WordLo

The idea that your mother tongue shapes your experience of the world may be true after all.


When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.


More on: NYTimes

Economist debate:The language we speak shapes how we think

Corso di introduzione all’economia, finanza e contabilità
per il traduttore finanziario


Il corso è rivolto a chiunque abbia un livello medio di conoscenza della lingua inglese e ritenga utile per la sua attività o formazione professionale la conoscenza di tale disciplina specialistica.


per maggiori informazioni:
Englishfor

A government term for 16 to 19 years olds not in education, employment or training. The original reserch carried out by UK government was intended to be titled „Status Zer0“. During the fieldwork, „Status 0“ was simply a technical concept to depict the status of those young people not in education“, (status 1), training (status 2)and employment (status 3). It was felt however, that „Status Zer0“ represented a powerful metaphor for young people who appeared to count for nothing and be going nowhere.
This terminolgy, however, created a political furore at the local level and references to” status 0” in the research report were replaced by „status A“. A s questions concerning young people not in education, training and employment have entered the political and policy arenas, their categorisation has been sanitised yet further; it is alleged that at high levels of local central government they are referred to as NEET young people.

published on:Youth, the 'underclass' and social ex…

When is a leak not a leak?

The classified documents unveiled by the Web site WikiLeaks stretched the semantics of leak to a bursting point.


“The word ‘leak’ just doesn’t seem adequate for a data dump and security breach of this magnitude,” wrote Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University, in a blog post for Foreign Policy. “This is not so much a leak as a gusher.” Jack Shafer of Slate concurred: “To call the torrent of information about the Afghanistan war released by WikiLeaks a mere leak is to insult the gods of hydrodynamics.”

Read more on: On Language, Ben Zimmer

Brave New Words: Word Nerds ‘R’ Us:

This is a list of the “50 Coolest Online Tools for Word Nerds” .

For more than 30 years, headline writers have relied on -gate to flag up controversial stories. This summer, a replacement emerged:

published on: Guardian




On the use of suffix -gate to flag up controversial stories

Allan Metcalf

It is said to be the most frequently spoken (or typed) word on the planet, more common than an infant's first word ma or the ever-present beverage Coke . It was even the first word spoken on the moon. It is "OK"-- the most ubiquitous and invisible of American expressions, one used countless times every day. Yet few of us know the secret history of OK--how it was coined, what it stood for, and the amazing extent of its influence.

Allan Metcalf, a renowned popular writer on language, here traces the evolution of America's most popular word, writing with brevity and wit, and ranging across American history with colorful portraits of the nooks and crannies in which OK survived and prospered. He describes how OK was born as a lame joke in a newspaper article in 1839--used as a supposedly humorous abbreviation for "oll korrect" (ie, "all correct")--but should have died a quick death, as most clever coinages do. But OK was swept along in a ni…