The F-word seems to be mainstream in the USA. It started several years ago with “friggin” or “frickin” being socially acceptable and heard often on reality TV and talk shows.
 
And now it appears (at least in Boston) that many radio stations don’t censor out cuss words. One station dedicated to hip hop was leaving in all the lyrics uncencored, and there were some draw droppers. Yet another station had a caller call in program, and all kinds of cuss words were being tossed out left and right, even several F-bombs, it seemed, just for being able to get away with it now.
 
The Oxford University Press just released it’s 3rd edition of The F-Word,  here is some insight to the book. 

In a thoroughly updated edition of The F-Word , Jesse Sheidlower offers a rich, revealing look at the f-bomb and its illimitable uses. Since the fifteenth century, no other word has been adapted, interpreted, euphemized, censored, and shouted with as much ardor or force; imagine Dick Cheney telling Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy to “go damn himself” on the Senate floor–it doesn’t have quite the same impact as what was really said. Sheidlower cites this and other notorious examples throughout history, from the satiric sixteenth-century poetry of James Cranstoun to the bawdy parodies of Lord Rochester in the seventeenth century, to more recent uses by Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Ann Sexton, Norman Mailer, Liz Phair, Anthony Bourdain, Junot Diaz, Jenna Jameson, Amy Winehouse, Jon Stewart, and Bono (whose use of the word at the Grammys nearly got him fined by the FCC).
Collectively, these references and the more than one hundred new entries they illustrate double the size of The F-Word since its previous edition. Thousands of added quotations come from newly available electronic databases and the resources of the OED , expanding the range of quotations to cover British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, and South African uses in addition to American ones. Thus we learn why a fugly must hone his or her sense of humor, why Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau muttered “fuddle duddle” in the Commons, and why Fanny Adams is so sweet. A fascinating introductory essay explores the word’s history, reputation, and changing popularity over time. and a new Foreword by comedian, actor, and author Lewis Black offers readers a smart and entertaining take on the book and its subject matter.

Concord Massachussetts is a historic town in the USA. It is home of the minute men who fought off the British leading to the independence of the United States of America in 1775. 
 
There are many terms that the Minute men used which are still used today in modern American English. Here is a sample taken from the Concord Magazine.

A musket was usually accomplished and paid for in three parts - lock (firing mechanism), stock (wood), barrel (metal tube). Once completed the item as a whole was given to its owner. Today when one obtains an item with all its parts, it is owned “lock, stock and barrel”.
 
If militia man Thaddeus Blood placed his musket in the safety position (half-cocked) then entered battle, he had better remember to advance to full-cock or the weapon would not fire and he would be in trouble. A person “going off half cocked” now means not successful due to lack of preparation and forethought.

Nathan Stowe might prime his weapon (small measure of powder in the pan), load the main charge to the barrel, fire and only have the priming powder explode. This was known as a “flash in the pan” or misfire. Today, the term means a sudden brief success not likely to be repeated or followed by a greater success. 
 
Thomas Munroe, tavern keep, might use chalk to mark upon his wall the bill of a patron who wished to pay at a later time. This was a reminder to collect owed money. Something is “chalked up” to experience in our world meaning that while unfortunate, it is not regretted but an attempt will be made to insure it does not happen again.
 
Grog was a cheap 18th Century drink of rum and water invented by a ship’s captain to water down sailor’s daily liquor ration in hopes of ending drunken brawls. Today one who consumes too much spirits may appear “groggy” or mildly intoxicated.
 
Keeper Ephraim Jones might yell to rowdy patrons to “mind their p’s and q’s” (pints and quarts of drink) and today the term still refers to watching ones manners and conduct; behaving properly. 
 
Today, a “rule of thumb” is a way to accomplish a task based on experience rather than theory or careful calculation. A colonial brewer (without a thermometer) would dip his thumb into a mixture to determine when the liquid was the right temperature to add the yeast.

If we receive unexpected good fortune (usually money) it is called “a wind fall”. For Jonas Bateman in the 1770s it meant that trees or limbs were blown down and easily obtained for firewood.

Purchase Brown, 1770s farmer, would “ear mark” his animals with a distinctive brand to denote ownership or purpose.
 
Citizens would gather annually on muster day to watch the militia drill, enjoy food and drink, socialize and have a fun time. They had a “field day”.
 
When John Buttrick, Jr. retired for the night, he probably would sleep on bedding of straw and thus in today’s usage he would “hit the hay”.
 
Meliscent Barrett might have the rope supports between the wooden sides of her bed frame tightened (no metal springs) to insure a good night’s sleep. As today, she would be requested to “sleep tight”.

