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Languages are like keyboards
I’ve previously compared the difference between being bilingual and fluent in a foreign language to the difference between cycling and driving a car. It struck me today that it’s also a bit like...
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Cancelling German
A German colleague was recently bemoaning the fact that a meeting had been cancelled. She said and I quote: “Mein Meeting wurde gecancelled.” (or should that be “gecancellt”?!) I’m not even going to...
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Bad English is the lingua franca of science
It is often said that mathematics is the universal language of science.* Indeed, it is thought that if we are ever able to make contact with extraterrestrial lifeforms, this will be best communicated...
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Mac for dummies. Female dummies.
It turns out that sexism in science isn’t just a problem in the English-speaking world (who knew?!). Further to yesterday’s rather long and rambly post, I bring you this gem, via a friend on Facebook:...
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Other people fucking hate sexism in science, too
Last week, I wrote a >2700-word rant about sexism, both in my field of science, and society more generally. As I write this, it has been seen over 12000 times. By my standards, that’s quite a lot:...
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Foreignish songs
Aside from stand-up comedy, music is one of the best ways I know to get to know a language. The former needs a much more advanced level of understanding in the first place to be worthwile, however,...
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Science: It’s Virginia’s Thing
Many in the world of science communication were less than impressed by the launch video for the EU’s “Science: it’s a girl thing” campaign. After the initial backlash, however, it was pointed out that...
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Science for learning languages
This isn’t a particularly structured post. Rather, it’s a list of loosely connected thoughts, questions and links as a response to a request from Jo Brodie. On her blog, she asks I’d quite like to...
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Pfeffered Pferd Preferred
There has been some controversy in the UK over the last few days about horse meat turning up in Tesco’s “beef” burgers. At least, my Twitter feed seems to have been full of it (controversy, that is,...
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Tu-itter
From excellent post Learn French Through Twitter (click for link) This BBC Magazine article suggests that the use of the informal pronoun “tu” on Twitter may kill off the use of “vous” in French. The...
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