Tag: ENGLISH

Future linguists will have a field day with this one. The Oxford English Dictionary (the "definitive record of the English language," in case you were keeping track) just released its latest update, and "OMG," "LOL" and even "<3" made the cut. These Internet acronyms were included due to their cultural relevance today, but it turns out most have origins pre-dating those pesky tween texters. ...

We always thought intimate, human-to-human interaction was a crucial element to learning any foreign language. But officials in the South Korean city of Daegu apparently think that human-to-robot interaction can be just as effective. On Monday, the city unleashed an army of 29 robot English teachers, designed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology. The 'bots conducted classes across ...

If, like the great Sylvia Plath, you punctiliously plot your prose with a thesaurus, may we entreat you to visit Save the Words? The prim nebbishes over at the Oxford University Press went crazy with Flash to develop the site, which features words that have all but disappeared from standard English usage and also asks users to "adopt" the archaisms in their daily communications. In a tragicomic ...

You may have never really noticed the weird capitalization pattern on iPhones; or perhaps you just thought it was part of Apple's brilliant marketing schtick. In reality, though, this weird mid-word capitalization has been around for a while, and is commonly known as 'camel case' (because of the visual "hump" that a nested capitalized letter gives a word). Caleb Crain, in a great article for ...

The BBC World Service Trust, the charity arm of the international broadcast company, is preparing to launch a service in Bangladesh that will offer lessons in English via cell phone. Called Janala, the service, slated to go live Thursday, started accepting subscriptions this weekend, and the BBC was surprised by the rush of customers. Sara Chamberlain, the manager of the service, told the ...

It's obviously stereotyping, but the British have definitely earned a reputation for being prim, proper, polite, and reserved. An English video (after the break) currently blowing up on YouTube captures a volatile disagreement between a 63-year-old grandmother and a 37-year-old man, but you might be surprised which participant actually adheres to those ingrained social stereotypes. Enraged that ...

Automated test scoring is nothing new. Most of us are quite familiar with the act of filling in little #2 pencil marks on a Scantron, and having it fed through a machine that puts a depressing little red dash next to each wrong answer. That's all well and good for tests with simple multiple choice answers, but what about tests with written answers and essay questions, like an English test? Well, ...

According to at least one estimation, the English language has collected its one millionth word. The Global Language Monitor, whose authority on the issue is on the questionable side, got us geared up for the Million Word March in May. At that time the Language Monitor was expecting the millionth word to be "noob" or "defriend," but both were beaten to the punch by "Web 2.0." The Global ...

The English language is about to pass a historic milestone, at least according to the Global Language Monitor, a group that monitors language. The one millionth English word is nearly upon us. What this will be isn't known yet, but in the running are a number of words straight from the Internet, including "defriend" and "noob." The standard used by the Global Language monitor requires that the ...

When you really want to let someone know you care, what's the gift that says it all? How about an iPod? How about a personally inscribed iPod? How about a gold-plated, personally inscribed iPod? That's what English soccer great and current Los Angeles Galaxy player David Beckham received from his mates on the English national soccer team after participating in his 100th game with the club ...