How to waste an afternoon (or three) July 9, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Language, Life.Tags: blogs, craigslist, Dan, errors, language resources
add a comment
I now have a new way to spend time when I’m not busy hitting refresh waiting for that cheap VB-2 to materialize on craigslist. Yes, I have recently rediscovered Paul Brians’ fantastic Common Errors in English (he asks that everyone link to that page, which answers any questions you might have about the site. If you’d just like to skip to the errors, well, go here), thanks to a comment on a recent entry in Dan’s blog. If you’re like me, there will be a lot to entertain you there.
It’s not that I make a lot of these common errors, or that I’m particularly picky about the way other people use language (although he does address my current, mystifyingly common pet peeve). Part of why I’ve been enjoying it so much is that Paul Brians is pretty funny, in an English professor sort of way. I think what I really enjoy, though, is guessing what the entries will actually be about before I click them. The entry for “ax” is a good example. I thought it was going to discuss the two spellings of the tool, but no, the ax in question is just a futuristic pronunciation of ask.
Anyway, check it out. There are some pretty good ones.
Can you look up the Ugaritic word for "lion" for me? March 22, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Language.Tags: Egypt, language resources, Near East
add a comment
I was surprised to find that Wiktionary apparently has categories for Sumerian, Akkadian and Ugaritic. The most interesting links from those pages are the lists of words. There aren't many, and most of them are in character sets I apparently don't have installed, but I thought it was cool that they had them at all. I'm sure there are more I didn't think of looking for. (Ancient Egyptian just popped into my head as I was writing this, and sure enough, they have that, too. Also, the category pages for extinct languages and Canaanite languages both turn up some interesting results.) These obviously aren't much use for trying to learn these languages — the lone Edomite noun probably won't leave you with much to talk about, for example — but it's neat that people are interested in them.
On that subject, the Akkadian language talk page has this link to a University of Pennsylvania site with scans of A.H. Sayce's pithily titled An Elementary Grammar With Full Syllabary and Progressive Reading Book of the Assyrian Language. It was written in 1875, and so does not benefit from the last 133 years of scholarship, but it's still nice that it's available for free online.
