What are some tips in having better speech? [more inside]
posted by InterestedInKnowing on Dec 14, 2009 - 9 answers

How can I improve my description of my back pain to best inform my doctor? [more inside]
posted by citywolf on Dec 10, 2009 - 9 answers

Can I teach myself to read French in five months? [more inside]
posted by SamuelBowman on Nov 28, 2009 - 16 answers

Is there a word that describes a situation where you *technically* have free will, but don't REALLY have the option to choose otherwise? [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon on Nov 18, 2009 - 27 answers

What's the gender-neutral equivalent to "Sir" and "Ma'am"? [more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen on Nov 16, 2009 - 26 answers

Are adverbs mere adjective spinoffs? [more inside]
posted by aswego on Nov 13, 2009 - 17 answers

I feel weird about dropping my foreign pen-pal-but not weird enough to want to change anything. Am I too cruel? [more inside]
posted by naplesyellow on Nov 11, 2009 - 11 answers

How can I dump every character in a font to a text file? [more inside]
posted by Beautiful Downtown Burbank on Nov 11, 2009 - 4 answers

A few years back, I was watching The Chappelle Show and Chappelle, during one of his monologues, made a reference to a sexual act, using a word that I was not familiar with. I assumed the word came from hip-hop subculture. He followed up by saying something to the effect of, "I love using nasty words that white people/FCC don't know yet. They have no idea how dirty I'm being when I say _______ ." Does anyone remember what that word was and what it means? Sorry I can't recall the season or the episode or more context.
posted by i'm being pummeled very heavily on Oct 30, 2009 - 4 answers

What did the Nazis call the French Resistance? I know they called the individual resisters "terrorists," but what word did they use to describe the resistance as a whole? (Insurgency, resistance, uprising, rebellion, etc.) This is research for a screenplay - I'm not looking for a discussion about modern parallels, or of what the morally correct word is in various situations. Also, if someone could give me the word in German that would be great! Please no guessing.
posted by bagadonuts on Oct 22, 2009 - 9 answers

Relationship filter: He's an Austrian in Austria, I'm an American in America, and I have ADHD/Inattentive type. He's not familiar with this concept. What books can I suggest to him? [more inside]
posted by bilabial on Oct 18, 2009 - 7 answers

How do I talk to doctors in a professional manner? [more inside]
posted by bananaskin on Oct 7, 2009 - 11 answers

What do you call this linguistic/social device? You are in a social situation, and want to get out. You say maybe, 'I'm going to be late for a meeting', when both people KNOW there is no meeting. But since you are being SO OBVIOUS, you are, in effect, telling them you are leaving. By being obvious, you are not evading, or lying, you are being creatively blunt. [more inside]
posted by ebesan on Sep 29, 2009 - 27 answers

I recently read about a study on what body language women use as perceived by men. Essentially, it said that there was no observable difference between a woman trying to flirt with a man and the same woman just being polite for the first four or five minutes of their first conversation together. I'm trying to find out if this actually happened, and if so whether it was a reliable, scientifically done study, but I lost the link right after reading it.
posted by sandswipe on Sep 27, 2009 - 8 answers

What is this type of toy called (and where can I buy one)? [more inside]
posted by UrineSoakedRube on Sep 25, 2009 - 11 answers

I almost never heard "Have a good one!" (in place of "Have a nice day!") until I moved to central NY - now I hear it at least once a day. Is it a semi-regionalism, a semi-neologism, or is this just confirmation bias? [more inside]
posted by Knicke on Sep 23, 2009 - 58 answers

I need to learn Biblical Hebrew, to a level of someone studying it for 4 university terms (2 years of one course/term) really really fast. If you've taken Biblical Hebrew in undergraduate or graduate studies, what textbooks did you use? [more inside]
posted by flibbertigibbet on Sep 22, 2009 - 12 answers

Modern Spanish-language music to help a complete newbie? ... but I have some specific preferences based on what I like in French! [more inside]
posted by wingless_angel on Sep 17, 2009 - 8 answers

Which are the words that refer to the genital organs in Swedish? I've been told that Swedish has a "neutral" sexual/anatomic terminology that is neither vulgar, nor childish, nor medical/technical. "They call it like we call a nose a nose, and a leg a leg". [more inside]
posted by megob on Sep 13, 2009 - 12 answers

Looking for podcasts or radio shows with women talking in Mancunian accents or similar Northern English accents. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Sep 5, 2009 - 6 answers

Downloadable content in Argentinian Spanish? [more inside]
posted by yesno on Sep 5, 2009 - 5 answers

I am teaching a high school Spanish class for the first time and need some help. I'm looking for 2 things, short news clips in Spanish and free songs with translations. [more inside]
posted by dealing away on Aug 30, 2009 - 12 answers

What's the best way to learn Japanese, if you don't care about being able to write it? [more inside]
posted by Mwongozi on Aug 30, 2009 - 18 answers

