Mr Bean and the European Anthem

Allow me to share this performance of the European Anthem by Mr. Bean who runs out of text and improvises one of his own using German loanwords and the like. I laughed so heartily that I had tears in my eyes ☺

Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean)
European Anthem - 'Beethoven's 9th Symphony'

Quick Locale Switcher

Quick Locale Switcher allows you to quickly switch to a different language (User Interface, Spell Checker Dictionary and Website content) in your Mozilla application.

rikaichan

rikaichan is a Japanese to English/German/French/Russian dictionary. Just hover the mouse pointer over a word, and a popup with both the reading and the meaning appears. The add-on automatically de-inflects verbs and adjectives and has a detailed kanji view. For Dictionaries see http://rikaichan.mozdev.org/.

Perapera Chinese Popup Dictionary

Perapera Chinese Popup Dictionary allows you to look up the pronounciation and meaning of any Chinese word that occurs on a webpage by just hovering the mouse pointer over it. Dictionaries for English (built-in), German, and French are available, it supports Pinyin and Zhuyin as well as simplified and traditional characters.

• Perapera Chinese-French Dictionary File
• Perapera Chinese-German Dictionary File

LEOs Dictionaries

LEOs Dictionaries is the official add-on for easier access to LEOs Online Dictionaries. Simply select any word or phrase, right-click on the selection and translate from (to) English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Russian to (from) German

You may also like to take a look at Dict.cc Translation.

Automatic dictionary

Automatic dictionary is an extension that remembers the language of the email when composing, something very useful if you write emails in different languages.

The History of English in 10 Minutes

The video contains ten short chapters, namely:

1. Anglo-Saxon or whatever happened to the Jutes?
2. The Norman conquest or excuse my English
3. Shakespeare or a plaque on both his houses
4. The King James Bible or let there be light reading 
5. The English of science or how to speak with gravity 
6. English & Empire or the sun never sets on the English language
7. The age of the dictionary or the definition of a hopeless task
8. American English or not English but somewhere in the ballpark
9. Internet English or language reverts to type
10. Global English or whose language is it anyway?

Add caption

Are you kidding me, Blogger?

Out of the blue, Blogger decided to talk to me in some Indian language. What on Earth is that supposed to mean?

Juriswahili

Allow me to introduce the term Juriswahili as a more “portable” alternative to legalese. The word legalese is quite nice but has one major disadvantage: It does not work in most languages.

Legalese is an English term first used in 1914 for legal writing that is designed to be difficult for laymen to read and understand, the implication being that this abstruseness is deliberate for excluding the legally untrained and to justify high fees. Wikipedia

My search for a more “portable” term did not turn up something useful so I did what one usually does in the English language when such a situation occurs and simply invented a new word. The reference to Swahili in my opinion fits perfectly:

Although only five million people speak Swahili as their native language, the total number of speakers exceeds 100 million. … Within much of East Africa, it is often used as a lingua franca.

Swahili is a Bantu language that serves as a second language to various groups traditionally inhabiting parts of the East African coast. Some Swahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic … It has also incorporated Persian, German, Portuguese, English and French words into its vocabulary through contact during the last five centuries. Wikipedia

Concerning the difficulty of the language:

Swahili is probably the easiest African language for an English speaker to learn. … no non-English sounds in Swahili and only one sound that occurs at the beginning of a word in Swahili that can only occur at the end of a syllable in English. … one of the few subsaharan African languages that have no tone … prefixes and suffixes are easy to see and hear … has many grammatical structures that are foreign to English grammar. It takes time and effort to learn any second language, but if you want to learn an African language and your native language is English, Swahili is your best choice. learnswahili.net/is-swahili-hard-to-learn

It is not unlikely that you know at least the Swahili word meaning “doctor”: daktari.

Originally published on Google+