Tag Archives: languages

Creating the First Cultural #DigitalLibrary in Canada’s North | University of Alberta #libraries #culture

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(Edmonton) When you live 400 kilometres from the nearest library, getting information can be a real challenge. Professor Ali Shiri of the University of Alberta’s School of Library and Information Studies is leading a project to address this issue. Together with co-investigator Dinesh Rathi, Shiri and a team of collaborators have begun to bridge the information gap for some of Canada’s most isolated people with a project called Digital Library North.

Currently, people in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region—an area that spans 90,650 square kilometres—must travel to the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre to access hard-copy information. The challenges with distance and winter above the treeline limit the access. The SSHRC-funded project will create a digital library infrastructure to address the unique information needs in Canada’s northern regions over the next three years. READ MORE: Creating the first cultural digital library in Canada’s North | University of Alberta.

MIT Claims to Have Found a “Language Universal” That Ties All #Languages Together | Ars Technica #cognition

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Language takes an astonishing variety of forms across the world—to such a huge extent that a long-standing debate rages around the question of whether all languages have even a single property in common. Well, there’s a new candidate for the elusive title of “language universal” according to a paper in this week’s issue of PNAS. All languages, the authors say, self-organise in such a way that related concepts stay as close together as possible within a sentence, making it easier to piece together the overall meaning.

Language universals are a big deal because they shed light on heavy questions about human cognition. The most famous proponent of the idea of language universals is Noam Chomsky, who suggested a “universal grammar” that underlies all languages. Finding a property that occurs in every single language would suggest that some element of language is genetically predetermined and perhaps that there is specific brain architecture dedicated to language. READ MORE: MIT claims to have found a “language universal” that ties all languages together | Ars Technica.

British Library Asks for Help Deciphering Medieval Sword | CNET #libraries #museums #language

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Image Credit: The British Library

A sword on display at the British Library has an 800-year-old mystery engraved on its blade. Dating back to between 1250 and 1330 AD, the sword was discovered in the east of England, in the River Witham near Lincoln, in the 19th century. The sword is a particularly fine double-edged steel weapon of English design. It was most likely forged in Germany and belonged to a wealthy man or a knight.

 

The hilt is cross-shaped, which is normal for swords from this period of the Middle Ages, and is heavy enough to have cloven a man’s head in twain if swung with sufficient strength.

But the sword, on loan to the library from the British Museum, does have a couple of highly unusual features. Down the centre of the blade, it has two grooves known as fullers, where most blades only have one. On one side, it also bears an inscription:

+NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+

It’s not the presence of the inscription that has researchers nonplussed, but its content: Experts don’t know what the inscription means. READ MORE: British Library asks for help deciphering a medieval sword | CNET.

@Google Translate’s App Now Instantly #Translates Printed Text In 27 #Languages | TechCrunch #apps #tech

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One of the most intense experiences you’ll ever have is visiting a country that speaks a language different than yours. There’s a host of tools you can use, but Google’s Translate product has leapfrogged just about everything out there over the years.

Its most handy, and impressive, tool is the six-month-old instant translation feature, using the goodies from the acquired Word Lens, that lets you point your camera at something written in another language, say a sign, and it’ll translate into your language with ridiculous accuracy in almost real-time.

Today, that feature is expanding today from seven languages to 27 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. The update is rolling out over both iOS and Android.

READ MORE: Google Translate’s App Now Instantly Translates Printed Text In 27 Languages | TechCrunch.

Link to Google Translate on iTunes.

