I was browsing the Huffington Post this morning, when the following story caught my eye on the home page: The Funniest Newspaper Corrections: Retracting The Ridiculous (PICTURES). One of the graphics is the following:

I couldn’t see what was so funny about it, so I clicked on the “Source” link, a site called more→

For kicks, I just searched Google News for the term “dialect,” and found this letter to the Editor in the The Barbados Advocate. I am reproducing it in full, italics mine:

Classroom not the place for dialect

3/3/2010

I was somewhat dismayed to read the report of the address given by a University professor on the subject [...]

In a recent radio segment, Rush Limbaugh made the following comment:

“Obama can turn on that black dialect when he wants to and turn it off.”

This particular comment is provoked by Obama’s pronunciation of the word “ask” during the President’s talk with state governors. Hendrik [...]

Looking for inspiration on a Monday morning? Check out Words Without Borders’ March issue, on international poetry!

“When words are immutable“–an article by Usama Hasan from The Guardian, in response to the question “Are religious texts lost in translation?”, being passed around Twitter today. Hasan wrestles with the contentious issue of the (possibility) of translation of the Qur’an, concluding in the end that “the best translation of its teachings is [...]

…for Google? Here’s what’s up:

Google may be earning an alleged $500 million a year via companies and individuals who register deceptive website addresses.

The claim centres on a controversial scheme known as “typosquatting“, the practice of registering a misspelled variant of a popular web domain. For example, a typosquatter might register “newscientsist.com” in [...]

The National Capital Language Resource Center’s “Culture Shocks” blog is offering prizes for 200-word-or-less vignettes of culture shock experiences that get published on their blog. Take a look at the stories there–and post yours here on FIT, too, while you’re at it!

Want to drink a Bruichladdich? Scared to order it? Well then, this article published in the Food section of the Atlantic Online is the one for you!

Have you been learning a language recently? Are you trying not to forget one? Do you have other thoughts or experiences about language, language learning, or language teaching that you’d like to talk about? FIT’s having a get-to-know-you meeting tomorrow (2/5) at 2pm in room 34 Dwinelle.

We’re hoping that there are others out [...]

The 36th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society is going to be happening on the UCB campus this weekend, February 6-7. There are several different session formats planned, and invited speakers include John McCarthy, Peter Daniels, Lyle Campbell, and Richard Sproat. Check it out!

FIT celebrates the official launch of the student-run Berkeley Review of Education. Congratulations to al the volunteers at the GSE who have made this happen!

From the editors:

We are excited to announce the publication of the inaugural issue of the Berkeley Review of Education. The journal can be accessed free online at more→

We’ve just added some language events to the Languages@Berkeley calendar (see the “Calendar” link at the top of the FIT page for a full calendar view, or scroll down and look in the right-hand column for the line-by-line summary).

Here are a few coming up:

“Lecture by Vincent Gillespie: Meat, Metaphor, and Mysticism: [...]

Today @langology on Twitter posted a link from 2006 that still seems pertinent today, as the word “linguist” continues to be misused in popular discourse to mean “language cop”, “polyglot”, or worse. This article from boston.com News introduces the writing, work, and thought of Geoffrey Pullum and Mark Liberman, regular bloggers [...]

The Berkeley Language Center’s Spring 2010 lecture series–featuring Professors Andrew Cohen (U of Minnesota), Jerrold Cooper, (Johns Hopkins U), Lera Boroditsky (Stanford), and the BLC Fellows Anna Maria Bellezza, Usree Bhattacharya, Minsook Kim, and Jason Vivrette–has been added to the Languages@Berkeley calendar. Check back with the BLC for more details, and [...]

This New York Times article by Anand Giriharadas, “Language as a Blunt Tool of the Digital Age“, makes some interesting associations between the use of digital communication tools like text messaging, Twitter, and blogs, on one hand, and a global business environment in which a ‘simplified’ version of English is in ascendance, on [...]

Several days ago I posted an aside mentioning the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching’s upcoming conference (April 23-25 at UCSD); the deadline’s been extended to Feb. 5 (first extended to Feb. 1), for anyone (like me) who’s been dragging their feet to get the application in.

Hope to see you there!