Free Republic

In 1958 the U.S. Army called it “Serbo-Croatian”. That was during the Cold War. I was a soldier in Military Intelligence, just beginning to learn the major language of Yugoslavia at the US Army Language School, on the old Spanish Presidio of Monterey in California. Thirty-some years later the Berlin Wall came down. In Slovenia in the year 1990 I learned from an American working there (it was still Yugoslavia then) that the Army had closed down the Monterey course. The Pentagon apparently had not yet received their orders to attack Yugoslavia. They thought the Cold War was over. Someone...

I'm writing a desktop application that I'd like to deploy onto Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. I'm trying to pick the language that will give me the most conveniences, without setting timebombs that will go off down the road. Here's what I think I know so far: C++ Pros: 1) resulting code runs fastest, provided I am not a bonehead 2) most flexibility in memory management 3) Maximum difficulty in reverse engineering my object code, though there is nothing revolutionary or complex in what I plan to write. 4) Tools are rock-solid. C++ Cons: 1) memory management is the biggest hassle,...

Thank you to all the Freepers who commented on my first Conversation with a Liberal at FreeRepublic. One of my favorite comments likened talking with Liberals to talking with houseplants. Thanks Popman. Here's another true story for your amusement... My wife was talking with some liberals recently who were discussing how Europeans are so wonderful and smart because they can speak multiple languages. The implication was that Americans are stupid because most Americans speak only English. My wife, being a naturalized American citizen who immigrated from Europe, was asked her opinion on the matter. Without missing a beat, she replied,...

San Francisco resident Carlos Dimaano, 50, a recent immigrant from the Philippines, speaks English in his job at a community center. But when he goes home to cook dinner for his 88-year-old father, the two lapse into their native Tagalog. The men are among the almost 43 percent of Californians who speak a language other than English at home, a proportion far higher than in any other state in the country, according to census figures released today. Speaking another language at home doesn't mean they don't also speak English in the home. But Dimaano, who immigrated just a year ago,...

Last month's ceasefire agreement centred around the creation of "buffer zones" between Russia and the Georgian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia which are now effectively controlled by the Kremlin. The agreement was brokered by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president whose country currently holds the EU presidency. But the original diplomatic coup became an embarrassing failure as Russia failed to move its troops off the main body of Georgia. Bernard Kouchner told a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the weekend that the ceasefire agreement was written in French before being translated into English and then Russian. Asked what...

In 1925, Virginia Woolf wrote "On Not Knowing Greek", the point of which was that the Greeks are very different from you and me. Yes, Virginia, they spoke Greek. Yet even Virginia's friend John Maynard Keynes - a mere economist - could read that philosophic tongue with ease. I, alas, cannot. When Richard Posner, who is now a distinguished federal judge, started teaching at the Law School of the University of Chicago, he began studying Greek at the institution's undergraduate college. He learnt it pretty well, or so I, over in economics, was told. The feat impressed me so much...

Bicultural people may unconsciously change their personality when they switch languages, according to a US study on bilingual Hispanic women. It found that women who were actively involved in both English and Spanish speaking cultures interpreted the same events differently, depending on which language they were using at the time. It is known that people in general can switch between different ways of interpreting events and feelings – a phenomenon known as frame shifting. But the researchers say their work shows that bilingual people that are active in two different cultures do it more readily, and that language is the...

BLACK RIVER FALLS, WI — In the country of the white pines, by the waters of Lake Superior and the banks of the Wisconsin River, the voices are dying one by one. The first languages of Wisconsin, the vessels bearing ages of American Indian history, song, medicine and prayers, could be as little as a generation away from an all-abiding silence. Languages that are grafted to the land and that together once counted tens of thousands of native speakers in the state, now have only an aging few here. Without unprecedented action, the state's tribes will test the Ho-Chunk belief...

Editor’s Note: Our friends over at Red Canary (http://www.redcanary.ca/view/top-10-programming) conducted a public forum with entrepreneurs and founders, like you, to find out what will be the top (most relevant, most used) programming languages in 2013. The results are in, we think they are worth reviewing for your strategic planning, and future hiring needs. (If you haven’t yet, do check out Red Canary (http://www.redcanary.ca/) so you can vote on the #1 language yourself (http://www.redcanary.ca/view/top-10-programming). Red Canary is full of other very useful content, and we really like their tagline, “opportunity meets community,” which expresses an ethos complimentary to Found|READ’s own mission.)...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The evolution of human speech was far more complex than is implied by some recent attempts to link it to a specific gene, says Robert Berwick, professor of computational linguistics at MIT. Berwick will describe his ideas about language in a session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Sunday, Feb. 17. The session is called “Mind of a Toolmaker,” and explores the use of evolutionary research in understanding human abilities. Some researchers in recent years have speculated that mutations in a gene called Foxp2 might have played a fundamental...

