Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with language

Help me stop sounding like a valley girl!

InterestedInKnowing — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:20:25 -0800

What are some tips in having better speech? I'm an adult woman, who sometimes sounds like a child! I notice when I speak my statements come out as questions and I sound like (yuck that word too) a total valley chick. In business settings I'm proper and I realize I want to sound like that all the time but I don't. What are techniques I can use to improve upon my speaking voice and grammar efficiency when I'm in a relaxed chatty mode? 'Cause it only makes me sound dumb, when I'm far from it.

Something more descriptive than "Oww."

citywolf — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:04:44 -0800

How can I improve my description of my back pain to best inform my doctor? Sometimes, when I stretch a certain way, a particular part of my back hurts somethin' awful. YANMD; I plan to ask about this at my next physical.

What I am looking for is: Given that I can't always replicate this on command (why would I want to?), what questions can I ask myself that will help me inform my doctor and thereby help him narrow down the list of possible causes (and thereby hopefully reduce the number of expensive tests necessary to diagnose me)? Is there a lexicon for back pain?

Because Ceasar never gave honor to Sheetrock...

Tchad — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:56:48 -0800

Is this Latin correct? or Perhaps: How incorrect is this Latin? I have been writing back and forth to a friend in Latin, very basic.

This is stretching it, but if someone could redirect me or correct me I would really appreciate it.

"Next week I will have hung all of the drywall."

"instrvero cvnctvs laminae gypsi hebdomas proxima "
instruero cunctus laminae gypsi hebdomas proxima

Oh man, on one hand I am so proud of myself for getting so much vocabulary (I have only been doing this on my own part time since March!) but I am just now getting the feel for how the parts are starting to work. The next few months are taking all of the vocabulary and trying to apply them using more complex structures.

Thoughts? Ideas? I thought it seemed best to use instrvere, because other words I know would call for a more complicated structure. Should I be using "laminae gypsum" instead?

At this point I am just stringing things together the best I can like a 4 year old trying to make the declensions feel right. This is just a little fun for us, so no pressure. I need them (not Cicero) to understand "sheets of drywall" and the general idea.

Pop Culture Call and Response?

flatluigi — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:38:52 -0800

Is there a word or a term for a pop-culture handshake? If I wave my hand and tell you 'these aren't the droids you're looking for,' you might repeat me and walk away. If I say "Do you know how many time zones are in the Soviet Union" you might respond with something along the lines of "it's ridiculous, it's not even funny." People can go on for minutes just quoting the Simpsons at each-other.

We've absorbed a lot of pop culture, enough so that responding in reference comes easily and freely. Surely there must be some sort of term for this.

Seeking language experiments!

mossicle — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:04:35 -0800

Linguisticsfilter: I'm looking for experiments that reveal something surprising or fascinating about the way we use and respond to language. Here's an example of what I'm looking for: in an experiment by Donald Rubin, undergraduate students were given a short, pre-recorded lecture by a native English speaker. A photograph representing the speaker accompanied the lecture; for half the subjects, the photograph depicted an Asian woman, and for the other half it was a similarly-styled Caucasian woman. The recording played for both groups was identical, yet the students who thought they were listening to an Asian woman rated her accent much stronger than the other students. What's more, they scored significantly worse on a test of lecture comprehension.

There's another experiment I had in mind, where students at a college in a Southern state were given one of two speeches. The content and speaker were the exact same for both groups, but at one the speaker used a Southern accent and at the other he used a standard American English accent. The students were then asked to rate the speaker on a number of qualities, such as articulateness, intelligence, competence, integrity, and so on. Basically they rated the speaker much higher on all qualities when he used the standard accent, with the exception of friendliness. I thought this was surprising because the students themselves spoke with Southern accents and I would have expected them to show preference for their own variety.

If you know of any language experiments that have similarly startling or interesting findings, please share! The examples I used have a sociolinguistic focus, but I'm interested in other areas of linguistics as well.

Thank you!

