My apologies ahead of time to those who use the translator in the sidebar to read this site in a language other than English. Today’s post will probably seem like gibberish to you. Not that it doesn’t happen most days anyway.

I love Babelfish. It’s quite handy for communicating with someone in their own language, even if you don’t speak or read it. I found Hamlet Hamster when he linked to my site. So I posted a video I found there on Neatorama. He thanked me, so I wanted to leave a comment. In German. This is the comment:
It was my pleasure! If you link to me, you become a source.
Babelfish gave me this:
Es war mein Vergnügen! Wenn Sie mit mir verbinden, können Sie hervorquellen werden meine Quelle.

After posting, I re-translated that back to English:
It was my pleasure! If you connect with me, know you will out-pour my source.

That now sounds like a pickup line. Oh well.

The Smiley Intervention

More people speak English in south Asia than in Britain and North America combined. The result is Hinglish, a blend of English combined with Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. Now we have a Hinglish glossary. (via Arbroath)

Did you know there are NINE varieties of English? Most are understandable to most native English speakers (except, of course, for British). Check them out at Fonetiks. (via Ursi’s Blog)

I just recently discovered that Gail Hapke of Scribal Terror has another blog, called Beautiful English Online.

Click the map to hear what English sound like in the accent of various countries in The Speech Accent Archive. (via Ursi’s Blog)

The importance of a good translation.

Luciferous Logolepsy a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. (via Look At This)

Yet another example of the great chasm between American English and British English.

Do you know the difference between British spelling and American spelling? Take the quiz! I scored 11 out of 12. It also shows me how bloody much I use British spelling for no reason at all.

Spoken English is a site for free grammar help for ESL learners online. You native speakers should take a look to see how difficult English really is.

Booked on Phonics (via Bits and Pieces)

The First International Collection of Tongue Twisters has hard-to-say phrases in 108 languages. See if you can wrap your tongue around these:

Romanian
S-a suit capra pe piatra si a spart-o-n patru, de s-ar sparge capul caprei ca si piatra-n patru.

Vietnamese
ba` ba ba'n bou'n bo` bien bo? bien?, ba` bi. ban. bo^- bit. ba` ba~'n be^? bo^.ng ba^u ba`.

Somali
waxaan faley waan faleyba
waxaanaan falin waad fashey
maxaad iigu fashishay

English
Something in a thirty-acre thermal thicket of thorns and thistles thumped and thundered threatening the three-D thoughts of Matthew the thug - although, theatrically, it was only the thirteen-thousand thistles and thorns through the underneath of his thigh that the thirty year old thug thought of that morning.

The Indo European Knowledge Test. Proto-Indo-European is the reconstructed root of a wide variety of important languages, from Greek to Gaelic, from Latin to Lithuanian. I'll be testing how well you know your P.I.E. roots. I'll also test you just a little bit on grammatical knowledge. If you are knowledgeable in one of the classical languages (such as Latin, ancient Greek, or Sanskrit) you will probably do well on this quiz.
I scored 70% in fluency, and higher than 99% of the people my gender and age group. I don’t know how, because I looked at the questions and was convinced I would fail miserably. (via Exploding Aardvark)

Slang terms from lots of different languages and industries.

Oxypedia is your source for oxymorons, when you really need one.

Interjections. More useful than grammarians will admit.

When you say “It’s raining,” what is “it”? Read the comments for various opinions and other lunacy.

A British language Guide for Americans.

BASIL

(via Scribal Terror)
A local grocery store sells small bags of herbs and spices labelled in English and Spanish. The Spanish labels, however, reveal one small surprise - what is called "basil" in English is, in Spanish, known as "la albahaca se va" - "the basil goes away".

After puzzling over this when I first saw it, I realized it was probably a poor attempt at translating "basil leaves" . . .

This page comprises a list of 876 "essentialist explanations" of the form "Language X is essentially language Y under conditions Z". (via the Presurfer)

English is essentially bad Dutch with outrageously pronounced French and Latin vocabulary. -Eugene Holman
English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs. -Benct Philip Jonsson
English is essentially a bizarre dialect of Chinese, pronounced entirely in the first tone. -John Cowan

The Translator. From The Catherine Tate Show on BBC. (via Cynical-C)

SCROD

(via That’s How It Happened)
A businessman arriving in Boston for a convention found that his first evening was free, and he decided to go find a good seafood restaurant that served scrod, a Massachusetts specialty. Getting into a taxi, he asked the cab driver, "Do you know where I can get scrod around here?"

"Sure," said the cabdriver. "I know a few places... but I can tell you it's not often I hear someone use the third-person pluperfect indicative anymore!"

CLEVER USAGE

(Thanks, Phil!)
A Mr. Jones was sued by a Mrs. Johnson for defamation of Character. She charged that he had called her a pig. Mr. Jones was indeed found guilty and fined.

After the trial he asked the judge, "Your Honor, this means that I cannot call Mrs. Johnson a pig?"

The judge said that was true.

"Does this mean I cannot call a pig Mrs. Johnson?" the man asked.

The judge replied that he could indeed call a pig 'Mrs. Johnson' with no fear of legal action.

Mr. Jones grinned, looked directly at Mrs. Johnson and said, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Johnson."

Previously at Miss Cellania: English, English 102, and English Around the World.

Thought for today: I speak twelve languages. English is the bestest. - Stefan Bergman

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