French
aardvarchaeology | August 5, 2016 1972 back-cover blurb
I bought a used copy of Maurice Lévy's Lovecraft ou du fantastique (Paris 1972) at the Fantastika 2016 scifi con, and now I'm picking my way through it with the aid of a dictionary. S.T. Joshi has published an English translation, Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic (Detroit 1988).
Here's how little of Lévy's literary French I understand without a dictionary. This back-cover blurb is a particularly hairy piece of writing, I should say.
The case of Lovecraft … the thick volume of fantastic literature. A limited case where … should cease: between a neurosis which, while…
esiegel | March 10, 2013"When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images." -Niels Bohr
Although I may write to you exclusively in English, I am fully aware that around half of my readership comes from outside the United States, and that English is the first language of only about 40% of you. Like most Americans, I learned Spanish as my second language when I was in school, and then studied a few other in college, formally, and tried to pick up the language of any country I traveled to. But I am by no means fluent…
catdynamics | December 7, 2010A lot of people have asked me to link to and comment on the SUNY Albany cuts and some of the reactions to it by some online academics...
To cut a long story short, the SUNY system took another round of cuts, and the President of SUNY Albany decided to cut whole programs rather than keep trimming around the edges.
Classics, French, Italian, Russian, and Theatre
cut by directive, at short notice and with little open consultation.
Gregory Petsko wrote a high profile defence of the humanities, from a science perspective, and the Dangeral Professor hisself pitches his penny's worth in, while…
edyong | November 5, 2009Telling the difference between a German and French speaker isn't difficult. But you may be more surprised to know that you could have a good stab at distinguishing between German and French babies based on their cries. The bawls of French newborns tend to have a rising melody, with higher frequencies becoming more prominent as the cry progresses. German newborns tend to cry with a falling melody.
These differences are apparent just three days out of the womb. This suggests that they pick up elements of their parents' language before they're even born, and certainly before they start to…
edyong | March 7, 2009
Most of us could easily distinguish between spoken English and French. But could you tell the difference between an English and a French speaker just by looking at the movements of their lips? It seems like a difficult task. But surprising new evidence suggest that babies can meet this challenge at just a few months of age.
Young infants can certainly tell the difference between the sounds of different languages. Whitney Weikum and colleagues from the University of British Columbia decided to test their powers of visual discrimination.
They showed 36 English babies silent video clips of…
awild | December 6, 2007Zut alors! This blog seems to have developed a following of Frenchmen. The shame of it is, I studied French for 5 years in High School and don't remember a word of it.
The French ant-enthusiast forum Acideformik looks like a fine place to hang out on the intra-webs. Most online myrmecology forums are populated by 12 year-olds relating their experiences fighting red and black ants, or trying to trade in their allowance to import a colony of exotic bulldog ants (to kick the butts of both red and black ants, I gather). However, the French are over there having book discussions and…