Recommend an online collaborative translation tool.

tkbarbarian — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:01:01 -0800

Can anybody recommend a good collaborative online translation tool? Not an automated translator, something to help manage and co-ordinate a translation workflow in a team of people. As an example, I have an excel spreadsheet or a database with a list of (not necessarily unique) questions and response options grouped into questionnaires for particular user groups.

I'd like to be able to upload this / import it into an online tool that then:

* breaks up the questions/responses into unique "translation snippets"
* allows individuals to propose translations for snippets in a number of requested languages
* allows moderators to review translations
* support back-translation for moderation as well.
* allow the completed translation "matrix" to be exported into a useful format (either the original database, an internationalisation po file etc.)

I've already got an excel sheet that does this in a specialised case with some scripting for a particular set of questionnaires. Looking for a more general purpose system that's online to ease collaborative headaches.

Any thoughts or starters for how to get this?

I'm explicitly not looking for a "upload your document and have it translated automatically" service. This is in the context of a community of volunteers, experts and internal staff we want to hand-select

What are the most essential travel phrases?

Alison — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:06:51 -0800

I'm building a basic phrase list that I will learn for countries that I visit. What are your most useful travel phrases? I'm also looking for anything that would be useful specifically for Egyptian Arabic. I'm traveling to Egypt this winter and I want to be able to speak just a few useful phrases. However, all of my language CDs have been terrible, either giving me much more than I need (most of it useless) or omitting important things. I want to build my own phrase list, kind of a swadesh list for travel.

I want to keep the list short and be able learn it within a few days. I'll be hiring someone to translate the list and record it.

Actually, if you're a speaker of the Egyptian dialect of Arabic and can record yourself, I'll pay good money!

What I have so far:

Important Phrases:
Hello
Goodbye
Please
Thank You
Yes
No
Nice to meet you!
Pardon me (for bumping into someone)
Excuse me (for attention)
Help!
That's beautiful! (view)
That's beautiful! (object)
No, thank you. (to touts)

Shopping:
How much?
Too expensive.
I'll take it!
How much for a meter? (of fabric)

Eating:
I'll have ____, please.
Coffee
Tea
Bottled Water
Excuse me, waiter.
Check, please.
Delicious!

Getting around:
Take us to ____, please.
Where is _____?
Museum
Toilet
Hospital

[Basic Numbers]
[Basic Colors]

Egypt Specific:
Mosque
God willing
Camel (eating or riding)
Lamb
Rice
Pyramid
Cairo
Luxor
Alexandria
Aswan
Nile
boat

Like a Herring to Water

mippy — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:58:21 -0800

I'd like to learn a Scandinavian language. Help me decide which one! I've always wanted to see Scandinavia, and hope to do so next winter - Stockholm, Gothenburg, Helsinki are seeming pretty attractive. It would be nice to learn Svenska/Suomi in the meantime. I'm pretty good at learning vocabulary but not as skilled with grammar, and I've heard that Finnish is pretty complex grammatically speaking. (During my linguistics degree grammar was not my strong point, although I was fine with Spanish). Really it would be nice to have a project too, so it needs to br the fun sort of challenging rather than terrifying. Any experiences learning either, and recommended resources?

Nobody uses "queer" to mean "odd" anymore

cross_impact — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:05:50 -0800

What is the name of the phenomenon where words lose their original meaning once they take on an off-color meaning? For instance isn't it queer that nobody describes themselves as "gay" anymore unless they are homosexual or are deliberately being provocative? I know there's a term for that phenomenon because I had to learn it in my freshman linguistics class in college. But that was twenty-six years ago and my Google-Fu fails me. Help!

Bonus: Is there a complete list of those words somewhere? Or do you have a personal favorite?

Can I teach myself French?

SamuelBowman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:21:53 -0800

Can I teach myself to read French in five months? Quite a lot of work done on the area I'm studying is in French, which I cannot read or speak. The only French I've studied was back at school, which I did for three years and barely passed my GCSE-equivalent exam. I wasn't good, but I have a basic grounding that I can build on.