When next you hear a modern idiom, ask if it has origins in the 18th Century and might have been used in 1775 Concord.

Ever wonder about the origins of the word O.K.? Here is an excerpt from Word Wide Words that explains it.

OK is without doubt the best-known and widest-travelled Americanism, used and recognised even by people who hardly know another word of English. Running in parallel with its popularity have been many attempts to explain where it came from — amateur etymologists have been obsessed with OK and theories have bred unchecked for the past 150 years.

Suggestions abound of introductions from another language, including the one you mention. Others include: from the Choctaw-Chickasaw okah meaning “it is indeed”; from a mishearing of the Scots och aye! (or perhaps Ulster Scots Ough aye!), “yes, indeed!”; from West African languages like Mandingo (O ke, “certainly”) or Wolof (waw kay, “yes indeed”); from Finnish oikea, “correct, exact”; from French au quais, “at the quay” (supposedly stencilled on Puerto Rican rum specially selected for export, or a place of assignation for French sailors in the Caribbean); or from French Aux Cayes (a port in Haiti famous for its superior rum). Such accidentally coincidental forms across languages are surprisingly common and all of these are certainly false. Many African-Americans would be delighted to have it proved that OK is actually from an African language brought to America by slaves, but the evidence is against them, as we shall shortly learn.

Some other theories I’ve seen mentioned: it comes from Old Keokuk, the name of a Native American Fox chief; from German Oberst Kommandant, “Colonel in Command”, because some German army officer fought on the colonists’ side in the American Revolution (names such as General Schliessen or Baron von Steuben are mentioned but cannot be linked to real individuals); from the name of a freight agent, Obadiah Kelly, whose initials often appeared on bills of lading; an abbreviation for Open Key, popularised by early telegraphers; or from the initials of Orrin Kendall biscuits supplied to the Union Army during the Civil War. A particularly persistent and long-standing theory says that President Andrew Jackson used to write OK to abbreviate the illiterate “ole korrek” on documents, a grievous calumny on a well-educated man. None of these theories can be supported with documented proof.

Synesthesia is an interesting phenomena concerning how the brain receives and processes senses. For example, some people can taste colors, or see colors when they hear music, or hear sounds when they feel things. Synesthesia is basically the notion that all our 5 senses of taste, smell, sight, sound and feel are somehow inextricably connected.

It’s thought that everyone has some degree of synesthesia. This excellent documentary by Jonathan Fowler describes a theory about how synesthesia may exist in individuals.

The relevance this has with language learning is that it is speculated that the characters of an alphabet and the words of a given language were formulated by the collective synesthesia of populations.
 
For example, when you hear the letter “S”, you think or feel the form of a slow and smooth path in the shape of an S. The letter and word “I” feels like simple straight line, just like the number “1″.  The list goes on concerning the coorelation between the sound of letters and words, their shape and their meaning.

Facebook is attempting to patent the idea of crowdsourcing language translations, an idea that Phrasebase.com put into practice back in 1999.

Facebook filed their patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office back in December 2008, but it is now only recently making it’s way into the public knowledge.
 
The application is currently going through the office’s examination process, and has not yet been approved.
 
Phrasebase.com would appreciate everyones help in spreading the word that we’ve already been doing this for over 12 years now.
 
Here is an abstract of the Facebook patent: 

Embodiments of the invention provide techniques for translating text in a social network. In one embodiment translations of text phrases are received from members of the social network. These text phrases include content displayed in a social networking system, such as content from social networking objects. A particular member is provided with content including a text phrase in a first language, and the member requests translation into another language. Responsive to this request, a translation of the text phrase is selected from a set of available translations. The selection is based on actions by friends of the member in the social network, the actions being associated with the set of available translations. These actions can the viewing of or approval of translations by the friends, for example. The selected translation is then presented to the member requesting the translation.

A recent study of long term data collected on over 600 nuns from Minnesota has shown that those with the greatest language skills were better off at thwarting Alzheimers disease and dementia later in life.
 
Despite still having developed brain lesions such as plaques and tangled neurological-tissue fibers that are indicative of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, those nuns with the greater language skills still retained their cognitive abilities.

The correlation was striking: the young women who had more sophisticated language skills - defined as the density of ideas per every 10 written words - were far less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia five, six or seven decades later.
Iacono effectively picked up where Snowdon left off. Iacono and his colleagues discovered that not only did nuns who avoided dementia later in life have 20% higher linguistic scores as young women, compared with peers who developed symptoms of cognitive decline, but that the relationship held up even in nuns whose brains showed all the physical signs of Alzheimer’s. “There is a special group of people who have comparable amount of plaques and tangles - the typical marks of the disease - without the cognitive impairment,” says Iacono. “[It appears that] people with higher linguistic scores were protected even in the face of higher pathology.”