Et tu, Watson? IBM’s Supercomputer Can Critique Your #Writing | Engadget #tech #IBMWatson

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It’s bad enough that robots are writing professionally (albeit badly), but now they’re criticizing, too? IBM has unveiled the Watson Tone Analyzer, the latest tool in its “cognitive computing” suite of cooking, health, shopping and other apps. Once you input a piece of text, the system will perform a “tone check” to analyze three different aspects of it: emotional, social and writing style. Each of those is divided into further categories — for instance, it can tell you if your writing style is confident or tentative, and whether the emotional tone is cheerful, angry or negative. From there, it can give you a breakdown of the overall tone and suggest new words to “fix” it. READ MORE: Et tu, Watson? IBM’s supercomputer can critique your writing | Engadget

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43 #Free Career-Advancing #Courses You Can Take (And Actually Finish) This Summer | Mashable #skills #education #MOOCs

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Yes, summer is the perfect time to relax and recharge. But, it’s also the perfect time to pick up a few new skills. Put that relaxed brain (and work schedule) to good use! How accomplished would you feel if, when September rolls around, you could open up your resume and add another skill to it? Very, we’re guessing.

Before you start stressing, know that we’re not asking you to sacrifice your summer nights to a droning professor. Instead, we’re suggesting devoting a few hours every week to advancing your career with an online class. (Online equals your couch and your sweats and an optional glass of wine.)

To make the process easier for you, we did two things. One, we only chose classes you can complete in less than 10 weeks (with some that can be completed in an hour). Two, we hand-curated this list to ensure it’s only courses that are valuable and interesting. The best part? All of them are free. So, without further ado, here are 43 classes you can sign up for today.

READ MORE: 43 free career-advancing courses you can take (and actually finish) this summer | Mashable

Feast Your Eyes on This Beautiful Linguistic Family Tree | Mental Floss #languages #linguistics

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When linguists talk about the historical relationship between languages, they use a tree metaphor. An ancient source (say, Indo-European) has various branches (e.g., Romance, Germanic), which themselves have branches (West Germanic, North Germanic), which feed into specific languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian). Lessons on language families are often illustrated with a simple tree diagram that has all the information but lacks imagination. There’s no reason linguistics has to be so visually uninspiring. Minna Sundberg, creator of the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent, a story set in a lushly imagined post-apocalyptic Nordic world, has drawn the antidote to the boring linguistic tree diagram.

READ MORE: Feast Your Eyes on This Beautiful Linguistic Family Tree | Mental Floss.

Readlang Helps You Learn a Foreign Language as You Surf the Web | LifeHacker #language

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The most effective way to learn a foreign language is to immerse yourself as much as possible in it. Readlang is a webapp and Chrome extension that helps you learn by translating web sites and creating flashcards and word lists for you. READ MORE: Readlang Helps You Learn a Foreign Language as You Surf the Web | LifeHacker

For Schools With No Books, A Digital Collection So They Can Have A Real Library | Co.Exist #education #digital #libraries #literacy

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For Schools With No Books, A Digital Collection So They Can Have A Real Library | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

Library for All is now working in impoverished places around the world on a simple mission with a major impact. Rebecca McDonald came up with the idea for Library for All after visiting Haiti in 2010. The country had just experienced a major earthquake, and the schools there were having a tough time getting back to normal—even more so, because they lacked basic education materials.

“The reason we started the library was that, everywhere I went, they didn’t have any books. And if they did, they were in English when people either speak Haitian Creole or French. They were good paperweights, and that was about it,” McDonald says.

Library for All now works with 10 schools on the island, with plans to partner with nine more. The model is simple. The nonprofit assembles a highly curated local-language collection of books that schools access through Android tablets.

READ MORE: For Schools With No Books, A Digital Collection So They Can Have A Real Library | Co.Exist | ideas + impact.

High-Tech Glove Could Help the Deaf-Blind Send Text Messages | Mashable

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In German-speaking countries, deaf-blind people use a “tactile alphabet” called Lorm to communicate with one another, which involves a series of motions on the hand.

The problem with Lorm, though, is that few people understand it. This means that people who are both deaf and blind are often limited to communicating with others who understand Lorm.

But a new technology aims to help them communicate more easily with people who don’t understand Lorm. Researchers in Berlin are developing the Mobile Lorm Glove, with which deaf-blind people can transmit Lorm to text on a computer or mobile device.

READ MORE: High-tech glove could help the deaf-blind send text messages | Mashable