South-East Asia's language wars continue HAD he been president of Indonesia, not France, Charles de Gaulle might have modified his famous saying about cheeses and asked how to govern a nation with over 700 different languages. The answer, as elsewhere in South-East Asia, was to impose a “national” tongue. As the region’s countries became independent, most wanted their citizenry to speak the same indigenous language. But choosing an acceptable candidate sometimes proved difficult, laying the ground for “language wars” that still rage. A new collection of essays* from the Singapore-based Institute of South-East Asian Studies (ISEAS) reviews the region’s struggles...

Being broke need not mean social death in Sweden - as long as you are well-educated. But for Americans and Russians having a good all-round education is no substitute for having cash, according to a new survey on status symbols in the three countries. The international survey by analysts United Minds asked 1,000 people in each country what values confer status. 'Bling' items such as expensive jewellery and designer clothes come well down the list for Swedes, while featuring more highly for Americans and, particularly, Russians. "Sweden is the only country where you can be penniless but well-read and still...

WASHINGTON - When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets together, there's still no one to talk to. Native Australian Charlie Mangulda is the only person alive known to speak that language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction. From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday. While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them.

Lithuanian and Latvian languages are not Slavic and not Balto-Slavic. I made a deep esearch and I can say that both Baltic languages are definitely not Slavic, not even close, and neither Balto-Slavic. They should be separated into a very early separation branch similar to Armenian. There are very few Slavic-sounding words in both Baltic languages and those words were borrowed in near modern times. All other words (99,999999%) in both Baltic languages don't even remind of any Slavic language. There are words that sound Arabic, Franco, Latin, Greek, even English and Italiamn and even Pacific, but very few Slavic...

TEHRAN IT is certainly unfair to accuse all Iranians of being liars. The label is judgmental and reeks of stereotype. The more appropriate way to phrase the Iranian view toward honesty, the way many Iranians themselves describe it, is to say that being direct and telling the truth are not prized principles in Iran. Often, just the opposite is true. People are expected to give false praise and insincere promise. They are expected to tell you what you want to hear to avoid conflict, or to offer hope when there is none. There is a social principle in Iran called...

I need some expertise on reading the greek language, or greek translated to latin. . . to english. I'm a bit lost.

The Rosetta Project Posted by Greg Bjerg on February 27th, 2006 at 4:33 pm Do you speak Votian? Votian is the language spoken by the Votes. Votes are the people of Ingria, an area of Russia just Southwest of St. Petersburg close to the Estonian border. The Votian language is also practically extinct with 50 speakers at most. There are no children currently speaking Votian. Experts generally consider a community's language to be "endangered" when at least 30 per cent of its children no longer learn it. Imminent extinction is also on the horizon for the Livonian, Krimchak and Yevanic...

Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins of Ancient Languages The key to understanding how languages evolved may lie in their structure, not their vocabularies, a new report suggests. Findings published today in the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages more than 10,000 years old. Because vocabularies change so quickly, using them to trace how languages evolve over time can only reach back about 8,000 to 10,000 years. To study tongues from the Pleistocene, the period between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago, Michael Dunn and his colleagues...

NPR.org, April 2, 2005 · "Tip O'Neill was correct," says Father Tom Reese, editor in chief of America, the Catholic weekly magazine. "All politics is local... even in the Catholic Church." Reese suggests that instead of focusing on the possible papal candidates as a bookie would look at horses in the starting gate, try to think about the election from the point of view of the electors, the cardinals who cast the votes. "Each cardinal is thinking, how will this candidate go over in my diocese?" Reese says. "If you're from the Third World, you're concerned with people who are...

Over the history of the United States, many languages have risen to the rank of "most important foreign language to know." A century ago, this title was bestowed on German. In subsequent years, the spotlight moved to French, then Japanese, and today is cast on Spanish. Tomorrow, Arabic or Chinese might take center stage. What can be said for sure is that the United States has never been a land of just two languages. We have revolved around one central language — English — with many more languages making up the distinctly American accent. The amount of linguistic diversity varies...

The European Union has been operating in 20 official languages since ten new member states joined the legislative body last year. With annual translation costs set to rise to 1.3 billion dollars (U.S.), some people question whether EU institutions are becoming overburdened by multilingualism. Brussels, Belgium, the European Union's headquarters city, is fast getting a reputation as the new Babel. Parliamentary sessions are conducted 20 languages simultaneously. With further countries soon to join the EU, some analysts fear the effectiveness of its institutions could be getting lost in translation. [. . .] The European Parliament requires some 60 interpreters to...

