400 Language
The world was made up of words. But I thought and felt and sometimes dreamed in a private language of numbers. In my mind each number had a shape—complete with color and texture and occasionally motion (a neurological phenomenon that scientists call synesthesia)—and each shape a meaning. The meaning could be pictographic: eighty-nine, for instance, was dark blue, the color of a sky threatening storm; a beaded texture; and a fluttering, whirling, downward motion I understood as “snow” or, more broadly, “winter.” I remember, one winter, seeing snow fall outside my bedroom window for the first time. I was seven. The snow, pure white and thick-flaked, piled many inches high upon the ground, transforming the gray concrete of the neighborhood into a virgin, opalescent tundra. “Snow,” I gasped to my parents. “Eighty-nine,” I thought. The thought had hardly crossed my mind when I had another: nine hundred and seventy-nine. The view from my window resembled nine hundred and seventy-nine—the shimmer and beauty of eleven expanding, literally multiplying eighty-nine’s wintry swirl.
-Daniel Tammet, Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing
410 Linguistics
"In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language."
— Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1; Rincewind, #1))
418 Standard usage (Prescriptive linguistics)
Anuvad, the Hindi word for translate, means “to tell again,” as Christi A. Merrill notes. When you tell a story, you become part of that story, and the translator too becomes part of the stories he or she tells. Yet translation inevitably involves guises and masks that can make this truth difficult to perceive; translators, like actors, appear to us under a persona, speaking to us with words that both are and are not their own.
-Esther, In Translation
419 Sign languages
Top Ten ReasonsYou Should Learn Sign Language
1. To be able to communicate effectively with the Deaf and hard of hearing.
2. To have fun learning a new and exciting visual language.
3. To look great on a resume and to open doors for new employment opportunities.
4. To spur intellectual growth and raise IQ.
5. To open new avenues for friendships and relationships.
6. To improve self-confidence and enhance communication skills.
7. To experience another avenue for expressing yourself artistically.
8. To broaden language acquisition in the early classroom.
9. To acquire the skill of nonverbal communication, body language, and facial expressions.
10. To learn a new language that can satisfy high school or college modern and foreign language requirements.
-Irene Duke, The Everything Sign Language Book: American Sign Language Made Easy... All new photos! (Everything®)
420 English & Old English (Anglo-Saxon)
I love to Read BooksIc lufræden beereeding (My attempt to translate this phrase into the Anglo-Saxon language)
423 Dictionaries of standard English
In the process of learning how to write a dictionary, lexicographers must face the Escher-esque logic of English and its speakers. What appears to be a straightforward word ends up being a linguistic fun house of doors that open into air and staircases that lead to nowhere. People’s deeply held convictions about language catch at your ankles; your own prejudices are the millstone around your neck. You toil onward with steady plodding, losing yourself to everything but the goal of capturing and documenting this language. Up is down,*2 bad is good,*3 and the smallest words will be your downfall. You’d rather do nothing else. We approach this raucous language the same way we approach our dictionary: word by word.-Kory Stamper, Word by Word
“A very good afternoon to you, sir. I am Dr. James Murray of the London Philological Society, and Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. It is indeed an honour and a pleasure to at long last make your acquaintance—for you must be, kind sir, my most assiduous helpmeet, Dr. W. C. Minor?” There was a brief pause, a momentary air of mutual embarrassment. A clock ticked loudly. There were muffled footsteps in the hall. A distant clank of keys. And then the man behind the desk cleared his throat, and he spoke: “I regret, kind sir, that I am not. It is not at all as you suppose. I am in fact the Governor of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Dr. Minor is most certainly here. But he is an inmate. He has been a patient here for more than twenty years. He is our longest-staying resident.”
-Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman
424 No longer used—formerly English thesauruses
Though nearly everyone is familiar with Roget’s, few people know anything about Peter Mark Roget, the eminent nineteenth-century polymath—physician, physiology expert, mathematician, inventor, writer, editor, and chess whiz—and what motivated him to write this immortal book.
Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged So as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition clearly bore the stamp of its creator. Roget’s was a two-for-one: it put both a book of synonyms and a topical dictionary (a compendium of thematically arranged concepts) under one cover.
-Joshua Kendall, The Man Who Made Lists
According to some sources, the word thesaurus is synonymous with treasury. That definition is especially fitting for this book, which departs from the typical alphabetical thesaurus with its closely-linked synonyms, and instead provides groups of words for storytellers who are groping for just the right idea. This book is less about technical accuracy and etymology and more about helping authors to craft a setting, envision a character, or unfold a scene. Every author reaches a point in a writing project (usually at about 66,000 words of a 100,000 word manuscript) at which she’d like to conjure up an out-of-control city bus to careen down a forest path, flatten her group of fantasy heroes, describe their gelatinous remains, and gleefully write the words “The End.” This book is for moments like that. This book is also for those moments when everything sounds like a cliché, when every fantasy story contains a hooded stranger in a tavern, and when all the villains and monsters in all types of fiction suddenly sound like two-dimensional cardboard rip-offs of the mustached bad guys tying young damsels to railroad tracks in black-and-white melodramas. This book is for those moments when nothing appearing on the computer screen sounds any good. This book is about inspiration.
-Anne K.; Brown, James M Ward, The Storyteller's Thesaurus
With so many aspects to juggle, describing emotion in an evocative way can be a challenge. It’s hard work to write something fresh-yet-familiar that puts readers into the character’s emotional shoes so they can share the moment. Our thesaurus entries will help you brainstorm emotional expressions that can be transformed into unique descriptions befitting your character, but if you need ideas to supplement that information, try one of the following techniques.
-Becca Puglisi, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression
Words are all around us, but when we’re searching for a precise word, we consult a thesaurus (like Roget’s) to find it. Ideas are all around us too, ideas with the potential to become stories and novels, gazillions of ideas—more than enough for every aspiring and veteran writer on the planet. However, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to identify or to anatomize for their story potential. Sometimes we have just the grain of an idea but need a push to expand it to full form. This is why writers also need an idea thesaurus, a central clearinghouse for ideas, you might say—not unlike that imaginary clearinghouse in Schenectady that Harlan Ellison once humorously referred to in response to the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” Until now, however, such a reference work has not existed. Yes, there are books of prompts on the market, but not story situations, which is what The Writer’s Idea Thesaurus provides.
-Fred White, The Writer's Idea Thesaurus: An Interactive Guide for Developing Ideas for Novels and Short Stories
There are over eight hundred referenced words in this thesaurus. Most of them are either specifically or generally related to the mystery, thriller, suspense, and crime genres. Other helpful words are also included. This book includes synonyms, examples, descriptions, and applicable quotes. It is also filled with helpful lists, body language, and a boatload of ideas. Fair warning: Expletives are not deleted and political correctness is not a criteria. This book, which is indexed and referenced, is intended to help the writer write. It is meant to stimulate the writer's imagination, not replace it. The goal is to help the writer reach back into his or her very fertile mind and sniff out the right words.
-Joyce Nance, Nance’s Mystery
425 Grammar of standard English
The reader will soon discover that these rules and principles are in the form of sharp commands, Sergeant Strunk snapping orders to his platoon. “Do not join independent clauses with a comma.” (Rule 5.) “Do not break sentences in two.” (Rule 6.) “Use the active voice.” (Rule 14.) “Omit needless words.” (Rule 17.) “Avoid a succession of loose sentences.” (Rule 18.) “In summaries, keep to one tense.” (Rule 21.) Each rule or principle is followed by a short hortatory essay, and usually the exhortation is followed by, or interlarded with, examples in parallel columns — the true vs. the false, the right vs. the wrong, the timid vs. the bold, the ragged vs. the trim. From every line there peers out at me the puckish face of my professor, his short hair parted neatly in the middle and combed down over his forehead, his eyes blinking incessantly behind steel-rimmed spectacles as though he had just emerged into strong light, his lips nibbling each other like nervous horses, his smile shuttling to and fro under a carefully edged mustache.
