Category: Linguistics

• July 20, 2019

  Field Note #7 — Being Lonely and Shifting Focus

  Kichwa word of the day: fakchaman = “cascada” / “waterfall” Hi, how’s it going?  Day 18 here after a week-long hiatus.  I’ve got the usual setup: sitting at my desk cocooned in my sleeping bag, watching my cup of tea get cold, sheep grazing on the hills outside my window, and of course, having the…
• July 10, 2019

  Field Note #5 — Lost in Translation (Sketchbook)

  Some Linguistics humor to wrap up my day… (Puta means “whore” in Spanish.  While in English the /b/ sound is more firmly voiced and held longer, in Japanese it’s a softer, more “staccato” consonantal sound that’s very close to the Spanish bilabial stop /p/ —so the two come out sounding dangerously similar.)
• January 11, 2018

  Archived Blog: yui yaku 1 • “mendokusai”

  etymology plug: yui + yaku yui = ゆい me yaku = 訳 (やく) “translation” yui yaku (ゆい訳) is a series in which I attempt to explain obscure words and phrases from modern Japanese culture that do not have equivalents in English.  The reign of Schadenfreude as the New Foreign Word on the Block has ended, and…