פרסומים אחרונים במדור "חדשות"

The claim that world views and interpretation depends on language is highly controversial, as well as extremely dangerous. and no, the eskimos do not have a thousand different words to describe snow.

"Studies of different languages have already revealed vastly different ways of representing and interpreting the world. Some Native American languages, for example, reveal a completely different understanding of the nature of time"

the fact that the article states something does not make any more true. assuming people see the world differently or have a different set of ethics and morals because they speak a different language is wrong, and dangerous partly because of the propogandist use done by xenophobs. language itself seems not to affect those things. people who hold a different world view will have linguistic means of expressind that world view. those linguistic tools and structures DO NOT shape their world view.

Nobody talked about ethics, moral or world views.

Languages abound in South Africa: it has 11 official ones, and dozens of unofficial. But the death on October 7th of Elsie Vaalbooi, aged about 100, saddened linguists. She was one of the last speakers of nlu, a click-based dialect of the once-nomadic San people. Only a handful of her aging relatives can still use nlu, the last known example of !Ui, a family of San languages spoken across southern Africa by hunter-gatherers, possibly for the past 30,000 years. It is now, it seems, about to expire.

According to UNESCO, the UN's cultural body, half the world's 6,000 or so languages could die within a generation. Indigenous, nomadic groups, such as Australia's aborigines (with 400 languages) and southern Africa's San, have rich deposits of old languages. But they are vulnerable as traditional lifestyles die. Of an estimated 1,400 African tongues, 500 are in decline, half of them facing imminent extinction.

Mrs. Vaalbooi had become a campaigner for the San tongues. "I want our language to come back. I want our water, our animals, our plants," she said as South Africa's government returned 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) to her Khomani community in 1999. Her activism was matched by historians who say that the study of long-isolated languages will reveal the origins of human speech.

Remarkably, !Ui and a cousin language in Botswana, !Xoo, have proved more complex than almost any other. Spoken languages usually employ just 20 sound units or phonemes. English-speakers have 55 of them, but !Ui-speakers use more than 140, says Nigel Crawhall of South Africa's San Institute.

Study of such a complex language should reveal more about hunter-gatherer cultures. But time is short. When Mrs. Vaalbooi died last week, there was almost nobody left to say "!hoi ca", goodbye, in her mother tongue.

!Ui, !Xoo, !hoi ca

that was truly lovely, as well as thought provoking.

Cuando el rei Nimrod
Cuando el rei Nimrod al Campo salia,
Mirava en el cielo i en la estreyeria,
Vido una luz santa en la Juderia,
que havia de naser Avraham Avinu,
Avraham Avinu, padre querido
padre bendicho, luz de Israel.
La mujer de Terah quedo prenhada
E dia en dia ele preguntava:
De que teneij la cara tan demudada,
eya ya savia, el bien que tenia(...)

if i may cite Dr. Charles Boasson who wrote a paper on the importance of studying and mastering your geographical neighbor's language as a tool to promote understanding, lessen xenophobia and facilitate crises management. He originaly wrote the paper in Holland, about the dutch and their flemic and german neighbors (circa WWII), and later, after immigrating to israel he mentioned it in conversations about israel's position in the middle east.
a true humanist, deep thinker and an extremely kind gentelman.

I thought there were no real evidence that Japanese descended from Altaic...? Is there any?

what resting? what resting what?

(Believe it or not)

Dank u wel, mevrouw!

graag gedaan :-)

This whole situation is getting irritating.

Esta situación entera está consiguiendo irritante.

Cette situation entière devient irritante.

Questa situazione intera sta ottenendo irritante.

Diese vollständige Situation erhält irritierend.

Deze hele toestand krijgt irritatie.

MTW

Ouvrir la porte.

Aperto la porta.

Aberto a porta.

Abierta la puerta.

Envoyer sa la lettre.
Inviare la sua la lettera.
Envie seua a letra.
Mande su la carta.

Deux. Trois. Quatre. Cinq. Six. Sept. Huit. Neuf. Dix.
Due. Tre. Quattro. Cinque. Sei. Sette. Otto. Nove. Dieci.
Dois. Tr?s. Quatro. Cinco. Seis. Sete. Oito. Nove. Dez.
Dos. Tres. Cuatro. Cinco. Seis. Siete. Ocho. Nueve. Diez.

I don't think that anyone knows _how_ many years separate languages from different linguistic families (why 3000?), or even that different linguistic families did not develop independently altogether.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

choice, question, reason, salary, pork, veal, poultry, example, beef...

"frankly my deer, i don't give a damn"

especially in the Amsterdam dialect.

money, numbers and counting in hourse trade are in hebrew.

and please forgive my spelling.