egosurfers

According to The Independent, 'Nerdic' is the fastest-growing language in Europe,
avoiding arguments on the fine line that divides language and dialects, Jerome Taylor claims that more than 100 new words were added to the Nerdic vocabulary in the past 12 months, more than three times the number the Oxford English Dictionary added to the English language.

Here is a sample of words created by the technology industry:
Android= phones featuring Google's Android software
Mash-up= when two elements from different websites are combined
Wimax= powerful wireless internet which can cover whole cities
Egosurfers= those people who spend all day looking themselves up on internet

Too fast to follow? Can't catch up with the speed of things?
Worry not! Most words (specially those used to describe older technology) have already disappeared!

Digital 'Smiley Face' Turns 25 :-)

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message, says Daniel Lovering for the BBC. Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect.Emoticons reflect the likely original purpose of language — to enable people to express emotion, said Clifford Nass, a professor of communications at Stanford University. The emotion behind a written sentence may be hard to discern because emotion is often conveyed through tone of voice, he said.
"What emoticons do is essentially provide a mechanism to transmit emotion when you don't have the voice," Nass said. In some ways, he added, they also give people "the ability not to think as hard about the words they're using."


:-)

lost in translation

Chinese love

I read in the International Herald Tribune that the Chinese government now requires top executives at security firms to pass written and oral exams in Mandarin, the national tongue.

According to Qing Zhang, a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas, Chinese is one of the toughest languages to learn. First, the meaning of each sound depends on tone. Worse, students must memorize thousands of picture-like characters instead of the 26 letters that make up English words.

Since the test began in 2005 fewer than 10 foreigners have passed.

The simplest Chinese word is the character for 'one' which is a single horizontal line; the most complex requires 56 strokes.

This is my first attempt at (Chinese) love:

great-grandmother's sayings

El que mal anda, mal acaba (don't start off on the wrong foot)

Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres

Al major cazador se le escapa la liebre

El buey lerdo toma el agua turbia

Oveja que bala pierde bocado

Habiendo pan y cueva, dejalo que llueva

En boca del mentiroso, lo cierto se hace dudoso

A rey muerto, rey puesto (The king is dead. Long live the king!)

El zorro pierde el pelo, pero no las manas

La mentira tiene las patas cortas

Es mas el ruido que las nueces

Angelitos al cielo y trapitos al arca

El que siembra viento recoge tempestades

No por mucho madrugar se amanece mas temprano

Contigo pan y cebolla

Mariquita, si quieres que te den, estira la mano y da tu tambien

Casamiento y mortaja, del cielo bajan

Maria tapa el pozo despues que se cayo el nino

El que mucho abarca poco aprieta

El perro del hortelano, ni come ni deja comer al amo

A su tiempo maduran las uvas

gestures in Spanish language

esta entrada ha sido inspirada por el blog de emilio http://makelele.wordpress.com/ acompanada por unchistesobreespanoles y el ya famoso clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEGamVBeeOc&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmakelele%2Ewordpress%2Ecom%2F

There was this Spanish lady, walking home carrying two bags of shopping, one in each hand, and a car pulled up next to her and asked the way to the post office, the woman sighed and looked up to the heavens rolling her eyes. Very carefully put the two bags on the pavement, straightened up, looked at the motorist, shrugged her shoulders and opened her palms saying ‘I’ve no idea’