Owner of PageF30.com.
Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mithradates
Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.
I've been trying out Anki more seriously over the past few days. A few months ago I downloaded it once, tried it out for about a day and then got rid of it as I generally don't like using flash cards, but have decided to start using it as they fill a need that I have due to the large number of languages I know to partial fluency. The more languages you know to that level the more work you have to do every day to maintain them, and sometimes it's nice to just have a program do all the work for you.
What flash cards are good for: nouns, other words with fairly exact meanings.
What flash cards are not good for: function words, other words with a large number or very contextual meanings.
This makes them less than useful when first learning a language, but very good when you have a good command of grammar and know how the most frequently encountered function words work. If a beginner could be classified as 1 and a fluent speaker as 10, flash cards would be most useful for levels 3 to 8.
As for why Afrikaans: I downloaded a few ready-made decks but found nothing in Afrikaans, so I made one from this list. Since Afrikaans uses very few diacritics I was able to make a 2500+ word deck in just over a day.
Next up: maybe Occidental or Sambahsa? Going with the Icelandic wordlist on Wordgumbo would be nice, but since Icelandic uses a lot of diacritics and they are easiest to type using Abctajpu on Firefox, creating an Icelandic deck would mean a lot of copying and pasting, instead of Afrikaans where you can put the word list on one part of the screen and Anki on the other, and blaze through a full page by just hitting tab-tab-spacebar after each word to add it to the list. That's just as easy to do with Sambahsa and Occidental, not so much with Icelandic.
Since this is now the only Afrikaans wordlist on Anki online it'll be interesting to watch the number of downloads, as anyone interested in Afrikaans will have to go with this deck. I now have a monopoly on Afrikaans Anki decks.
Read more...
As a foreign policy addict I've found yesterday's Wikileaks release to be far more interesting than the other recent releases of theirs they have chosen to hype up a week or so before the big release. I'm still not sure what to conclude from this, except this: the US actually comes out looking pretty normal in the cables I've read, normal for the world's foremost superpower, that is. The fallout the US wanted to prevent seems to be not any fear of their own image, but rather embarrassing allies and the effects that could have.
On Iran, for example: no surprise that Israel was pushing for an attack, but Saudi Arabia was pushing for an attack too. Pretty much every regional power seems to be in favour of a US-led attack on Iran, which would weaken them while they continue to pretend to be supportive of a fellow Islamic state. Well, except for the foreign ministry which seems much less hawkish.
This cable gives some (unsurprising) insight into Azerbaijan's opposition to normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia before Nagorno-Karabakh is resolved.
Biographic and biometric data, including health, opinions toward the US, training history, ethnicity (tribal and/or clan), and language skills of key and emerging political, military, intelligence, opposition, ethnic, religious, and business leaders. Data should include email addresses, telephone and fax numbers, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans.
This one was also interesting, about how the EU did a "you can't fire me because I quit"-type move when they did a half-boycott of Ahmadinejad's inauguration.
The easiest way to see what effect this is going to have on American relations with other countries is to read newspapers in other languages to see what they are saying. This page lets you find cables by countries referenced, and those cables are going to be the ones that get referenced in newspapers in other countries. This article in Turkish for example is about a cable referencing the lawsuit that tried to close the AK Party down in Turkey. So to see what the reaction is to the release right now, just use the keyword Wikileaks in Google News in a number of languages to see what you can find.
Two weeks after the last chapter I've finally gotten around to finishing chapter 2 of Li Micri Prince. You may notice that I alternate back and forth between litt and micri for the French word petit, and that's on purpose - sometimes one feels better than the other. The reason I've gone with micri for the prince himself instead of litt is because:
- Li Litt Prince sounds a bit clumsy on the tongue, and
- assuming this translation gets used to promote Occidental later on, I don't want a title like Li Litt Prince to give the impression that Occidental is just some type of modified English.
I've also gone with the recommendations of Olivier and Robert to write omnicos as omnicós, since without the accent one could be led to believe that the -s here represents the plural, and pronounce it omnícos as a result.
Capitul 2.
2
Dunc yo vivet sol, sin person con qui yo posset vermen parlar, til un panne in li desert de Sahara, ante six annus. Alquó esset ruptet in mi motor. E pro que yo havet con me ni machinero, ni passageros, yo preparat me de acompleer, tot sol, un desfacil reparation. To esset por me un question de vive o morte. Yo havet con me aqua por apen ott dies.
J'ai ainsi vécu seul, sans personne avec qui parler véritablement, jusqu'à une panne dans le désert du Sahara, il y a six ans. Quelque chose s'était cassé dans mon moteur. Et comme je n'avais avec moi ni mécanicien, ni passagers, je me préparai à essayer de réussir, tout seul, une réparation difficile. C'était pour moi une question de vie ou de mort. J'avais à peine de l'eau à boire pour huit jours.
Li unesim die yo dunc esset dormient sur li sable, mill milies de tot terre habitat. Yo esset vermen plu isolat quam un naufrageat sur un flottuore in li medie del ocean. Alor vu imagina mi surprise, al comense del die, quande un drolli litt voce avigilat me. It dit:
Le premier soir je me suis donc endormi sur le sable à mille milles de toute terre habitée. J'étais bien plus isolé qu'un naufragé sur un radeau au milieu de l'océan. Alors vous imaginez ma surprise, au lever du jour, quand une drôle de petite voix m'a réveillé. Elle disait :
"Ples...dessinar me un agnelle!"
"S'il vous plaît... dessine-moi un mouton!"
"Quo?"
"Hein!"
"Dessina me un agnelle..."
"Dessine-moi un mouton..."
Yo saltat sur mi pedes quam si yo esset frappat per fúlmine. Yo frottat bon mi ocules. Yo bon regardat. E yo videt un litt chap totmen extraordinari qui considerat me gravmen. Vi li max bon portrete quel, plu tard, yo posset far pri il.
J'ai sauté sur mes pieds comme si j'avais été frappé par la foudre. J'ai bien frotté mes yeux. J'ai bien regardé. Et j'ai vu un petit bonhomme tout à fait extraordinaire qui me considérait gravement. Voilà le meilleur portrait que, plus tard, j'ai réussi à faire de lui.
Ma mi dessine, certmen, es mult min ravissent quam li modelle. To ne es mi culpa. Yo esset decorageat in mi cariera de pictor per li grand persones, al etá de six annus, e yo ne hat aprendet quocunc, ultra boas cludet e boas apert.
