Language


Turn Your Cell Phone Into a Phrase Book with Trippo

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed.Finally, there’s a way to tell that snooty French waiter your soup is cold without having to fumble through a phrasebook. A new translation tool called Trippo promises to do just that with the help of your cell phone. Trippo is a client-server application that […]

Cosplish School Opens in Tokyo

To the long list of English language hybrids around the world, you can add a new dialect – Cosplish. It has its origins in Tokyo, and more specifically, in the slang used in cos-play, or costume play, which has fans of anime and manga comics dressing up and speaking like the animated characters. If you’d […]

Esperanto: The Universal Language of Travelers?

Nora Dunn explores the not-yet-dead language of Esperanto. Could it be the universal language of travelers?

Estonia Announces Language Beauty Contest

On the occasion of its 90th birthday, Estonia is planning a beauty contest for languages to crown the prettiest dialect of them all. No girls in swimsuits mouthing breathless French phrases into a microphone. Instead the plan is to have kids from around the world send in a voice recording in their native language consisting of […]

The Secret Language of Vagabonds and Traveling Hobos

Not surprisingly, vagabonds and traveling hobos have their own system of language which I’m sure dates back decades, if not centuries. Some hobos now communicate via cellular phones and e-mail. But the classic American hobo of early this century communicated through a much more basic system of marks–a code through which they gave information and warnings […]

How to Learn a New Language 1 Week Before Your Trip

Tips on taking a crash course in the basics of a language when your departure date is just a week away.

One Year of Spanish: Linguistic Laws of Attraction

1000 Wines points us to One Year of Spanish: “Nothing impresses the senoritas like a well-conjugated verb.” Indeed.