I know this is a political site, but there are so many people here, I thought I'd ask may question here. I am self studying Java and am wondering if I put an applet into an HTML comment to a board like Free Republic (say if you rolled over it with your mouse you get a barking dog or someting) would it pass through the server? If it did pass through, would Microsoft IE give its warning about security, to everyone who openned the thread.

Rev. Paul Ciniraj, Salem Voice, Devalokam (P.O), Kottayam, Kerala-686038, INDIA http://www.geocities.com/salemvoiceministries/Photos.html email: salemvoiceministries@yahoo.com WE WISH YOU AND ALL OF YOURS A HAPPY CHRISTMAS !! AND A NEW YEAR PROSPEROUS !!! "C" Christ has born as a child of virgin Mary, "H" Herod not seen, but angels herald in the night, "R" Redeemer came to ransom for many, "I" Israel as well as the whole world believe must, "S" Star that shone so brightly, "T" Three wise men, who traveled far to submit, "M" Manger they saw with Jesus happy, "A" Act of love and peace showered by the Holy Spirit,...

VITAL SIGNS Just thinking about language can be enough to set off a chain of events in the brain of a stutterer that differs from that of someone who does not stutter, a new study reports. Stutterers appear to process language differently, even when they are asked to remain silent while solving word problems, the researchers found. The study, led by Dr. Christine Weber-Fox of Purdue University, was presented last week at a conference of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Stuttering, the authors suggest, results from a complex set of problems. Although the most obvious one involves oral motor skills, the...

A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language By NICHOLAS WADE Correction Appended Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it. If that family tree of human language could be reconstructed and its branching points dated, a wonderful new window would be opened onto the human past. Yet in the view of many historical linguists, the chances of drawing up such a tree are virtually nil and those who suppose otherwise are chasing a...

English alternatives at home on rise The Census Bureau found that nearly one in five Americans speak a language other than English while at home. By Michelle Dynes rep2@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - Some 47 million Americans ages 5 and older used a language other than English at home in 2000, according to a new Census Bureau report. This translates into nearly one in five Americans compared with roughly one in seven 10 years earlier. Most speak Spanish, followed by Chinese, with Russian rising fast. The Spanish-speaking population rose by 62 percent over the past decade to...

When time erases written languages By Greg Lavine The Salt Lake Tribune While researchers periodically hail new finds as the earliest examples of human writing, few scientists have systematically peered into the other end of the process -- the fall of a culture's written symbols. Writing systems, like cultures, have come and gone throughout human history. Brigham Young University anthropologist Stephen Houston and other colleagues studied several dead script systems from around the globe to look for similarities and differences in their respective demises. "What's interesting is why people choose, or are forced, to drop something that had been enormously...

KIEV (AP) -- Ukraine's parliament has ratified the European charter on languages, making Russian one of 13 "minority languages" and capping a contentious debate that has simmered since the country's independence from Moscow in 1991, an official said Friday. Lawmakers adopted the European Charter on Regional and Minority languages on Thursday in a 249-10 vote, according to the parliament's web site. The action lumps Russian among a raft of minor languages spoken by small pockets of the population. The language issue remains a flash point among Ukrainians. Nationalists are wary of a return to the dominance of Russian culture, while...

    Finnish rune singer Jussi Juovinen Author J.R.R. Tolkien   The One Ring of Sauron, engraved with Elvish writing(© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New Line Cinema)   Map of Finland detailing Viena Karelia area(Map from National Geographic Television)   Anthropologist Wade Davis (left) and Finnish rune singer Jussi Juovinen(Photograph by Markku Nieminen)   Map showing modern language groups of Scandinavia   Cultural and Linguistic Conservation What does it mean when one culture changes or vanishes from the Earth? How does a language influence or embody a given culture? And what does it mean to a people,...

ON TOLKIEN Growing up with language The Shakespeare of model languages is J.R.R. Tolkien. His best-selling fantasy novel, The Lord Of The Rings, now considered a literary classic, achieved much of its believability from the depth of its invented languages: Quenya, Sindarin, Adu^naic and others. The following article provides a broad overview of Tolkien's seminal work with model languages. Tolkien was exposed to languages to a remarkable degree. He learned Latin, German and French from his mother. At school, he learned or taught himself Middle English, Old English, Finnish, Gothic, Greek, Italian, Old Norse, Spanish, modern Welsh and medieval Welsh....

QUESTION: If there is a perfect Bible in English, doesn't there have to be a perfect Bible in French, and German, and Japanese, etc? ANSWER: NO. God has always given His word to ONE people in ONE language to do ONE job; convert the world. The supposition that there must be a perfect translation in every language is erroneous and inconsistent with God's proven practice.