Mais mon dessin, bien sûr, est beaucoup moins ravissant que le modèle. Ce n'est pas de ma faute. J'avais été découragé dans ma carrière de peintre par les grandes personnes, à l'âge de six ans, et je n'avais rien appris à dessiner, sauf les boas fermés et les boas ouverts.
Yo dunc regardat ti aparition con ocules tot rond de astonament. Ne oblivia que yo esset mill milies de tot region habitat. Nu, mi litt chap ne semblat a me ni perdit, ni mort de fatiga, ni mort de fame, ni mort de sete, ni mort de timore. Il ne havet null aparentie de un infante perdit in li medie del desert, mill milies de tot region habitat. Quande yo finalmen posset parlar, yo dit a il:
Je regardai donc cette apparition avec des yeux tout ronds d'étonnement. N'oubliez pas que je me trouvais à mille milles de toute région habitée. Or mon petit bonhomme ne me semblait ni égaré, ni mort de fatigue, ni mort de faim, ni mort de soif, ni mort de peur. Il n'avait en rien l'apparence d'un enfant perdu au milieu du désert, à mille milles de toute région habitée. Quand je réussis enfin à parler, je lui dis :
Ma quo fa tu ta?
"Mais qu'est-ce que tu fais là?"
E il repetit alor a me, tot lenimen, quam si pri un cose tre seriosi:
Et il me répéta alors, tout doucement, comme une chose très sérieuse:
"Ples...dessinar me un agnelle..."
"S'il vous plaît... dessine-moi un mouton..."
Quande li misterie es tal impressiv, on ne trova li corage desobedir. Quantcunc absurd it semblat a me, a mill milies de omni locs habitat e in dangere de mort, yo retirat de mi tasca un pezze de papere e un plum. Ma yo alor rememorat que yo hat studiat precipue geografie, historie, calcul e grammatica e yo dit al litt chap (con un poc de mal humor) que yo ne posset dessinar. Il respondet a me:
Quand le mystère est trop impressionnant, on n'ose pas désobéir. Aussi absurde que cela me semblât à mille milles de tous les endroits habités et en danger de mort, je sortis de ma poche une feuille de papier et un stylographe. Mais je me rappelai alors que j'avais surtout étudié la géographie, l'histoire, le calcul et la grammaire et je dis au petit bonhomme (avec un peu de mauvaise humeur) que je ne savais pas dessiner. Il me répondit :
"To ne importa. Dessina me un agnelle."
"Ça ne fait rien. Dessine-moi un mouton."
Pro que yo nequande hat dessinat un agnelle yo refat, por il, li un del du sol dessines quel yo posset far. Li dessine del boa cludet. E yo esset stupefat escutar li micri chap responder a me:
Comme je n'avais jamais dessiné un mouton je refis, pour loui, l'un des deux seuls dessins dont j'étais capable. Celui du boa fermé. Et je fus stupéfait d'entendre le petit bonhomme me répondre:
"No! No! Yo ne vole un elefant in un boa. Un boa es tre dangerosi, e un elefant es tre ponderosi. U yo vive omnicós es micri. Yo besona un agnelle. Dessina por me un agnelle."
"Non! Non! Je ne veux pas d'un éléphant dans un boa. Un boa c'est très dangereux, et un éléphant c'est très encombrant. Chez moi c'est tout petit. J'ai besoin d'un mouton. Dessine-moi un mouton."
Alor yo dessinat:
Alors j'ai dessiné:
Il regardat atentivmen, poy:
Il regarda attentivement, puis:
"No! Ti ja es tre malad. Fa un altro.
"Non! Celui-là est déjà très malade. Fais-en un autre."
Yo dessinat:
Je dessinai:
Mi amico subridet gentilmen, con indulgentie:
Mon ami sourit gentiment, avec indulgence:
"Tu vide bon... to ne es un agnelle, es un agno. Il have cornes..."
"Tu vois bien... ce n'est pas un mouton, c'est un bélier. Il a des cornes..."
Yo refat un vez plu mi dessine:
Je refis donc encore mon dessin:
Ma it esset refusat, quam li precedentes:
Mais il fut refusé, comme les précédents:
"Ti es tro old. Yo vole un agnelle quel vive longmen."
"Celui-là est trop vieux. Je veux un mouton qui vive longtemps."
Alor, mi patientie expenset, pro que yo devet urgentmen comensar demonter mi motor, yo scriachat ti-ci dessine:
Alors, faute de patience, comme j'avais hâte de commencer le démontage de mon moteur, je griffonnai ce dessin-ci:
E yo lansat:
Et je lançai:
"Vi li buxe. Li agnelle quel tu vole es intern."
"Ça c'est la caisse. Le mouton que tu veux est dedans."
Ma yo es bon surprisat vider li iluminant visage de mi yun judico:
Mais je fuis bien surpris de voir s'illuminer le visage de mon jeune juge:
"To es totmen qualmen yo volet! Crede tu que on besona mult grass por ti agnelle?"
"C'est tout à fait comme ça que je le voulais! Crois-tu qu'il faille beaucoup d'herbe à ce mouton?"
"Pro quo?"
"Pourquoi?"
"Pro u yo vive, omnicós es micri..."
"Parce que chez moi c'est tout petit..."
"To certmen va suficer. Yo dat a te un tre litt agnelle."
"Ça suffira sûrement. Je t'ai donné un tout petit mouton."
Il inclinat su cap vers li dessine:
Il pencha la tête vers le dessin:
"Ne es talmen litt... Oh! Il indormit..."
"Pas si petit que ça... Tiens! Il s'est endormi..."
E to esset qualmen yo fat li conossentie del micri prince.
Et c'est ainsi que je fis la connaissance du petit prince.
There's a tiny patch of sky known as the Groth Strip that looks like this:
(Ignore the arrow added on to the image)
It's that tiny strip up near the top and slightly to the left. Someone the other day directed me to this page, showing all the stars in this tiny strip of sky. Except that most of them aren't stars...the image is zoomable so you can see exactly what they're made of. The strip looks like this:
But if we zoom in to a part of this (a tiny part of that tiny part of the sky) we can see that most of the tiniest pixels are actually galaxies, so instead of one star we're looking at a few hundred billion of them.
There are more images of this type here. Another great one is this one, the galaxy M101. Zooming in suddenly and then waiting a few seconds while the image buffers and becomes clearer and clearer is great fun. I just wish I could keep zooming in.
Read more...