An exiciting new website outlining the sterotypical racial differences of white people has shown studying broad to be a common trait amongst white people.
 
Further up the list, they so poigniantly call out the notion of raising multilingual children as yet another trait associated with white folks.
 
It gets better. Further up and securing a spot at #12 on the list of stuff like people like, the popular amongst white people notion of promising to learn a new language.

Since learning a new language is something that most white people fail at, it should be approached with extreme caution. When you hear a white person say that they speak your native language, you will probably think it’s a good idea to start talking to them in said language.  WRONG! Instead you should say something like “you speak (insert language)?” to which they will reply “a little” in your native tongue.  If you just leave it here, the white person will feel fantastic for the rest of the day.  If you push it any further and speak quickly, the white person will just look at you with a blank stare.  Within a minute you will notice that blank stare has shifted from confusion to contempt.  You have shamed them and your chance for friendship is ruined forever.

LG launches website to help parents understand what their kids are saying when they are texting their friends. Their website called DTXTR.com, pronounced Dee-Text-Er. Taking a page from how Phrasebase works, if dxtr doesn’t understand a given input, it asks for you to do the translation for them, so that translation can be added to their database.
  

Problem is it seems, the teens aren’t going to be eager to help ma and dad with their lingo, so they are unlikely to use the site and enter in new terminology. So, how will they continue to maintain an accurate and up to date database? Will be interesting to keep an eye on this application.

Microsoft’s announced the name of their new search engine. It’s called Bing. Interestingly enough, while there are several meanings for “Bing” in Mandarin, one of the more common definitions is “Disease“.

病 = disease

The character part 疒, which itself is without independent meaning as a full word, stands for diseases and words associated with diseases.

先天病 = xian(1)tian(1) bing(4) = congenital disease

后天病 = hou(4)tian(1) bing(4) = acquired disease (as opposed to a congenital one)

性病 = xing(4)bing(4) = venereal disease
 

Lets hope this new search engine can give Google a run for it’s money and doesn’t end up being a disease.

In our endless quest to either build or find the perfect language learning solution, many paths have sent us toward a Dr. Georgi Lozanov, developer of the system “Suggestopedia”, also called “Accelerated Learning”.

Dr. Lozanov, a Bulgarian Psychologist developed Suggestopedia back in the mid 1960s’s stating:

Suggestopedia (in its new desuggestive development as well) is a science for developing different non-manipulative and non-hypnotic methods for teaching/learning of foreign languages and other subjects for every age-group on the level of reserve (potential, unused) capacities of the brain/mind. That means: at least three to five times faster, easier and deeper learning, inner freedom, increasing the motivation for learning, joyful learning and psycho-physiological well-being. 

There is no question of the impact this method had on language learning in the 60’s and 70s’s. We have talked with students who have been through the Accelerated Learning system in the 80’s, and they swear that today, nothing exceeds it.
 
However, the methods are heavily, well, exclusively teacher focused. In fact, Dr. Lozanov spent all of his time teaching teachers. So the effectiveness of this type of training system boiled down to the quality of the teacher. Here is what Dr. Lozanov says on the subject:

 There is no other method or system that operates on this level. That is why working with this method requires the teacher to be properly trained. There is a lot of information in the authentic publications of Dr Lozanov but unfortunately this is not enough for a teacher to be trained. The whole training process is a specific form of art which cannot be mastered only by reading. It is as if a person who has not studied music was giving a professional concert only by a published description of the performance. Teaching is not  the mastery just a bunch of techniques but it is about emotional development and the need to teach empathetic skills. Do not rely on advertisements that are using the name of Dr Lozanov and are done by people who cannot show an authentic certificate. The teacher needs individual training and adaptation to the method in its dynamics if she/he wants to be a really good and creative teacher.

In todays world demand for fast learning and the DIY (Do It Yourself) mentality is the norm. Most adult language learners, or students who don’t have time to sit in class several hours each day and are trying to learn a foreign language online want a new innovative approach to language learning that doesn’t rely so heavily on the competency of the teacher and allows them to study on their own time.
 
While Dr. Lozanov’s techniques and methodologies were a breakthrough in the 60’s and 70’s, we find it difficult to find ways of bringing the success of his system into the era of the internet.
 
If you are a language teacher and want to improve, we highly recommend that you read Dr. Lozanov’s Foreign Language Teachers Suggestopedic Manual.