My subject is African history, so I won't need to be able to read technical or scientific language. Five months would be a decent amount of time as I won't be doing much research until then. (This is a UK course, so I have lots of free time for stuff like this.)

Learning to read French isn't essential, but I think it would be a help by opening up a lot of French-language sources to me. Reading is all I really need to do for the work I'm doing at the moment.

Can this be done? If so, how?

Italiano?

LittleMissItneg — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:00:56 -0800

Can you please help me translate this phrase: cominciâ a butâ da bande, ce che ho ai dentri e nol è gno Thank you very much!

Source for construction industry lingo?

eliina — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:06:47 -0800

Can anyone point me to a resource where I can learn construction industry-related lingo? I'm a defense attorney and I've recently been pulled onto a few cases involving accidents on construction sites. There is a lot of terminology tossed around in the documents I'm reviewing, and I could use some help making sense of it.

(For example, I'd been trying to determine the difference between a pettibone and a lull, only to finally figure out they are two brands of forklifts, not two types of equipment).

Any book or website suggestions would be appreciated!

Tools to learn Spanish

Nickel — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:42:14 -0800

What tools can I use to help my family (adults and children) learn to speak Spanish? I am interested in CDs, software, music, TV shows,kid-friendly immersion programs, and anything else. This recent question has inspired me to try to learn Spanish with my family. It is something I have been meaning to do myself to further my career, and I would like my kids to be proficient in another language as well. It will also be a fun and intellectual activity that the family can do together. We will most likely never approach native-level fluency, but I would like the adults to be proficient and the kids to be proficient or better.

In my house, we have:
1 adult with proficient Italian
1 adult with high school courses in Spanish, could get by in basic conversation
1 adult (grandmother) who used to be fluent in French
1 toddler
1 baby whose daycare providers speak Spanish to him

We have several family friends who are native Spanish speakers as well, so I know we will be able to expose the kids to native Spanish.

What tools would you recomend? I'm thinking language learning CDs for the adults, childrens tv shows for everyone, simple spanish music, software, movies, etc.

chinese language educational software for native chinese speaking kids

alcahofa — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:48:34 -0800

my kids (ages 3 and 6) are beginning to learn chinese. i am looking for useful materials and strategies to get them fluent. i don't speak chinese. one thing that helped a lot in learning spanish (their second language) was spanish language education software that targets native spanish speakers ages 3 to 5. does anyone have any recommendations both for the chinese educational software of this type and how to buy it when you don't speak chinese. there is absolutely nothing more daunting than a chinese language web site.

serious business!

streetdreams — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:20:04 -0800

Is there a word for a person who has been subpoenaed? If two people are subpoenaed, they are called co-...? They're not co-defendants. Is there an equivalent?

Yeah once I ordered coffee in Chile in French, but it sounded right at the time.

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:03:56 -0800

I'm very seriously considering the foreign service, but I've never been any good at languages. Will I likely be able to learn a language, with the intense training the Foreign Service provides, without a natural apptitude for languages? I've been doing my research on the Foreign Service and it has become abundantly clear that I will need to learn several languages over the course of my career were I to join. At least one of those would be a "hard" language (not closely related to english). I have little apptitude for languages. I took French for 3 years in high school and got basically straights Bs and then promptly forgot it all. I only got Bs because my high school was easy and I crammed right before every quiz which allowed me to get by. I've lived in Europe and SE Asia and did not pick up either language of my host country. However, I could get by in English (I wasn't put in a situations where I had to learn the language) and I had no training in either language. I took one semester of Spanish in college and found it very difficult. Took the class pass/fail and I passed. Promptly forgot all of it again.

Now on to things I am actually good at! I'll give some background on my education/current career because hopefully (?!) some of those skills are transferable to learning a language? At least that is what I am hoping.