That's the conclusion one reaches if you're a fan of sloppy statistics. The debate between Blair and Hitchens just ended, and since it wasn't streamed live without paying I haven't seen it yet. Nor do I care who wins - I enjoy a good debate and prefer to avoid commentary on it after watching one as I prefer to let my first impressions sink in on my own. After about a day then I'll become curious whether others had the same impressions as mine, and what is often the case is that they didn't.
More interesting than who won the debate is who came up with the most interesting point. In a recent Hitchens - Dembski debate I thought the most interesting part was when Hitchens talked about whether a non-specialist can contribute to fields of knowledge as well. This was in response to a point made in Stephen Hawking's latest book where apparently he says something to the effect of human knowledge has progressed to the point where you have to be a specialist in order to make a meaningful contribution to any field now, in comparison with before where a layman with a good deal of thought could contribute without even necessarily having an academic background in that area...the example he gave was one where Immanuel Kant contributed greatly to understanding of seismology after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake:
The concept of the sublime, though it existed before 1755, was developed in philosophy and elevated to greater importance by Immanuel Kant, in part as a result of his attempts to comprehend the enormity of the Lisbon quake and tsunami. Kant published three separate texts on the Lisbon earthquake. The young Kant, fascinated with the earthquake, collected all the information available to him in news pamphlets, and used it to formulate a theory of the causes of earthquakes. Kant's theory, which involved the shifting of huge subterranean caverns filled with hot gases, was (though ultimately shown to be false) one of the first systematic modern attempts to explain earthquakes by positing natural, rather than supernatural, causes. According to Walter Benjamin, Kant's slim early book on the earthquake "probably represents the beginnings of scientific geography in Germany. And certainly the beginnings of seismology."
So that's the kind of thing I most look for in a debate.
Obsession with who won the debate though has produced the following sloppy statistic (from here and here):
Preliminary results on the Munk website said 68 per cent of the votes backed Hitchens and 32 per cent Blair.
All right, 68% for Hitchens and 32% for Blair. Blair wins, as the second article says (Hitchens 1 - 0 Blair).
But wait a second...
Both men gained about 10 percentage points from the pre-debate standings, when 21 per cent were undecided.
It turns out the pre-debate standings (before a single word had been uttered) were 57% Hitchens, 22% Blair. After the debate they both went up by 10 points each, winning over the undecided.
Bad conclusion: Hitchens won the debate!
Good conclusion: Debate watchers overwhelmingly preferred Hitchens before it began, both men won over an equal number of undecided.
Expecting Blair to get 51% in order to be the 'winner' would be like expecting Barack Obama to win over a group of 57% firm Republican backers in 90 minutes, or Dick Cheney to win over a group composed of 57% Daily Kos users, in order to be declared the winner. Not going to happen. So it seems like the only loser in the debate was statistical comprehension.
Read more...
I noticed a link to this page on a forum yesterday, one that may well be the best source to refer to on just how similar Afrikaans and Dutch are, written from the point of view of an Afrikaans speaker (actually two) after a few years in the Netherlands. It's called Nederlands vir (Afrikaanse) dommies, and starts out with the top ten things you need to watch out for when attempting to use a modified Afrikaans to do things in the Netherlands. These are:
Baie - not understood, use zeer, heel, veel instead
Lekker - not used quite as much, gives examples of where other words would be used instead
pronouns - using Dutch pronouns is a definite necessity given their frequency
verb conjugation - since Afrikaans verbs hardly conjugate at all
pronunciation - quick tips on how it differs
double negative - when to replace it with niet, and when with geen
common vocabulary - words such as kar (auto), naweek (weekend), vinnig (snel)
hê - hebben
pleasantries - how to properly thank people in Dutch instead of always wanting to say baie dankie everywhere
more on daily expressions - mentions that while basic words (boom, huis) are almost all the same, it's daily expressions that you need to watch out for.
I was looking through some books on Eric.ed.gov today and found a few in Romanian, including this one (pdf) for volunteers in Moldova in 1998 that is particularly short. At just over 20 pages, it took just a bit over an hour to type up, except for the alphabet chart and pronunciation guide as that can be found anywhere. The English part (and maybe the Romanian, but I can't tell) is full of typos and mistakes ("good buy", "by cause", "I am share" for "I am sure") and so I've changed quite a bit there.
There are at least four other Romanian textbooks there that are much greater in size (up to 120+ pages), so be sure to do a direct search if you want more.
Here is an interesting article from a few weeks back in Portuguese. It's interesting for two reasons, and the first is the information from the article itself. According to the article 43% of Brazilian students taking the national Enem test prefer to go with Spanish instead of English, even students like the first one interviewed who have never heard a word of Spanish before, choosing to risk it simply due to the similarities to Portuguese. The second student in the article said she had never learned Spanish in school but knew some from the internet and books, and so went with Spanish instead of Portuguese. The 43% number is especially interesting considering that seven out of ten schools do not offer Spanish classes, whereas they all teach English. The article ends with some caution that simply relying on the assumption that Spanish will be easy due to similarities to Portuguese can be dangerous, and in extreme cases this may be true, but then again there is no other language for a Portuguese speaker where a student can actually feel comfortable risking taking it on a test after having studied it for exactly zero hours.
The second interesting thing about the article is that the audio in the embedded video matches the text almost exactly, so that site (Jorna da Globo) looks to be a great place to learn Portuguese. Videos with live interviews do not match up, but all the ones with prepared news reports seem to, such as this one from yesterday on the North Korean attacks on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong-do.
Two other related articles from the past year on Brazil and Spanish are: this one where the number of students learning Spanish in Brazil has increased by 400% over the past 3 years, and this one on the plan to increase the number of those proficient in Spanish in Brazil from 11 million to 50 million by 2015. As today's article shows, Brazilians are already quite familiar with Spanish in a passive manner, and learning Spanish is more a manner of tweaking their native language than learning a new one from scratch.
Read more...
Since the attacks today on the island of Yeonpyeong-do are all over the news over here in Korea and elsewhere, I thought I would see what I can find in Korean as information comes in. I spent a week back in 2003 on an island called Baengnyeong-do which is similar to Yeonpyeong-do in being part of Incheon (the city technically extends into all those islands in the West Sea) and located close enough to North Korea that you can see it just across the bay. You can see all three of these locations on the map here:
Baengnyeong-do and its two companions are the three islands in the top left with the largest on the top, and Yeongpyeong-do (which is actually two islands) is nearer the middle, with the larger island closer to the north shore. Incheon city is on the right side. The two Koreas have never really agreed on the maritime border, as due to those islands in the northwest South Korea technically owns a lot of land north of the armistice line (and so the marine border veers northwest after going a ways west from Incheon) whereas North Korea doesn't recognize this. It's called the Northern Limit Line, and looks like this:
So let's get some information. A lot of these articles have slightly different information from others so take some of the numbers with a grain of salt.
