LINKDING

excerpt: Taifa of Tuluz Spring 1194 “A wondrous thing is happening at the university!” said Avram to Isaac the Blind. “Like nothing you’ve ever seen!” “I daresay you’re right,” Isaac answered, “since the last time I saw anything, I was younger than you.” ➤ historical fantasynovelette set in a muslim kingdom on the iberian peninsula in the 12th century, with a jewish scholar as the viewpoint character ➤ I love the setting, richly full of a wide variety of types of people and languages and religions, with universities and scientific progress and people doing magic, all interacting with each other ➤ the mystery at the heart of the story is that someone is stealing people's languages of study, on purpose, leaving behind only whatever their first language was. why, and how? and is it reversible? ➤ it's about people's relationships with language and with knowledge and with the world. it's great! ➤ 14k words in length

no summary ➤ this free-to-read academic article is an overview of the features of a voice that lead people to read that voice as a particular gender ➤ it pushes back against the traditional view of male vs female voices, of pitch being the main deciding factor in gendering voices, and of a voice's gender being immutable ➤ it's a pretty accessible read, IMO! ➤ 16 pages in length; 12 pages if you discount the list of references

<blockquote>“Do you know people die of tooth infections?” “Stupid way to die,” Wei Wuxian mumbles. “I agree,” Wen Qing says. “So: you’re going to the dentist.” / While on the run, Wen Qing drags Wei Wuxian to a free clinic where they are confronted with someone from their past lives, a root canal, and the devastating suggestion of how things could be different.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Kirk and Spock discuss old history.</blockquote> ➤ the one that's written in old english, and then translated into modern english!

<blockquote>‘So, you’re Nicky, I take it? I’m Joe.’ ‘Sorry, I don’t speak English,’ Nicky says. It’s about the only sentence he knows in English, a dubious badge of honour he nevertheless wears with pride. Or rather, he did until about five minutes ago, when Andy said there was someone she wanted him to meet. In English. -- Modern AU with language barriers: Joe speaks Dutch, English, and Arabic; Nicky speaks Italian, Spanish, and German. Andy didn't know that when she introduced them, but it doesn't really matter. As the poets say, love finds a way.</blockquote>

Panlexicon is a unique thesaurus that provides a quicker and more intuitive process for finding the words you want.

➤ stick in some text (up to 500 words) and it'll tell you the first date of usage of every word in the sample!

<blockquote>This is to provide a reference for writers who are unfamiliar with Chinese literary conventions or terms used in canon. Hopefully someone will find this helpful. </blockquote> ➤ basic info about forms of address in Chinese with particular reference to what's useful to know for the Untamed

<blockquote>I hate when I have a call in Inglewood. It’s still the 1990s in Inglewood, and for all I know, people still care about Madonna. Los Angeles County has a forty-bed psych facility there. Arrowhead looks like a nursing home: a long one-story building with a wide wheelchair ramp and glass doors and overly bright, easy-to-clean floors. I stop at the reception desk and check in. “Rosni Gupta,” I say. “I’m here to do an evaluation.”</blockquote> ➤ the one with the time traveller who speaks Old English

<blockquote>Zhou: You can understand this language? The sign? Subject: Yes, I can understand this sign. It is one of my father’s languages, I have learned it from he, my father, who learned it from [sign unrecognizable], but past that the wake of history is lost. Zhou: Who was your father? Subject: My father was. [here she makes the phonetic sign marker, then pauses] Zhou: Go on. Subject: It is not his real name. Zhou: Tell us his real name, then. Subject: [ejects something wet onto the table]</blockquote>