I want to know how to speak in as many languages as possible, not necessarily fluently, just a couple things in each one. The goal here is variety, rather than depth. [more inside]
posted by fizzzzzzzzzzzy on Aug 28, 2009 - 11 answers

Is it a widespread behavior for multilingual speakers of english to get a more anglicized accent when talking to a native speaker? [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur on Aug 22, 2009 - 19 answers

Can I say that I'm fluent in Spanish on my resume? Details and whatnot inside. [more inside]
posted by Aizkolari on Aug 18, 2009 - 22 answers

Does anyone know of a free, online program that, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call a random sentence scrambler? I see there are a lot of anagram makers but I want one for about 500 word bodies of text. Theoretically I could paste in the text and it would spit it out with all the words intact, the sentence structure preserved, just arranged into a new sequence. Thanks.
posted by holdenjordahl on Aug 16, 2009 - 10 answers

I need a less drastic version of "That's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" [more inside]
posted by SLC Mom on Jul 24, 2009 - 38 answers

LanguageFilter: How can a native English speaker develop a better sense of grammatical cases? [more inside]
posted by mary8nne on Jul 22, 2009 - 16 answers

Need help compiling a list of monolingual dictionaries. [more inside]
posted by RavinDave on Jul 18, 2009 - 11 answers

Are they any sentences that can be said in one language, but also understood in a different language (albeit with a different meaning)? [more inside]
posted by devnull on Jul 7, 2009 - 42 answers

vocab-filter: Is there a vocabulary word or term to describe a service or an act of generosity that is ceased by its maintainers because a small, select group broke the rules ? [more inside]
posted by fizzix on Jul 5, 2009 - 28 answers

How can I recognise more languages? How can I recognise where people come from? [more inside]
posted by devnull on Jun 13, 2009 - 17 answers

Children's books in Spanish in Canada? [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit on Jun 8, 2009 - 9 answers

How do I become a better translator for the open source project that I'm volunteering for? [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis on Jun 6, 2009 - 2 answers

Looking for favorites among the MeFi regulars in the category of: Foreign Language radio streams, suitable for language immersion and/or passive practice. [more inside]
posted by RavinDave on May 29, 2009 - 18 answers

I'm in Spain and have been asked to give summer courses in English for academic purposes to university researchers and teachers of engineering. Apart from "English Academic Vocabulary in Use" (CUP), which I used last year - it's good - do any MeFites have any tried and tested recommendations for books and other materials that might be suitable? Amazon is great, but too often you can't get a feel for the book.
posted by Holly on May 26, 2009 - 5 answers

How do you pronounce the last name of Emmanuel Levinas? [more inside]
posted by AngerBoy on May 22, 2009 - 10 answers

Do you have any good resources/tips for a beginning free-lance Spanish tutor? [more inside]
posted by chara on May 20, 2009 - 4 answers

FSI language courses: is this a particular accent, or just the tape? So I'm going through the Foreign Service Institue German program, available online here, and I'm wondering if the speakers on the audio portion have a particular accent or if their pronunciations pretty much the most common. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long on May 20, 2009 - 4 answers

Do you know of a reliable translation programme that will take English text and convert it to written Chinese? [more inside]
posted by Pomo on May 5, 2009 - 6 answers

I'm finding the NATO phonetic alphabet is confusing when I speak with with people who are not native English speakers over the phone (e.g. they don't recognize the words alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, etc). I trying to find an phonetic alphabet made up of words that non-native English speakers would have learned while learning English--maybe something like apple, boy, cat, dog, etc. I could take a guess at making one, but it would be nice if there was a standard?
posted by scharpy on May 5, 2009 - 20 answers

What does 'binned' mean in UK slang? [more inside]
posted by coryinabox on Apr 15, 2009 - 25 answers

What is the origin in English of the present continuous tense (present progressive tense)? [more inside]
posted by mary8nne on Mar 21, 2009 - 15 answers

Any survival tips for a non-Spanish speaker going to Barcelona? [more inside]
posted by some idealist on Mar 15, 2009 - 20 answers

I am making a door-sized poster for my classroom that will have two phrases in fifteen languages: “We speak German” and “We learn/are learning German.” I have German, French, Russian and Romanian covered. I need eleven more. [more inside]
posted by vkxmai on Mar 7, 2009 - 41 answers

How do you say "I feel sick, teacher!" In as many languages as possible? [more inside]
posted by By The Grace of God on Mar 2, 2009 - 35 answers

Why does French suck? [more inside]
posted by malapropist on Feb 18, 2009 - 64 answers

Looking for academic lectures in Japanese freely available on the web [more inside]
posted by kinakomochi on Feb 17, 2009 - 3 answers

Drunken Japanese Filter: I just got home to find my JLPT test results. I took level two of the Japanese language test for the second time, two years after the first go-round, and got 41%. Should I just give up? If not, what the f can I do? [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah on Feb 14, 2009 - 21 answers