05.28.05
Bahasa Blogging
Not that I can read it, but here’s a blog in (I think) Indonesian.
05.27.05
Bahtssal (Eastern Pomo) Language
A Pomo site with some basic info and phrases, including sound files.
05.26.05
Pomo Language Preservation
Eighteen-year-old Kristin Amparo, a tribal member of the Big Valley band of Pomo Indians, lives with her parents and five siblings in a large house on their reservation in Clear Lake, about three hours north of San Francisco. She likes bouncing on a trampoline to slam-dunk a basketball in her back yard, zooming past the creamy white Konocti Vista Casino in a yellow all-terrain vehicle and, now, speaking Bahtssal with her 14-year-old sister Felicia.
…
Only a few elders of the Big Valley tribe are fluent in Bahtssal, a tribal dialect that began to fade after settlers forced Northern California Pomos off their lands. Today, Amparo and her sister are among a small group of young people on the 470-member reservation who are learning to speak the dialect as part of a newly formed language program.
Full story here.
05.20.05
Indigenous-language web site to explain legal system
Representatives from Aboriginal Resource and Development Services are attending an Indigenous communications forum in Alice Springs to find out more about the latest technological advances that might assist their project.
The organisation’s Maratja Dhamarrandji says the web site is being created in the local Yolgnu [sic] Matha language.
He says it is an important step that needs to be taken if the rate of Indigenous people going through the judicial system is to be reduced.
Full story here.
Some additional Yolngu resources:
- Tips for learning vocabulary
- Just a few important phrases
- Yolngu studies at Charles Darwin University
05.18.05
Bad News is the Same in Any Language
The Education Department already translates many student records into Spanish, Chinese and Russian, the most common foreign languages in the city.
But with the city’s immigrant population exploding - and a new $5.3 million translation unit within the Education Department - officials hope to add Bengali, Haitian Creole, Korean, Urdu and Arabic.
Full story here.
05.17.05
Pseudodictionary
While trying ot find a reference for the “word” hypmotized, I ran across the Pseudodictionary - the dictionary for words that wouldn’t make it into dictionaries.
05.16.05
Huttese
In case you ever are stranded on Tattooine, this site offers some information about the constructed language Huttese, including a phrasebook and dictionary. Rumor has it that it was influenced by Quechua (about which there’s also some info at the site).
05.13.05
Heluhelu
I have been getting a lot of searches for the definition of the Hawaiian word heluhelu (when I say a lot, I mean about 10). It had been mentioned in my post about Hawaiian language revival classes. Using this very nice online Hawaiian dictionary, the definition is:
helu.helu
1. v. To read, count. (2 Nal. 23.2.) Mea heluhelu, reader (either a book, or a person who reads). Poʻe heluhelu, reader (person). Aʻo heluhelu, reader (book); to learn to read.
2. Redup. of helu 4; to scratch.
As an aside, the University of Hawai’i will be offering a Master’s Degree program in Hawaiian studies (via Languistics):
The College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature will offer a Masters of Arts in Hawaiian as an effort to revive the Hawaiian language, emphasize the study of Hawaiian literature and improve teacher-training in schools.
05.11.05
Slang Dictionaries
- 19th Century Slang Dictionary (Civil War-oriented)
- Hobo Slang (via Incoming Signals, via In4mador)
- Jazz Age Slang
- The Urban Dictionary, at which you can vote for or against reader-supplied definitions (at the time I checked, resnet was rated all thumbs up - never saw that before)
05.10.05
Georgian
In honor of Bush’s successful visit to Georgia, here are some Georgian links:
- Outline grammatical summary
- A brief history of Georgian typography and book production
- A Georgian web portal
- A games page, in Georgian
- And one slightly off topic
05.09.05
Manx Monday
A Manx Note Book has a wealth of Manx-related resources, including a number of full texts. Sadly, only the intro to Cregeen’s 1835 A Dictionary of the Manks Language is available, but surely there is something that will catch your interest here.
05.07.05
Wolof
- Learn Wolof online
- UCLA Wolof Web Site
- Swedish-Wolof-English wordlist
- Guide to some additional Wolof resources
05.05.05
Guarani
- A term paper giving an overview of Guarani
- A German-Spanish-Guarani dictionary
- A Guarani-English dictionary
- Learn Guarani online (very sloooow site, in Paraguay)
- Another paper, Post-Stroessner Language Planning in Paraguay
Update: A very nice handbook of Paraguayan philately, with a discussion of Paraguay’s military history.
05.04.05
Stanisław Lem
Stanisław Lem’s official site, in both Polish and English; there is a nice selection of covers from many foreign editions.
05.02.05
Tohono O’odham Online Bibliography
Tumacacori National Park has posted an extensive annotated bibliography of works relating to the Tohono O’odham (or Papago). From the intro:
This bibliography is an outgrowth of a project begun in the summer of 1956 with the support of an Eban F. Comins grant provided by the Department of Anthropology of the University of Arizona. I had just completed my first year of graduate work in the anthropology department and had determined to focus my studies on the Papago Indian (Tohono O=odham) community living on the San Xavier Reservation some nine miles south of downtown Tucson, Arizona. To do so would require a knowledge of previous research concerning Papagos, and the compilation of an annotated bibliography seemed to be a good way to begin.
05.01.05
Macau Media
State of the media in Macau:
Macau Business, a glossy monthly distributed mainly to hotels but also in Hong Kong, was established in May last year and has been growing steadily since. Its executive director, Paulo Azevedo, was formerly a journalist with TDM and another Portuguese daily, Ponto Final. “The Portuguese language in Asia is like Latin, like we’re 16th century Dominican priests or something,” he said. “It’s nice to maintain this image of Macau but commercially speaking it’s a nightmare. There is no growth there.”
Full story here. More info about the history of newspapers in Macau here, including A Abelha da China (the China Bee), the first newspaper.