ghit (iii): interesting news

Over a couple of lunchtime drinks today a culturecrat intimated that it might be possible to fast-track ghit into the official dictionary of a widely spoken Romance language. Being first with this kind of thing is important – just think of the PR.

incomprehensible shock jocks

The difficulty of interpreting intent in materials published in a different language and cultural context was one of the interesting facets of the case of the Fuengirola imam, convicted of publishing with malicious intent a manual on how to beat women without leaving scars. It’s not going to get any easier here once radio and…

Backwards words

The sports stars interviewed here by Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News confirm what every Dutch child knows already: watch television in your target tongue and you can skip those expensive and boring language classes. Different alphabets are another kettle of fish, however: “I was reading a book that Artukhin had on the bus,” Richardson said. “It was Russian.…

Conservas Dani implicated in Morecambe tragedy

From The Independent, re the death of 19 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay: The intensification of the industry has been driven by Conservas Dani, based in Vilassar de Mar… Dani’s products are a household name in Spain by virtue of the fact that Espanyol, the club chaired by the company’s wealthy owner, Daniel Sanchez…

get this blog on your mobile

The URL is http://winksite.com/hikdekedekek/kaleboel. If you hit this link you’ll get an emulator. I did a couple of terrible WAP sites a few years back, but this makes some kind of sense. Via The Shifted Librarian and Reiter.

Kuffars gittin nekkid

Re the Dirty Kuffar video: although the transliteration changes, radical Islam has been predicting imminent victory over us for quite a long time: And Halid returned to the west of Azahfi, and said to them: – Know that these kafres are disheartened. (Anonymous, Libro de las batallas (1600)) But we aren’t, are we, because we…

as man, so his livestock

Says a Western Yugur proverb. I don’t know if it works in reverse, but I note that the cat (who one of these days will require a name) is already asleep.

Money laundering? Let’s do that in French, Sir

I’m used to contracts where one language version is assigned precedence over others. In linguistically cautious Quebec, defendants have the right to be judged by the version – French or English – of legislation that most favours their case, as this tale of Agent 008 and the dodgy pawnshop demonstrates.

Northern English speech online

This is brilliant: a historical archive of interviews between ropemakers, dry stone wall-builders, football fans, pig slaughterers and some folk from London with very strange accents indeed. Via the Telegraph, which also includes a good interview with the curator. There’s some gorgeous stuff in the other collections, including this 1890 Bovril ad. It seems that…