I'm an attorney. I did pretty decent, but not amazing in law school. Passed the NY and CA bar on the first try. Generally speaking I do well (better than I should given my knowledge on any particular subject) on standardized tests. In college, I was an art history major and had to memorize lots of names/places/dates, which I also promptly forgot (I remember the art and all about the art, but names of things are very hard for me to remember along with names of people actually). Also, at one point I was an applied math major and chemistry major. I did well in classes for both, until I switched my major for other reasons. I think that I have good analytical skills.

Can people like me learn a language after intense training and study? Or am I likely to "flunk out" of the foreign service after crying myself to sleep on top of my flash cards for 88 weeks straight?

I am very interested, but do not have my heart set, so to speak, on the foreign service. I think I want to join, but if I joined I would want to be able to work my way up the ranks (as it's up or out). Stories/experience/advice about the foreign service in general also very much appreciated. I also have no idea if it matters but I am a female in my late 20s.

Is there a word for this situation?

jenfullmoon — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:49:42 -0800

Is there a word that describes a situation where you *technically* have free will, but don't REALLY have the option to choose otherwise? My friend who went to Catholic school told me there was a word for this, but she can't remember what it is, and Googling "free will" or "Catholic" or both or whatnot isn't cutting it.

I'm thinking along the lines of a person having a vocation or calling. Being called to be a priest/nun is an example, or if you're Buffy. TECHNICALLY they have free will and can choose not to become one, but for all intents and purposes, once they've been chosen, they can't really duck that destiny.

Mainly I just find it irritating that someone could claim they have free will in that sort of situation, when it seems to me like they don't REALLY have it. And it seems like there should be a word for that!

Sir / Ma'am / ???

Zarkonnen — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:18:14 -0800

What's the gender-neutral equivalent to "Sir" and "Ma'am"? I'm writing a story (well, a game, really) that contains a character, neither male nor female, whose male/female counterparts of the same rank (captain) are addressed as "Sir" and "Ma'am" respectively.

What mode of address do I use for this character? I imagine that there is no official answer, so I'd like your help in making up a good one. It needs to not stick out, and ideally have some kind of underlying rationale.

Barefoot, pregnant, and slaving over a hot stove

ivanka — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:14:47 -0800

Where the expression "barefoot, pregnant, and slaving over a hot stove" came from? What is the history of it in English speaking countries?

Help me find a site that people list their favorite words on

debu — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:14:47 -0800

I bookmarked a site years ago that was all about people listing their favorite words - sort of like "delicious" but for word nerds. Does anyone have a clue what this is? thanks

Are adverbs mere adjective spinoffs?

aswego — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:02:36 -0800

Are adverbs mere adjective spinoffs? From noticing the pedantic correction of adjective use where adverb use would be more appropriate, I've developed a fascination with the adverb. I even developed an entire theory of its development in the English language, but unfortunately it is based on no actual research. I am now curious how far off the mark it is.

Many "modern" adverbs seem to be the result of the adjective+"ly" construction. Other common constructions include -wise and -like (the latter which I understand to actually be quite old). Was there a time when English had but a small set of "natural" adverbs before the conversion of so many adjectives?

I've also anecdotally noticed that words that had previously worked as adverbs, like "quick" or "slow," are now reconstructed as "quickly" and "slowly." I'm guessing this comes from the fact that everyone is so used to adverbs ending in -ly, that they no longer sound "right" to some people without the ending. Even "high," which people accept in many adverb circumstances involving positioning, becomes "highly" when one is thinking highly of someone else. How and why did these double-duty adjective/adverbs actually evolve this way? Was there a time when adjective and adverbs were less distinct?

