Why Do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?
Blame Tolkien and time - by Eric Grundhauser December 7, 2016
"...Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures & histories to speak them... In the case of the ever-present Elvish in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men & hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.
For the dwarves, who were meant to have evolved from an entirely separate lineage, he took inspiration from Semitic languages for their speech, resulting in dwarven place names like Khazad-dûm & Moria.
“When dwarves actually talk, they don’t sound Scottish at all,” says Olsen. “They sound like Arabic or Hebrew.”...As radio & film adaptations of Tolkien’s works were released in later decades, you can see the slow evolution of the dwarven accent..."
It’s a funny word, “schmooze.” It comes from the Yiddish, shmuesn, and before that from Hebrew, approximately shemuoth, according to my Webster’s.
Leo Rosten, in The Joys of #Yiddish, says it refers to a “friendly, gossipy, prolonged, heart-to-heart talk.” No other word, he avers, “conveys ‘heart-to-heart chit-chat’ as warmly.”
If you watched the Banshee of Inisherin or Netflix's Bodkin and wondered if they really say "that" pretty much every other word in small Irish towns, apparently the answer is yes.
They should be related to a #language#technology task, able to be automatically evaluated, with training and test #data able to be distributed to participants at low- or no-cost, and should be fun!
I know language is fluid and I try not to be overly prescriptivist, but I am never going to be able to accept “learnings” as a valid noun. I’ve tried, but I just can’t, and I need to accept that about myself.
@Meyerweb I'm with you, but how do you feel about “teachings?” After remembering that word, which I'm OK with, I'm torn about “learnings.” #Language#Usage
I can't get over the following direct quote, which is from the middle of a training session provided by my company's new (probably lower-budget) HR/training vendor:
"Using the office guillotine when you're upset about a tough meeting earlier is not a good idea."
The Swedish debate about #racism is confused by the fact that Sw. ras has only ever meant 'genetic breed, dog breed'. And many Swedes don't know that Eng. race used to mean 'cultural, ethnic, national group regardless of genetics'. So in Swedish it makes dictionary sense to say that "I'm not a racist, because I despise these people for their culture, not for their genetics". OTOH, many native #English speakers today don't know what race used to mean in their own language.
English speakers have the distinct benefit of using the world’s most common language when traveling. So you’re good, right? In fact, learning the obvious and necessary words and sayings of the country to which you’re traveling can make your trip easier, impress a few locals and enrich your experience. From greetings to asking for help, Fodors breaks it down. https://flip.it/fw6LLQ #Culture#Travel#Traveling#Language
They should be related to a #language#technology task, able to be automatically evaluated, with training and test #data able to be distributed to participants at low- or no-cost, and should be fun!
Good news on open access to my works on bilingualism, the research area related to my teaching, child-raising, and using Japanese for over 40 years. I was interviewed by The Japan Times on #bilingual#education for a forthcoming paywalled article. It was a long interview, and usually a newspaper article uses only short passages from one individual. However, the #Japan Association for #Language#Teaching Bilingualism Special Interest Group (#JALT#Bilingualism SIG) would like to publish the full interview in its newsletter Bilingual Japan. Everyone should be able to read that as I back it up in research repositories. The tentative title is "English Education and Bilingual Education in Japan."
My publications on bilingualism have been backed up mostly at Academia Edu, which is not so easy to access anymore [any comment?], so I've added links to the original sources of articles, which are open access, at https://japanned.hcommons.org/bilingualism