Google collects data – a truism. But whether you support, reject, ignore, fight or tolerate this behavior you will find the analysis of this particular data collection noteworthy. Googlebooks is scanning books and has made a library of 15 millions books (out of some 129 millions totally published books) available to anyone (which agrees to…
Tag Archive: Language
Languages – Living in the present, without tenses but happy
Linguists generally assume that human languages have a common basic grammar. Yet the US researcher and missionary David Everett tries to proof the contrary after having studied for years the isolated Brazilian indigenous tribe of the Piraha. Its language has no numbers (just many and few), no tenses, no colors, no sub-clauses and the like….
Switzerland – Tricky Languages in a Small Country
Switzerland is a special case, not only in politics – even if probably more in conservative-fantasy than in reality – but also language-wise. There is the French-speaking part, which considers dialects as backward and went to great lengths to eradicate them even more quickly than centralized France. Standard French united the French-speaking regions and motivated…
USA – Lack of Translation Leads to Intellectual Isolation
In the English-speaking world and particularly in the USA only 2-3% of published and sold books are translations – in Latin America and Europe the figure is 35%. US-publishing houses deprive their readers of the vast worldwide diversity in literature and focus almost exclusively on homegrown authors. Like this, the US are isolating themselves from…
Spain – Translating Speeches Even Though Deputes Have Common Language
For some time now, Spain isn’t a centralistic country anymore. Several autonomy agreements have given considerable power to the regions and fundamentally changed the way of Spanish statehood. Now, the parliament is making another step and is planning to accept speeches in all recognized local languages (Basque, Catalan, Galiciano and Valenciano). This is the prize…