This article: the attacks happened at 2:34 pm and involved tens of rounds of artillery. Some of them hit the island Yeonpyeong-do and one soldier died, 10 were lightly wounded, and 3 heavily wounded. The south fired back in response to this. There have been intermittent events across the DMZ since the 1960s, but this is the first time a bombardment/shelling has taken place since the 1970s.
Civilian casualties on Yeonpyeong-do are still unknown. A total of 932 families (1780) live on both islands according to numbers from last year.
Today at 10 am the South Korean military was carrying out a military firing exercise in the area, around Yeonpyeong-do and Baengnyeong-do, and North Korea warned them by saying that they would not overlook firing in 'their territory'. The South Korean military said that the training took place on the south side of Baengnyeong-do and the southwest side of Yeonpyeong-do, so the parts not facing the North, and said that the North fired on the west part of Baengnyeong-do and the south side of Yeonpyeong-do.
After South Korea fired back, the North stopped firing at 3:42 pm.
The South scrambled F-15K jets from its base in Daegu (down in the southeast, next to the second largest city of Busan), and confirmation of the safety of South Koreans in the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Geumgangsan tourist resort is taking place, where 976 and 14 South Koreans work, respectively. Both of those are joint operations between the South and North but located in North Korea.
From this article: North Korea fired a total of some 50 shells at Yeonpyeong-do. It also says that the South fired 30 times in return but that article is an earlier one so we'll assume 80.
From this article: South Korean president Lee Myung-bak is being cautious so far, telling everyone involved to double check everything in order to avoid escalation. He's at the moment in the Cheongwadae (the Blue House, like the Korean White House) underground bunker in the National Crisis Management Center talking with the General Staff. They are saying that the North has used the South Korean naval exercise as an excuse to launch the attack. Also, civilians on the island have all taken shelter.
It's now past 6 pm and here's an article with a transcript from a reporter on tv: it confirms the same military casualties, and also says that 3 civilians have been wounded, in addition to a number of burning houses. The reporter said the following:
- There was no extra firing from the North after 3:41 pm, and no sounds of firing could be heard in the area after that time either.
- Firing started at 2:34 pm, continued for 20 minutes stopping at 2:55, then started again at 3:10 pm and continued for 30 minutes.
- North Korean forces came from the Gaemeori Base (개머리기지) in Kangryeong county.
- Some shells fell in the ocean, others fell on the marine corps and civilian houses in Yeonpyeong-do.
- South responded with K-9 artillery, as above
- The South scrambled F15-K and F-16 fighters, and they are continuing to patrol the area around the five islands. The military says they will respond strongly to any additional attacks.
- Civilians were taken to shelters in 20 locations.
- Some of the mountains are on fire on the island, which is a continuing source of worry. If we zoom in on the island you can see how green it is:
- A large number of the shells dropped were concentrated on the area with the K-9 artillery, which raises the possibility that they were aiming for a certain area and not just shelling randomly
(Quick edit from elsewhere: number of soldiers that have died is now two)
- As above, the North sent a message in the morning saying they wouldn't let the South carry out a military exercise around the islands. The South responded by warning them against any provocation and said they would continue the exercises. After that there was no response from the North.
- The military is now on Jindogae-1 alert (Jindogae is a type of Korean dog, but here it's a code for military readiness similar to Defcon), which is the highest and involves putting all operational forces in a state of readiness.
- Since there has been nothing from the North since they stopped the attack they are concentrating most of their effort on analyzing the attack now and the reasons behind it
- The military is having another briefing right now (began at 6:30 pm, right now it's 6:50 pm).
Twitter has been popular in Korea since around the summer, and this link shows current Twitter traffic containing the term North Korea (북한) as translated by Google if you want to see (though often badly translated) what is being said right now. The Korean internet is usually quite isolated from the rest of the internet due to just being really different (lots of reliance on ActiveX, and needing a Korean Resident Registration Number or 주민등록번호 just to register on most sites) so the recent increased popularity of Twitter is nice to have. Feel free to leave a comment below if you are curious about what a tweet actually means if the automated translation is wrong but has something that piques your interest.
An article from a few minutes ago here has a statement from the North High Command that I think they just issued: it says that "if the south Chosun puppets encroach even 0.001 millimetres on our marine territory our revolutionary forces will continue to respond without mercy", so no backing down on the rhetorical side from them.
An article here from 6:30 pm says the Unification Ministry here in the South has announced they will delay indefinitely a joint South-North Red Cross meeting that was planned for the 25th.
The largest forum for expats in Korea has a thread here that started earlier this afternoon. Any event of this type always results in a thread of a few dozen pages there.
8:30 pm: someone just came to this page using the search term how far is Yeonpyeong from Daegu. The answer is 330 km. This map (in Korean) gives distances using the second button below the slider on the right that looks like a tiny ruler, so you can try it out for yourself if you want to know the distance between two points (the distance is given using km so you can read it).
This article here from 7:30 has North Korea's statement on the news that the same lady always gives, where they said that the South fired first, saying: "In spite of our repeated warnings, the South Chosun puppets entered our marine territory at 1 pm today, and carried out a military provocation" and "our revolutionary forces responded immediately to the military provocation by the puppets with a strong physical response".
You can also see an infographic here, which is pretty self-explanatory. The NLL is in red, the location of the NK base is where the artillery is shown coming from. It says that some 100 rounds were fired, composed of coast batteries and high-angle (howitzer) shells.
- the Ministry of Defence says the response from the South was concentrated on the area where the attack came from, so they assume that a great deal of damage was done to the North side as well.
- they are working right now on strategies to halt attacks from the North as quickly as possible, using extra surveillance and closer cooperation with the US
From the news on tv now (9:00 pm): people from all five islands are going to evacuate, and extra ships are being sent right now to Yeonpyeong-do to evacuate them and are also bringing food (lots of ramyeon/ramen). Baengnyeong-do in the west has about 6000 people and a military base in the west that you can visit (not now though, of course). The reason why people visit there is because of the impressive cliffs in that place known as Dumujin, and you can see them here. About half of the families on that island have relatives in the North, since when Korea was a single country it was simply an island next to the province of Hwanghae-do, separated by just a few km of sea. You can see the northern side on a clear day from there.
