Posts Tagged ‘language’

Talking about talking monkeys

In language on 4 November 2008 tagged apes, evolution, language, linguistics, monkeys, university, video with Comments Off

It’s not often I get to sit and watch videos online and still file it under ‘being pro­duct­ive’, so I enjoy it when I can. This is Susan Savage-Rumbaugh talk­ing about Kanzi, a bonobo who can “talk”. While the evid­ence on the mat­ter is slightly con­tra­dict­ory, it still seems like a good excuse to watch a film about a mon­key*.

*Yes, yes. Tech­nic­ally, a bonobo is not a mon­key. I know that. But in my mind’s fuzzy “prim­ate” cat­egory, everything is a mon­key. And it would annoy my lec­turer less if I used the cor­rect term, and where would the fun be. Also, mon­keys are cuter**.

**Insinu­ations that I am not tak­ing my Ori­gins and Evol­u­tion of Lan­guage course entirely ser­i­ously, and am just treat­ing it as a fun diver­sion from my really heavy sub­jects and overly com­plic­ated dis­ser­ta­tion, may not be entirely unfoun­ded. But surely enjoy­ing a course, for whatever reason, is a good thing?

Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd!

In Odd, language on 31 October 2008 tagged language, news, signs with Comments Off

 

When offi­cials asked for the Welsh trans­la­tion of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfor­tu­nately, the e-mail response to Swansea coun­cil said in Welsh: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated”. So that was what went up under the Eng­lish ver­sion which barred lor­ries from a road near a super­mar­ket. [Full story]