The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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thelinguist.uberflip.com DECEMBER 2015/JANUARY 2016 The Linguist 5 What the papers say… The Feira do Grelo in As Pontes de García Rodríguez, a town in Galicia, north-western Spain, is an annual event celebrating rapini – a turnip-like vegetable often used in regional cuisine. But on the Castillian Spanish version of the town's website, powered by Google Translate, the Galician word for rapini, 'grelo', was mistaken for the Portuguese 'grelo', a slang term for clitoris. The error meant visitors looking for event information on the Castillian page were directed to one on the 'fiera clitoris', or clitoris festival. It read: 'The clitoris is one of the typical products of Galician cuisine.' 'Well that's a Turnip for the Books!', 3/11/15 [Uptalk and vocal fry] are not expressions of female powerlessness. They are vocal patterns that have become more prominent in English in recent years and because women tend to be pacesetters in linguistic innovation they are often misinterpreted as being distinctively female… Disliking something, however, is not the same as finding error in it. 'Language is not Impoverished by Local Mannerisms', 8/8/15 The latest from the languages world NEWS & EDITORIAL Concerns are growing for language provision in UK universities after Northumbria University announced in October that it would no longer offer BA courses in French and Spanish. This followed a decision by the University of Ulster, the month before, to shut its language department after an £8.6m cut in funding from the Department for Employment and Learning. Pointing to "a fall in demand across the sector over the past 10 years", Northumbria University made the decision despite a University departments close Speech theory: new evidence Scientists have found the first "hard evidence" for a controversial hypothesis that languages are shaped by the ecological features of the areas where they evolved. Researchers at the University of New Mexico analysed 628 global languages to determine whether low-pitched sounds are more common in tropical, forest habitats, and high-pitched sounds in open, mountainous regions. The acoustic adaptation theory originally developed from studies of birds and other animals whose sounds are optimised for particular environments. Speak to the Future update CIOL Vice-President Baroness Jean Coussins, co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages, became President of Speak to the Future (S2F), the campaign for languages, in October, with fellow CIOL Vice-President Richard Hardie as the new Chair of S2F Trustees. The announcement was made at Language Show Live at London Olympia. Since S2F's '1000 Words' challenge launched two years ago, nearly 32,000 people have signed up to learn 1,000 words in another language. petition from alumni, and criticism from the student union, embassies and academics around the world. In a recent national league table, it had been ranked first for modern languages and linguistics among institutions awarded university status since 1992. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, modern language degrees have declined by 16% in the last seven years. Following the closure in Ulster, there is no provision of degree courses in German and Chinese in Northern Ireland. To the Russian ear the direct imperative does not sound impolite. Indeed, they have two different forms of the imperative to provide even greater subtlety. 'Shut the door!' can be Zakroy dver or Zakryvay dver. The latter apparently sounds more polite to a Russian – or more urgent, depending on how it's said. Imagine how this can affect politics… The world's press reported that Putin had called for talks on "statehood for the south-east regions of Ukraine". In fact he called for no such thing. Putin used the word gosudarstvennost, which has two distinct meanings… He was talking about decentralisation, not statehood. 'Understanding the Kremlin: It's the words, stupid', 22/10/15 ARDFERN VIA WIKIPEDIA CC BY-SA 3.0