. Some languages have many inflections — […]

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