Tag Archives: Language

Dear Ocean Vuong, Your Writing Is Gorgeous

By Charlina Strelow

Is it okay to dog-ear or write in your books? This ques­tion remains a heat­ed top­ic among read­ers. I always thought it was stu­pid to care what oth­ers did with their books but pre­ferred to leave mine in their orig­i­nal state.

This all changed for me when I start­ed read­ing Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gor­geous. Vuong’s words were so beau­ti­ful­ly con­struct­ed that sim­ply read­ing them didn’t feel enough. I want­ed to force myself to linger. I want­ed to embrace the parts that had touched me, want­ed to firm­ly secure the pas­sages I’d lat­er return to.

Or, less dra­mat­i­cal­ly, I want­ed to mark my book.

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Found in Translation

By Raul Quinque

Wish I could read this. Cred­it: Janayugam arti­cle on Soft­ware Free­dom & lan­guage Com­put­ing by Ani­var Aravind, https://www.flickr.com/photos/technopolitrix/1414813791/in/photostream/

Full dis­clo­sure: I’ve writ­ten this blog on my behalf. Or in eigen­er Sache, as I would say in Ger­man. Is there a dif­fer­ence between the two expres­sions? Worlds, I would say, as some­one who is pre­oc­cu­pied with lan­guage trans­la­tion most days of the week. In light of the rapid pro­lif­er­a­tion and evo­lu­tion of machine-learn­ing trans­la­tors, here’s to what makes think­ing, speak­ing, and writ­ing with diverse lan­guages invalu­ably human.

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Having Fun with Language on German American Day 2022

By Sabrina Völz

In coun­tries, such as Poland and the Nether­lands, learn­ing Ger­man is on the rise. Yet, in the U.S., it’s been declin­ing for the past hun­dred years. Num­bers of stu­dents learn­ing Ger­man have decreased from rough­ly two mil­lion in 1910 to a lit­tle over one mil­lion today. There­fore, it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise that Ger­man pro­grams have been clos­ing all over the U.S. The very lib­er­al arts col­lege I attend­ed as a bach­e­lor stu­dent in Indi­anola, Iowa – Simp­son Col­lege – elim­i­nat­ed its Ger­man pro­gram a few years ago. So in prepa­ra­tion for this Ger­man Amer­i­can Day (Oct. 6), I decid­ed to attempt to do some PR for German.

Recent­ly, while I was surf­ing the web, I came across some­thing that almost knocked me for a loop. It’s noth­ing bad, just a 58-let­ter word. So let’s hear that drum roll….

Please acti­vate javascript to watch the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ViZqQkddCc

That word is: Kurzfris­ten-energie-ver­sorgungs-sicherungs-maß­nah­men-verord­nung.

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