We have some video of the shells landing now. The building there is the myeon office (a myeon is an administrative district, kind of like a village).
Here's another video with the myeon office plus a lot of smoke in the distance.
Some more from TV news: one of the two soldiers that died was just days from finishing up his military service. He had written yesterday on his Cyworld page (kind of like Facebook in Korea) yesterday that he would be able to go home on the next ship.
Read more...
There has been some anticipation over the past few weeks regarding the 500 exoplanet milestone, and now it seems we have reached it. Since about the beginning of this month the number of exoplanets discovered this year has also been greater than the total discovered in 2009, so that is also a new record. This chart (updated to 3 October at the moment) shows what the number was a month before. It's pretty interesting to look at years like 2003 - that year doesn't feel like all that long ago, but back then we were only discovering a pitiful 30 planets a year. The most important number though in the article is the number 20, and that is because it has to do with Kepler:
"Our false positive rate continues to be rather low," he said. "It appears to be below 20 percent."
Out of the 700 candidates being observed right now then that means that some 550 should turn out to be real planets. And more importantly, the majority of the planets Kepler is and has discovered are not Jupiter-size and larger, but Neptune-size and smaller, and these are far more interesting if you're a human.
Read more...
YouTube over the past year or so has made me into a Disney fan, which is notable since there were few things I hated more when growing up than Disney movies. A bit of animation then an annoying song, a little bit more animation and once again the characters break out into song, blech. But now that 1) Disney doesn't seem to make these types of movies anymore and 2) YouTube is full of clips of Disney songs in just about any major language you can think of, I'm suddenly a fan.
One account here is quite good, with the German lyrics for a few dozen songs. The song Reflection (Spiegelbild) from Mulan is particularly good, and though that account has disabled embedding I found it somewhere else:
Reflection sounds good in pretty much any language though. Here it is in Bulgarian.
Now that one doesn't have the lyrics on the video, but if it's not there chances are you should be able to find it either in the video explanation or in the comments below. For this video we've lucked out and a helpful commenter has added them:
Може би няма никога да зарадвам аз моето семейство
Може би друга роля имам аз
В този миг осъзнавам колко различна съм
Как да споделя това
Кой се оглежда в мен
Може би друга съм
Как да разбера коя съм аз сега
Как ли да скрия аз образа другия
Колко тайни крие той образа в мен
Колко тайни крие той образа в мен?
Another song that sounds great in most languages is Part of Your World. The Austrian German version sounds better than the standard German one:
And for some reason the Spanish and Italian versions don't sit well with me. Too busy or something, and the Italian one in particular sounds a bit like it's trying to hard to impress, coming across more like a finely-trained singer instead of a lonely mermaid singing to her two friends.
I'll Make a Man out of You also sounds quite good in German and a few others:
Once again the Italian version seems off - sounds just like somebody brought in to record a song, not a seasoned warrior.
The French versions are overall quite good, such as this one.
I haven't listened to every language available on YouTube (probably even fewer than half) but one other language that also always sounds nice is Icelandic, and there are a few Icelandic users there that seem particularly motivated about providing lyrics and an English translation for as many as they can. Here's one.
Here's an article in French on how many languages it takes to reach a majority of the internet: with 10 languages one can reach over 80%, but to reach 99% you would need to have a site translated into 37. With just English, Chinese and Spanish one can reach 50%. The ten languages needed to do so are:
That's actually no different from the top ten languages shown here.
Not taken into account in the study is mutual intelligibility, where Portuguese speakers would be able to navigate a site in Spanish but not necessarily participate on it. Dutch and Afrikaans speakers often find themselves in a similar situation too when reading articles in German.
Also keep in mind that this has very little to do with the population of languages offline: Bengali has only about one or two million speakers online, but over 200 million in real life, and is probably the most extreme example of a language with a great deal of representation in the real world but hardly anything online. Icelandic would be the exact opposite, with just 300,000 speakers in real life, almost 100% of which have access to the internet. That gives Icelandic a presence about a tenth to a third that of Bengali in spite of having a population some 600 times smaller, and on top of that Icelandic is much easier to type and display.
Finally, note that broadcasters such as Deutsche Welle do not choose the languages they broadcast in by population. Deutsche Welle has nothing in Italian, but a lot in Bulgarian and Macedonian. There is also no Dutch and no Scandinavian languages. International broadcasters tend to focus on two areas: 1) the largest languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, etc.) plus 2) strategically important languages - Bulgarian, Persian, Albanian, Croatian, etc. Basically languages of places either where the EU is militarily involved or prospective EU countries. It's a pity that none of these broadcasters have anything in Armenian though. Turkey's TRT has Armenian, but that's a no-brainer considering their historical relationship and the large number of Armenians in Turkey today as well.
The Parliament of East Timor approved a resolution at the end of October that makes the use of Portuguese obligatory in plenary sessions and meetings of parliamentary commissions, at least once a month.
The resolution states that "the Portuguele language, along with the Tetum language, makes up part of the national heritage, being an element of national unity, contributing decisively to societal cohesion and to the Timorese State."
Manuel Tilman of the Kota Party, one of the two deputies that abstained, said that "almost all public employees or those from other governmental institutions don't speak Portuguese well, including various deputies that have completed their studies in Indonesia".
The National Parliament of East Timor will be the host of the Parliamentary Assembly of the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries), whose next meeting will happen in the East Timorese capital of Dili in 2011, and for the members of various parties that endorsed the resolution, "the ability to respond to parliamentary services (for the meeting) is an imperative".
The issue of Portuguese as an official language in East Timor has been an issue since the country achieved independence in 2002, and since it hasn't even been a decade since then it's not yet certain whether the majority of the population (or a sizable minority) will be able to learn the language to fluency. A good sign for Portuguese though is how Brazil has continued to improve since then, as that really is the only country that counts when the fate of Portuguese as an international language is considered. It's nice that Portuguese is spoken in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique and a few other countries, but without Brazil its influence would be close to nothing on the world stage.
Over six years from 2002 to 2008, Brazil's GDP has grown to three times its size:
More important than GDP though for a country like Brazil are factors such as poverty and literacy, and we'll see by about 2016 whether Brazil can achieve what it is aiming for. That also happens to be the year Rio will host the Summer Olympics.
Read more...