-William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
Place yourself in the background. Do not affect a breezy manner. Do not inject opinion. Use figures of speech sparingly. Avoid foreign languages. Prefer the standard to the offbeat. What have we here—a gulag for deviant writers? Whenever I review those dictates from The Elements of Style, that cynosure of American composition by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, I feel I should make a dash for it, vault the gates into the free zone. In the course of a long writing career, I have often been on the lam from Composition 101 and its constables, Strunk and White. After all, I want my opinion heard. I want to be offbeat. What writer doesn’t? I want to be so offbeat that crazed readers chase me down alleys. And yet I keep staggering back to The Elements of Style to review those sensible rules I want to savage—or embrace— in my next piece.
-Arthur Plotnik, Spunk & Bite
“We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
428 Standard English usage (Prescriptive linguistics)
What makes a word wonderful is it has to hit you like a good joke, or a satisfying denouement, or the scent of something tantalizing in the air. It makes you want to go off on tangents, or rants, or wild goose chases, it fills you with wonder. It opens vistas.
There are plenty of words that are weird without being the least bit wonderful—nectocalyx is orthographically weird, but meaning as it does ‘the swimming-bell that forms the natatory organ in many hydrozoans’ it is sadly lacking on the wonder scale. There are wonderful words, such as brio and luminescent, which long familiarity has deprived of any weirdness. Finding a truly weird and wonderful word is like meeting a gorgeous person who is also a good cook and will help you move.
-Erin McKean, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words . Oxford University Press. Kindle
430 German and related languages
Ich lese gern Bücher
440 French & related Romance languages
J'aime lire des livres
450 Italian, Dalmatian, Romanian, Rhaetian, Sardinian, Corsican
amo leggere libri
460 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician
amo leer libros
470 Latin & related Italic languages
Amo legere libris
480 Classical Greek & related Hellenic languages
Μου αρέσει να διαβάζω βιβλία
Mou arései na diavázo vivlía
490 Other languages
I Love Reading Books
Arabic: أنا أحب قراءة الكتب /'ana 'uhibu qara'at alkutub
Bulgarian: Обичам да чета книги/Obicham da cheta knigi
Chinese: 我喜欢读书 / Wǒ xǐhuān dúshū
Danish: Jeg elsker at læse bøger
Esperanto: Mi amas legi librojn
Filipino: Gustung-gusto kong magbasa ng mga libro
Galician: Encántame ler libros
Haitian Creole: Mwen renmen li liv
Hebrew: אני אוהבת לקרוא ספרים
Irish: Is breá liom leabhair a léamh
Japanese: 私は本を 読むのが大好き /Watashi wa hon o yomu no ga daisuki
Klingon: paq laD qamuSHa'
Lithuanian: Aš mėgstu skaityti knygas
Morse Code: .. .-.. --- ...- . .-. . .- -.. .. -. --. -... --- --- -.- ...
Norwegian: Jeg elsker å lese bøker
Old English: ic pro myne wordsomnung {books} (This is the Best I could find…)
Polish: kocham czytać książki
Queretaro Otomi: Di ho ga lei libros
Russian Я люблю читать книги/YA lyublyu chitat' knigi
Swedish: Jag älskar att läsa böcker
Turkish: Ben kitap okumayı severim
Ukrainian: Я люблю читати книги /YA lyublyu chytaty knyhy
Vietnamese: tôi thích đọc sách
Welsh: Dwi'n hoffi darllen llyfrau
Xhosa: Ndiyakuthanda ukufunda iincwadi
Yiddish: איך ליבע צו לייענען ביכער /ikh libe tsu leyenen bikher
Zulu: Ngithanda ukufunda izincwadi
May golden light fall on your book at the times of your reading
Elvish: Nai laure lantuva parmalyanna lúmissen tengwielyo
No comments:
Post a Comment