The fascinating thing about language
The language services industry has more than its fair share of interesting and amusing stories. Here we feature a few interesting snippets - and if you happen to come across any language-related anecdotes in your own line of work, we'd be delighted to hear from you.
Using one word where six would do
Nootka (or Nuuchahnulth, which literally means "along the mountains") is spoken by the tribes inhabiting Vancouver Island, Canada. In the early 20th century linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir studied Nootka over several years, and now his notes have helped linguists at Newcastle University with the challenging task of creating the first ever dictionary for this little-known language. Known for being extremely concise, the language features many short words with long meanings, e.g. "fib" meaning "to wipe the tears from one's eyes with the back of one's hand". The prospect of encouraging similar conciseness might well make this an ideal stocking-filler for the mother-in-law this Christmas...
SoccerLingua has a worthy goal
European Commission employee Richard Weaver has found the perfect way for football-mad youngsters to pursue their passion for the "beautiful" game whilst at the same time becoming more familiar with foreign languages and cultures. Based in Brussels and a keen footballer himself, he combined his own interest in the sport with his previous language teaching experience and set up SoccerLingua - a European partnership to promote languages to all young people. The project focuses on the five main football languages: English, German, Italian, Spanish and Catalan, and the "goal" is to capture the imagination of European youth and harness the power of football for language learning. Viva el futbal!
Interested in a life of crime?
If you're tired of your current job, how about a career as a "forensic linguist"? The sad reality is that this mad world in which we live has its fair share of terrorists and others of a criminal persuasion. In recent years this has led to a growing demand for linguists to decipher accents in recorded telephone calls, interpret dialectal implications of ransom notes and act as interpreters in court or even siege situations. Ice-cool nerves a pre-requisite for this job methinks...
Linguistics for relaxation
If you quite enjoy playing around with words, how about taking up "recreational linguistics" as a hobby? You could spend many a pleasant hour engaged in pursuits such as creating a name that uses as many letters of the alphabet as possible (e.g. "Emily Jung Schwarzkopf") or even developing a list of oxymoronic expressions that contain their paradox within the same word, thereby making their final meaning non-oxymoronic e.g. "spendthrift", "bridegroom", "bittersweet", "ballpoint", "speechwriter" and "someone". Or, if that all sounds rather like a foreign language, there's always good old Scrabble!