It's autumn now here in Seoul, and as the leaves begin to fall off the trees in November this is the time of year where the craptastic pruning jobs done on the trees by the road really make themselves known. What happens every year is this: around December or so when all the leaves have fallen off, for about two days you'll suddenly see branches all over the street and trucks parked by the road, on top of which is a group of guys going at last year's growth with their saws. BZZZZZAWWW- BZZZAAARRRGHAWWWW, and down goes another branch. It's all a very roughshod and slipshod and really quite horrendous job really that gets done to the trees, and after they are done they become leafless and quite stumpy until spring finally comes around and covers them up.
Now, the result of this haphazard pruning every year is this: right around now when the leaves begin to fall, for a few weeks you get to see a really quite horrific sight, somewhat resembling what happens when you take a rubber glove and fill it with water like a balloon - the middle part is much too bloated, while the fingers suddenly change from a part of the hand into some sort of weird stubby protrusion that doesn't fit well with the size of the rest of the hand at all. The palm is too large, the fingers are far too small. That's what happens here too. After such a rough pruning job only some fairly thick parts of the tree remain, and one year of growth is still much too thin in comparison, so what you see is the trunk, then move up to where the trunk splits, gets a bit thinner, a tiny bit thinner, and....all of a sudden you're now looking at twigs.
Tough to imagine? That's why I took pictures. Here's the view from yesterday. Looking at the trees with leaves still on them you can imagine how hidden this stays throughout the summer, but not any longer.
(and click on the images to see them in a much larger size)
These ones are probably the worst.
Notice the tree on the right there, the one that looks normal? That's because...
it's a tree in an apartment complex next to the street, where they hire real gardeners to take care of the trees. Here's what a tree that has been properly pruned should look like in the fall.
That's more like it. Now I've almost arrived at my destination so I took one more picture of a sad tree before turning off the camera.
So will the chainsaw truckmen be back this year too? I hope every year that they've gotten around to hiring some real pruners, but who knows. One thing Korea does a good job of though is changing and adapting, and the city does continue to improve year after year with more green space, better walkways, more buses running on natural gas, etc. Whether they've gotten around to doing something about the horrible pruning job in the winter though is hard to say.
Read more...
Last month (10 October) I typed up a Latvian Peace Corps textbook from the 1990s and was about to publish it when I decided I would wait until a busy day when I had many other things besides blogging to do. Well, today is the day. Here's the Latvian course!
-----
Over at Eric.ed.gov there are Peace Corps manuals for a number of languages, one of which is Latvian. There is also an Estonian one there and though a Lithuanian one can't be found on the site it's safe to assume that they made one at around the same time, in the early 1990s when the Baltic countries had just become independent again and things were still pretty chaotic and underdeveloped economically. Because of this the cultural notes within the textbooks are now pretty much useless, though quite interesting. The Latvian textbook for example talks about Latvia's plan to introduce its own currency instead of the Ruble, says that roads outside of the main cities are all made of gravel, men work hard and women marry young, that sort of thing.
I spent part of last week typing up the dialogues for fun, and now that it's done here it is without any formatting. In all honesty it's not the best textbook, as the dialogues are too short and grammatical explanations are not detailed and friendly enough. With this book alone it would be pretty hard to pick up the language, though of course it was made for people who were actually going to the country so I expect they referred to the textbook very infrequently and instead found other ways in real life to learn Latvian.
Oh, and be sure to let me know where the inevitable typos are if you know Latvian.
Another asteroid discovered over the past few days is flying by the Earth at an extremely close distance as we speak - its name is 2010 WA and it has a diameter of just 3 to 6 metres, which is much too small to make it to the ground if it were to hit the planet. A quick stick man diagram will show just how small this is compared to a human:
In spite of the tiny size it's passing by at an extremely close distance (which is what makes it newsworthy), just 10% that from the Earth to the Moon. That's around the same altitude as a geostationary satellite.
Big news for the Chevrolet Volt a few days ago as GE has decided to purchase a full 12,000 of them. At full price ($41,000) that works out to almost half a billion in sales, though of course they paid less per unit than that (though they did not say how much). The amount GM spent to develop the new technology for the Volt was around $1 billion, so it shouldn't take long before they fully recoup this investment. Reviews for the Volt continue to be almost entirely positive, and today it was named Motor Trend Car of the Year.
I really do think people are going to eventually see their cars the way they see their cellphones or netbooks, as something they use during the day and plug in at night. Until range gets up to about 400 - 600 km for full electric, the Volt will be the way to go for those that want the ability to almost entirely avoid going to the gas station but without range anxiety.
Here's what it looks like from above since the ISS had the Cupola installed in February:
This was the APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) yesterday.
My thoughts on people in space vs. robotic exploration have changed recently, but luckily I already wrote on the subject last year so I'll just provide the link:
In short: people are hardwired towards human drama, and space can be exciting for the average person if our astronauts are seen to be real people (like in the photo here), not just highly-trained specialists that do things in space, return to Earth, and then disappear until they are called to duty again.
Read more...
The title is Հայ թագավորներ (Hay Tagavorner) which means Armenian Kings and not only is the music nice but something about the unchanging sun in the graphic that I like, simple though it may be. Kings come and go while the sun and the mountains remain unchanged..
Even Armenia at its greatest extent (shown in red) looked like this from space:
Also reminds me of this scene:
Chancellor Durken: I go home each night to a loving wife, two beautiful daughters. We eat evening meal together as a family. I think that's important. And they always ask me if I've had a good day.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: And how will you answer them tonight, Chancellor?
Chancellor Durken: I will have to say: This morning, I was the leader of the universe, as I know it. This afternoon, I'm only a voice in a chorus. But I think it was a good day.
Not sure which episode this one is? Luckily you can watch it right here. You're welcome.
Read more...
Edit: if you're just tuning in now, the link to NASA TV is here on the media channel. The press conference starts soon...
Edit 2: the press conference is going on as we speak, and here's what the object is:
----
It's November 15th and thus NASA will finally hold its press conference to discuss what is apparently an exceptional discovery by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. What it will be is unknown, but keep in mind that often these press conferences announced ahead of time turn out to be exciting for those of us that closely follow developments in space, but far less so to the public at large. Plus, the term "cosmic neighborhood" is very vague - cosmic neighborhood could easily mean "within 50 light years" in which case we are talking about somewhere well beyond where humans could hope to travel (even if we become capable of going to other solar systems), but if it means within 10-20 light years or so then it will be all the more interesting.
The conference will be held at 12:30 pm EST which is three hours from now as I write this - see here to see what time it is now in that time zone.
