WordLo

What jobs are out there for people with language skills? ‘Teacher’ or ‘translator’ are usually top of this list when you ask people that question, and there is a common misconception that these are the only jobs you can do. Wrong!


Here follows just some of the interesting jobs where languages are specifically required:
Video games tester – playing video games to test that they say the right words in the correct language.
Private jet sales executive – selling private jets, or fractional ownership of them, to high net worth individuals across Europe.

Football analyst – watching and analysing the latest European football matches and producing reports on the failures and successes of the team in different languages.These are passed onto traders to aid investors in betting more successfully.
International assignment manager – working for a large international company to help colleagues re-locate from country to country.

Luxury yacht sales manager – Selling yearly memberships tothe rich and famo…

Using Twitter to practise English

At what point along the trajectory from touristic phrasebook to Safiresque linguistic mastery do you feel comfortable claiming to 'speak' a given language?

Great question.

Full post: Johnson, Economist

TWITTERING: The fanciful language creations associated with the online Twitter system

Busted: has modified oil rig, or just plain rig. A database search of coverage of the BP spill finds the first recorded use of busted came nine days into the crisis on April 29, when the MSNBC host Ed Schultz said, “The busted rig is leaking — get this — 200,000 gallons of oil a day.”

Chunking: In recent decades, the study of language acquisition and instruction has increasingly focused on “chunking”: how children learn language not so much on a word-by-word basis but in larger “lexical chunks” or meaningful strings of words that are committed to memory

Cracking the jargon: how to interpret five sentences commonly used by stock market experts

MAMIL: Middle-Aged Men In Lycra, taking up cycling with enthusiasm, in the process spending freely on high-end cycles and all the accoutrements, especially the clothing.