I quit my "pen pal"--do I need to explain why?

naplesyellow — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:14:12 -0800

I feel weird about dropping my foreign pen-pal-but not weird enough to want to change anything. Am I too cruel? A woman in Germany befriended me last year. She saw my very handsome brother's page on an memorial site...and she claimed to "love him". (yeah..I know...what was my first clue that she is troubled). But I didn't see any harm in writing to her and I really enjoyed learning about where she lives, etc. She writes in impeccable English because she is a translator. It was kind of nice to discuss my brother with her...since not too many people cared about him while he was alive. Over the year, however, she made noises about coming here to the US. She is very effusive and "loving". I told her I have absolutely no room for guests (which is true) and she writes back things like "oh, don't worry, I can stay in your yard in a tent!" She is the kind of person who sends hugs and kisses and "cuddles"...she fawns over me. I know that she is very lonely because she is taking care of her elderly Dad and she never goes anywhere. She was writing to me twice a day...really long long emails. I feel almost like a guy who "led someone on"--but I have completely run out of things to talk about with her. I just stopped writing and answering her. A bit abruptly. She loves to send me stuff and I am completely tired of it. I just didn't know how to tell her that I don't want to write anymore...so I have handled it passively agressively by just dropping her.
I know I have not handled this well...but the question is..should I just never write back and call it a day? She isn't writing either now and I know she is "hurt" because she has written my dead brother some messages about it on his tribute page.
Advice gladly accepted.

How can I dump every character in a font to a text file?

Beautiful Downtown Burbank — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:25:52 -0800

How can I dump every character in a font to a text file? I am trying to generate a text file that contains every character in a specific font. I also need the characters to be broken up into small groups so that they are approximately subtitle-length. Thus, when I'm finished, I'll have a text file of several (to several hundred) subtitles, comprising every possible character in the font.

I'm trying to do it through Character Map, but I have to individually click each character, then click select, then when I get enough characters for a line, I click copy, then paste it into my document, then back to the character map, delete the text out of the select field, start again. This isn't completely terrible, but my problem is that I'm trying to do it for Asian fonts, which can have several thousand characters each.

Ideally I would like to be able to get one copy of each character in the entire font in one text document. Then I could do the line length editing myself, because I would be saving so much time on the copying and pasting.

Any utilities, free or paid, that anyone knows of that can automate this process for me?

AAVE, AAE, BEV, whatever we call it nowadays, in the movies.

ms.codex — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:32:58 -0800

I'm looking for "black best friend" supporting characters in movies who also come with a black love interest. I'm interested in their language patterns and dialect usage. I'm thinking of writing a paper about the portrayal of African-American English in popular film. When I watched the movie Clueless, I was struck by how the black best friend and her black love interest speak COMPLETELY DIFFERENT dialects: the girl speaks fairly standard English, the boy speaks strong African-American Vernacular English, and this discrepancy goes totally uncommented on. It's as if (pun intended), because they're both black, the linguistic divide that would send very different social signals in the real world is irrelevant. Are there other examples like this where racial identity trumps language? Movies in which black couples speak different levels of AAVE? Clueless is pretty dated, and I'm also wondering if this scrupulous need to give black-best-friends love interests of the same race, language use aside, is still as strong as ever.

Do I have a body language speech impediment?

bartleby — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:35:04 -0800

I've been watching a lot of Lie to Me, and it's making me think that I've got an answer to why I get misinterpreted a lot; is it possible that my microexpressions are "wrong"? So there's this US TV show called Lie to Me, which is based on the study of microexpressions and the work of Paul Ekman and others.

The premise is a lot like reading "tells" when playing poker, and goes like this, simplified:
1) when you smell something bad, you make a "stink-face"
2) pretty much everyone everywhere makes the same "stink-face"
3) even if you're trying to be polite or conceal your reaction, the mind-body(face) connection is so strong that unless you're very highly skilled, the "stink-face" is going to flash across your face as a microexpression
4) some people can consciously and clearly read these microexpressions in the faces of others, making them natural lie detectors; but most people only register them subconsciously. Even the subconscious registering of them is how we get clues to the emotional or mental states of others, to the point that people who can't read faces at all usually get diagnosed with a disorder like autism or Asperger's.

Now I've always had a problem going in the other direction; people seem to take subconscious cues from me that aren't accurate. They'll think I'm lying when I'm telling the truth, or that I'm upset about something when I have no feelings either way about it.

Could it be possible that my microexpressions are somehow off-kilter? Do I have a body language speech impediment?