Also check here out on Reddit to see how much attention this is getting - eight submissions so far over the past two days, and 100+ comments for this one. NASA certainly knows how to tease the imagination.
Anyway, we will find out soon enough and then I will update the post if the discovery turns out to be as interesting as claimed..
Edit: While we're at it, let's see what else has used the term "in our cosmic neighborhood" until now. As you can see, the term really is just useful in a relative sense.
This article refers to a brown dwarf "in our cosmic neighborhood", meaning within ten light years.
This one, however, uses the phrase to refer to asteroids in the inner Solar System.
This one uses the phrase to refer to nearby galaxies.
And this one uses it to mean within 1000 light years.
Also, remember this image?
That was the famous "Hand of God" photograph that was also taken by Chandra, which is actually the pulsar PSR B1509-58, 17000 light years away (17% the diameter of the Milky Way). In the press release for that there is no mention of the pulsar being nearby, or in our cosmic neighborhood, so I think we can safely assume that this new object to be announced is much closer than that.
And now finished Chapter 1. My cats woke me up this morning so I went ahead and did the chapter now ahead of schedule; on the other hand sleepiness could have caused some errors.
Capitul 1.
1
Quande yo havet six annus yo videt, un vez, un magnific image, in un libre pri li virginal forest, nominat HistoriesVivet. It representat un boa inglotinte un bestie. Vi li copie del dessine.
Lorsque j'avais six ans j'ai vu, une fois, une magnifique image, dans un livre sur la forêt vierge qui s'appelait Histoires vécues. Ça représentait un serpent boa qui avalait un fauve. Voilà la copie du dessin.
In li libre esset scrit: "Li boa serpentes ingloti su preda tot integrimen, sin machar it. Poy ili ne posse mover se plu, e ili dormi durante li six mensus de su digestion."
On disait dans le livre : « Les serpents boas avalent leur proie tout entière, sans la mâcher. Ensuite ils ne peuvent plus bouger et ils dorment pendant les six mois de leur digestion ».
Alor yo reflectet mult pri li aventuras del jungle e, respondente, yo successat, con un crayon de color, dessinar mi unesim dessine. Mi dessine numeró 1. It esset tal:
J'ai alors beaucoup réfléchi sur les aventures de la jungle et, à mon tour, j'ai réussi, avec un crayon de couleur, à tracer mon premier dessin. Mon dessin numéro 1. Il était comme ça :
Yo monstrat mi mastre-ovre al grand persones e demandat a ili, ca mi dessine fat terrore in ili.
J'ai montré mon chef-d'œuvre aux grandes personnes et je leur ai demandé si mon dessin leur faisait peur.
Ili respondet a me: "Pro quo un chapel vell far terrore?"
Mi dessine ne representat un chapel. It representat un boa serpente qui digestet un elefant. Alor yo dessinat li interiore del boa serpente, por que li grand persones vell posser comprender. Ili sempre besona explicationes. Mi dessine numeró 2 esset tal:
Mon dessin ne représentait pas un chapeau. Il représentait un serpent boa qui digérait un éléphant. J'ai alors dessiné l'intérieur du serpent boa, afin que les grandes personnes puissent comprendre. Elles ont toujours besoin d'explications. Mon dessin numéro 2 était comme ça :
Li grand persones consiliat que yo lassa ad-látere li dessines de boa serpentes apert o cludet, e que yo interessa me plutost in geografie, historie, calcul, e grammatica. Talmen yo abandonat, al etá de six annus, un magnific cariera de pictor. Yo hat esset decorageat del ínsuccesse de mi dessine numeró 1 e de mi dessine numeró 2. Totmen sol li grand persones ne comprende quocunc, e il es fatigant, por infantes, de sempre les dar explicationes...
Les grandes personnes m'ont conseillé de laisser de côté les dessins de serpents boas ouverts ou fermés, et de m'intéresser plutôt à la géographie, à l'histoire, au calcul et à la grammaire. C'est ainsi que j'ai abandonné, à l'âge de six ans, une magnifique carrière de peintre. J'avais été découragé par l'insuccès de mon dessin numéro 1 et de mon dessin numéro 2. Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours leur donner des explications…
Dunc yo devet optar un altri mestiere e yo aprendet pilotar aeroplanes. Yo volat un poc partú tra li munde. E geografie, it es exact, servit me mult. Yo posse reconosser, al unesim regarda, China e Arizona. To es util, si on perdi li via durante li nocte.
J'ai donc dû choisir un autre métier et j'ai appris à piloter des avions. J'ai volé un peu partout dans le monde. Et la géographie, c'est exact, m'a beaucoup servi. Je savais reconnaître, du premier coup d'œil, la Chine de l'Arizona. C'est utile, si l'on s'est égaré pendant la nuit.
Talmen yo havet, in li curse de mi vive, un amasse de contactes con un amasse de seriosi gente. Yo vivet mult con li grand persones. Yo videt ili de tre proxim. To ne mult ameliorat mi opinion pri ili.
J'ai ainsi eu, au cours de ma vie, des tas de contacts avec des tas de gens sérieux. J'ai beaucoup vécu chez les grandes personnes. Je les ai vues de très près. Ça n'a pas trop amélioré mon opinion.
Quande yo incontrat un qui aparet un poc lucid, yo fat mi experiment pri il de mi dessine numeró 1, quel yo sempre conservat. Yo volet saver ca il esset vermen comprendent. Ma sempre il respondet a me: "To es un chapel." Alor yo ne parlat con il ni pri boa serpentes, ni pri virginal forestes, ni pri li stelles. Yo mettet me a su nivelle. Yo parlat pri bridge, golf, politica e cravattes. E li grand person esset tre content de conossentar un hom tal rasonabil...
Quand j'en rencontrais une qui me paraissait un peu lucide, je faisais l'expérience sur elle de mon dessin n°1 que j'ai toujours conservé. Je voulais savoir si elle était vraiment compréhensive. Mais toujours elle me répondait : « C'est un chapeau. » Alors je ne lui parlais ni de serpents boas, ni de forêts vierges, ni d'étoiles. Je me mettais à sa portée. Je lui parlais de bridge, de golf, de politique et de cravates. Et la grande personne était bien contente de connaître un homme aussi raisonnable…
Robert Winter wrote two days ago that he has gotten over his auxlang malaise after tentatively concluding that he had wasted his time on them during the past nine months. Why? Apparently during his time away from blogging about auxlangs he tried writing a few things in Occidental here and there, and found the language in practice to be much more apt than he had expected, in spite of the lack of documentation and content compared to the Big Three. You can see what he wrote about the subject here. One other reason for giving Occidental a serious try is that (according to him) the Big Three have failed in that over the past decade or so on the internet they have failed to attain a serious amount of interest from the public at large, while Occidental has not yet had that chance in the sun to make its case.