<blockquote>It's like having a curtain pulled back on something he wasn't expecting to see. A surprise punch-and-judy at an up-scale restaurant, a lobster thermidor when he's ordered an ale. Crowley's gleefully trying to wrap his head around the fact that Aziraphale is speaking Polari. Because of course he is. Or: The Patron Saint of London's LGBT Community is real, and he lives in Soho.</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Yuuri moves to St Petersburg, he decides that learning to speak Russian is an important step in his relationship with Viktor. Russian may be tough, but Yuuri will be tougher. Probably.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a set of symbols that linguists use to describe the sounds of spoken languages. This page lets you hear the sounds that the symbols represent, but remember that it is only a rough guide. There is lots of variation in how these sounds are said depending on the language and context. For example, in English voiceless plosives usually end with a puff of air called aspiration, but the voiceless plosives on this page aren't aspirated. Click on a symbol to hear the sound it represents.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Julian Bashir has been on Cardassia for six months. He thinks he's adapted pretty well. But when it's time to learn the language, he realizes he's nowhere near as clever as he thought. Set post-canon, about a year and a half after the series ends. Light stuff, with occasional dips into darker territory.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“You know,” Diana says as she strides back to you, “China’s really hot right now—with their new open-door policy, lots of people are (clamoring?) to invest there; I have people calling me all the time, asking if I have A-grade Mandarin.” She sets a brochure down on the desk and sits back in the executive chair across from you. “Have you considered selling your Mandarin?” You trace your hands over the brochure, feeling the embossed logo. China’s flag cascades down to a silhouette of Beijing’s skyline; you read the Simplified characters printed on the brochure, your eyes skimming over them so much more quickly than you skim over English. “How much?” you ask. Diana leans in. “A-grade Mandarin is going for as much as $800,000 these days.” Your heart skips a beat. That would be enough to cover Lillian’s college, with maybe a little bit left over—it’s a tantalizing number. But the thought of going without Mandarin gives you pause: it’s the language you think in, the language that’s close to your heart in the way English is not; it’s more integral to who you are than any foreign tongue. English you could go without—Lillian’s Mandarin is good enough to help you translate your way around what you need—but Mandarin?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The author says that we may pronounce the names as we please, but many readers wish to know how she pronounces them. Without getting too finicky, this is to give an indication of the syllables which are more emphasized and the approximate values of the vowels and consonants of most of the names used in the Vorkosigan universe of Lois McMaster Bujold. Brief identifications will include the work in which the person or place principally appears, if it appears little outside of that work</blockquote>

<blockquote>My mother’s letters are lost to me. I cannot read the language they are written in. My mother tries to teach me, long ago, turning our scarred kitchen table first into a desk, then into a jail. “Look here,” she says, “See how the word for heart is at the heart of the word for love?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The thing people always forget is that it was a Vulcan ship that reached Tarsus IV first.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Excerpts from a forthcoming work on the formation of policy during the reigns of King Laurent and King Damianos V, with notes on sections to be censored.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Jaylah and Nyota and language.</blockquote>

<blockquote>John always gets a little thrill when he sees Rodney sign at him across the room, casually dissing people literally standing next to him and John is the only one who knows.</blockquote> ➤ In which Rodney is mute and talks in sign language

tenlittlebullets: <blockquote>If you suspect a word’s meaning has shifted since the 19th century and modern-day dictionaries aren’t turning up results that make sense, look it up in this database and it will give you a bunch of different dictionary entries from the 17th through the 20th centuries.</blockquote>

<blockquote>If anyone’s trying to learn a language I’ve recently discovered this company called the Language Pod Company and it is so much better than Rosetta Stone and it’s completely free (unless you’d like one-one-one teacher-student help then it’s like $25 a month which tbh you shouldn’t really need because they make it really clear in the lessons). It’s super easy to navigate and it even gives you a history of the language. There are audio and video lessons. Real-life situations and different speakers. They even write the letters for you because I know sometime it’s hard to learn to write in a language that doesn’t use the same alphabet that you’re used to. You’re welcome. </blockquote>

<blockquote>A fic about learning dead languages, when you're Dawn and it's the summer after season 6.</blockquote>

<blockquote>After Khan, Jim has a few residual issues. Spock helps him. Naturally, there's a strange Vulcan practice for everything.</blockquote> ➤ writing on the body and also hugs!

➤ spellchecks your fic against the source text to show you any words you use that the source text didn't. (currently includes Les Mis, some Balzac, Count of Monte Cristo, and some Victorian-era erotica) ➤ updated url: http://chanvrerie.net/fun/fic-spellcheck/

<blockquote>Uhura learns to be a xenolinguist.</blockquote>

tenlittlebullets on learning language:<blockquote>Don’t worry if you don’t know the past tenses or anything, just keep looking up unfamiliar words. If they’re verb forms you don’t recognize, WordReference will give you the infinitive and you just have to go to the “conjugate this verb” page. You can look up brief summaries of what each tense is used for and how it’s constructed</blockquote> ➤also: <blockquote>Single best English<->French dictionary on the web. The dictionary itself has a lot of secondary and idiomatic meanings, but even if it misses some, every entry includes the search results for that word on the WordReference forums, where people ask all sorts of fiddly obscure usage questions. Also, it will conjugate any verb for you, and any time a verb appears in a dictionary entry there’s a little link next to it to do just that.</blockquote>