He did note, however, that:
Even now I could still fail and might give up if I hit too many roadblocks, considering that I'm still flying by the seat of my pants and trailblazing in trying to write literature in Occidental with virtually no existing literature (other than some non-fiction articles and a few, rare literary fragments) to help me. Well, we'll see what happens anyway...
Virtually no existing literature, hm? Then why not translate Le Petit Prince? LFN did it. So let's translate it into Occidental, one post per chapter, corrections always welcome (Olivier, Steve, etc., watch this space). We shall begin with the dedication:
A Léon Werth.
À Léon Werth.
Yo demanda pardon a infantes pro dedicar ti ci libre a un grand person. Yo have un excusa seriosi: ti grand person es li max bon amico qui yo have in li munde. Yo have un altri excusa: ti grand person posse comprender omnicos, mem libres por infantes. Yo have un triesim excusa: ti grand person habita Francia, u hay fame e frigore. Il deve esser consolat. Si omni ti excusas ne sufice, yo vell bon dedicar ti ci libre al infante quel unquande ci grand person esset. Omni grand persones unquande esset infantes. (Ma poc de ili memora to.) Yo corecte dunc mi dedication:
Je demande pardon aux enfants d'avoir dédié ce livre à une grande personne. J'ai une excuse sérieuse : cette grande personne est le meilleur ami que j'ai au monde. J'ai une autre excuse : cette grande personne peut tout comprendre, même les livres pour enfants. J'ai une troisième excuse : cette grande personne habite la France où elle a faim et froid. Elle a besoin d'être consolée. Si toutes ces excuses ne suffisent pas, je veux bien dédier ce livre à l'enfant qu'a été autrefois cette grande personne. Toutes les grandes personnes ont d'abord été des enfants. (Mais peu d'entre elles s'en souviennent.) Je corrige donc ma dédicace :
I wrote what is probably the last post on the French version of the Nightmare Before Christmas a few days ago, but a bit of searching turned up a particularly useful page here that is worth sharing - it's every song from the movie with the lyrics in Italian on the same page, as well as the English lyrics to the right and a link to the video for every one. The only thing to watch out for is that the English lyrics are not a translation of the Italian lyrics but rather the original English, which means that they don't match up half the time and if you're studying Italian you'll have to translate the lyrics yourself.
...strange, one video has been taken down for copyright infringement over just the past day. Luckily I found it somewhere else:
That's Jack's Lament, and you can hear that the Italian singer is much more aggressive than the one for French, which sometimes is a plus and other times not. Overall from all the versions I've heard the French one is by far the best, but the Italian one has its good moments.
WISE announced a few days ago the discovery of a brown dwarf, a quite cool one that now has the lengthy name WISEPC J045853.90+643451.9. I didn't write about it when the discovery was first announced as this brown dwarf isn't the type I'm most excited about, namely a brown dwarf closer to us than Alpha Centauri is. This one happens to be somewhere from 18 to 30 light years away, which is fairly close but still nowhere close enough to excite the imagination in the way that a nearer object would.
Nevertheless, it's still worth writing about. The field in which the brown dwarf is located can be seen in this image from here:
It's hard to tell unless you click on the image to zoom in, but this brown dwarf shows up as a tiny green dot in the centre of all that blue, which is the way you look if your temperature is a mere 600 Kelvin (325 C), which is cooler than Venus.
Some days everything just combines together to produce an amazingly surreal atmosphere. Back in March when we usually have yellow dust there was one day that happened to be particularly dark and gloomy, and I took pictures of the city then. Today is similar to that in the gloomy sense, but it was mixed together with something that you see in dystopian science fiction movies, a kind of sense of power and authority as well. There were police absolutely everywhere around COEX, the road in front of it was sealed off with two fences (one green one in the middle of the street, and a smaller white one on the curb in front of COEX that surrounded the whole area), rain came down intermittently, the wind was high and the clouds were racing above, and it more or less looked like an image of what Korea might look like in some gloomy future if the whole place became a kind of technocratic police state. On top of that the weather was extremely warm, around +14 in spite of being almost the middle of November. Personally, I loved it.
I forgot my camera though (plus I'm not sure whether I would have been permitted to take pictures), but I'm sure there are a lot of images online. Let's see what we can find.
Here's the view from Bongeunsa temple earlier in the day before it got really dark, with the white fence on the opposite side. Seems to be just before they put up the green fence in the middle of the road.
and this book is but one of many that are available here:
http://www.iampeth.com/books.php
I found it when doing a search for a fairly famous drawing of Jesus made through a single stroke of a pen - in other words, starting from the centre (the nose) and then working outward in gradually larger circles until you end up with a face. A friend had told me about that image and I suddenly remembered it then and decided to see if it could be found.
So while I was at it I decided to upload the rest of the book for quick viewing...but didn't get around to it until I noticed a thread here today on Reddit about learning cursive writing vs. learning typing. I agree with a few of the top-voted posters there that typing is easy to learn later on (one of the best ways to learn to type quickly is online gaming where you have to keep up with the others, typing while doing something else at the same time) whereas cursive writing really is something that you either learn during school or likely won't end up learning at all. One comment here is also noteworthy as it goes to two links on how writing trains the brain, helping it to remember things in a way that apparently typing does not.
I waited a bit longer than the usual six weeks before this update on the Ted.com translation stats as I was keeping an eye on Bulgarian and Spanish to see if Bulgarian would end up taking first place, and though it once got within three translations of first place Spanish has managed to hold first place. The numbers at the moment look like this:
The language with the largest increase over the past two months is definitely French, which added a full 145 translations since the last update compared to the next highest at 92, Italian. Besides this there aren't that many surprises. Chinese is also now close to first place but considering the population this is not that surprising a result (whereas Bulgarian is always notable considering its tiny population), and no languages have dropped off or been added to the list. Also, when checking the overall list (not just the top performers) there doesn't seem to be anything worth noting there either. Here are the numbers compared to those two months ago:
So which language is right behind Persian? Slovak at 150 articles. We may see it on the list soon, especially considering how easy it is to turn Czech to Slovak, and Czech has 192 articles right now.
Posts
