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mainsicloud · 2 years

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Monolingual dictionary online

Monolingual dictionary online software#

the use of digital media: MLDs were among the first dictionaries to appear on CD-ROM, with the Longman Interactive English Dictionary leading the way in 1993.

Monolingual dictionary online software#

detailed information about collocation, such as the ‘collocation boxes’ in the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, which give lists of high-frequency collocates, identified using ‘Word Sketch’ software.the use of intelligent software for extracting information from corpora and for automating the dictionary-making process.the use of corpora as a basis for language description, a radical innovation which was introduced by the COBUILD project in the 1980s and is now standard practice in lexicography.Since the 1980s, the English MLD has, arguably, been the most innovative area in the field of lexicography, in terms of both the way dictionaries are written and the aspects of language which dictionaries describe. Monolingual learner's dictionaries have been the subject of a great deal of scholarly work, and the standard book on the subject is Cowie 1999. Merriam-Webster Advanced Learner's English Dictionary, 2008Īll of these dictionaries are available in hard copy and online.Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2002.Cambridge International Dictionary of English, 1995, now published as the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, first published in 1987.In addition to the Oxford and Longman dictionaries, these are: There are currently six major MLDs for advanced learners. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English was published in 1978, and its most striking feature was the use of a restricted defining vocabulary, which is now a standard feature of learners' dictionaries. Other publishers gradually entered the market. It was subsequently republished as A Learner's Dictionary of Current English in 1948, before acquiring its current name. It was originally published in Japan in 1942 as The Idiomatic and Syntactic Dictionary of English, written by A. Probably the best-known English monolingual dictionary for advanced learners is the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Since the end of World War Two, the MLD has been a publishing phenomenon, with global sales running into tens of millions of copies, reflecting the boom in the English language teaching industry. The first English MLD, published in 1935, was the New Method English Dictionary by Michael West and James Endicott, a small dictionary using a restricted defining vocabulary of just 1490 words. But most of the activity in this field is in the area of dictionaries for people learning English. Monolingual learner's dictionaries have been produced for learners of several languages, including German, Spanish, Dutch, and Chinese. And while the definitions in standard dictionaries are often written in difficult language, those in a monolingual learner’s dictionary aim to be simple and accessible. Dictionaries for learners include a great deal of information on grammar, usage, common errors, collocation, and pragmatics, which is largely missing from standard dictionaries because native speakers tend to know these aspects of language intuitively. MLDs are based on the premise that language-learners should progress from a bilingual dictionary to a monolingual one as they become more proficient in their target language, but that general-purpose dictionaries (aimed at native speakers) are inappropriate for their needs. A Monolingual learner's dictionary (or MLD) is a type of dictionary designed to meet the reference needs of people learning a foreign language.

#Monolingual dictionary online

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mmorgmediagroup · 2 years

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Italian monolingual dictionary online

#Italian monolingual dictionary online code

Goran Igaly – author of the initial English-Croatian database.Let me take this chance to thank all who contributed to the making of these dictionaries and improving the site's quality: To contact me for any reason please send me an email to tkuzmic at gmail dot com. I am responsible for the concept, design, programming and development. My name is Tomislav Kuzmic, I live in Croatia and this site is my personal project. Why not add a EUdict search form to your web site? Form Credits Disable spellchecking in Firefox by going to Tools → Options → Advanced → Check my spelling as I type. If you are searching for a word in the Chinese dictionary and not receiving any results, try without Pinyin (term in brackets). If you are searching for a word in Japanese (Kanji) dictionary and not receiving any results, try without Kana (term in brackets). Sometimes you can find translation results directly from Google by typing: eudict word. Although EUdict can't translate complete sentences, it can translate several words at once if you separate them with spaces or commas. Instead of clicking the Search button, just press Enter. If you are unable to add a bookmarklet in Mozilla Firefox according to the instructions above, there is another way right click on a link and select Bookmark this link… Now you can drag this link from Bookmarks to the Bookmarks Toolbar. If you want to type a character which isn't on your keyboard, simply pick it from a list of special characters.

#Italian monolingual dictionary online code

A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript code stored as a bookmark in your browser. There is a way to enable word translation from any page: Bookmarklets. Afterwards, you simply type the chosen keyword in the address bar to start the search in the chosen dictionary. In Chrome, first click on a language pair and change the search keyword in the field 'Keyword' to a keyword (eg: 'eudict'). And you're ready to go select EUdict from the drop-down list in search field (Firefox) or address bar (IE), input a word and press Enter. To add EUdict alongside Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and other search engines in Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, simply click on link after the title Browser integration, select appropriate language pair and confirm your decision. Perhaps the best way to enable dictionary search is through integration into the search field of your browser. For the same reason the Chinese dictionary contains traditional and simplified Chinese terms on one side and Pinyin and English terms on the other. There are two Japanese-English (and Japanese-French) dictionaries and one contains Kanji and Kana (Kana in English and French pair due to improved searching). Look at the complete list of languages: Available language pairs The most common way is by word input (you must know which language the word is in) but you can also use your browser's search box and bookmarklets (or favelets). There are several ways to use this dictionary. Total number of translations (in millions): 14.6 Please help us improve this site by translating its interface.

#Italian monolingual dictionary online

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solkatts-svenska · 8 months

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Hej! Hur mår du? I'm trying to learn swedish for my partner, would you happen to have any tips? Babbel is very useful, but I loved your blog so much I scrolled all the way to the bottom last night so I wanted to ask you. Tack (so? Sa?) Tack sa mycke!

Hej, tack så jättemycket för dina snälla ord! :) I’m really glad if you liked my blog.

I’m not sure I can give much useful advice, but I’ll do my best to describe what worked for me. So, here’s how I’ve been teaching myself Swedish:

I used several grammar reference books at the same time, to get a fuller overview of the language + get to do as many exercises as possible haha. The ones I used were the Routledge essential grammar and comprehensive grammar (as well as one in my own native language but well, that probably won’t be useful to you…). They’re all available as pdfs online. I would pick a grammar topic, scan all my books and do an additional internet search if necessary to compile and condense the information in my notes, then do some exercises. Initially I tried to do one or more topics every day but then found it more productive to alternate “grammar days” with “vocabulary days”

Speaking of which, I approached vocab in a similar way in the beginning: pick a topic, like colours or numerals or body parts, make a list and cram it. For adjectives, I found it an efficient strategy to learn them in pairs of antonyms

I kept a diary in Swedish for some time, which was helpful because that way I learnt and used specific vocabulary relevant to me and my life

I started reading, watching and listening stuff in Swedish quite early on, which I highly recommend to get comfortable with the language. To translate new words, I tried to refer to a monolingual Swedish dictionary as much as possible. Note: I could post a list of particular podcasts/YouTube channels/news resources etc that I liked if you guys want me too! But obviously it largely boils down to what you’re interested in.

Related to the previous point, I follow both teachers of Swedish and Swedish natives on social media to increase immersion

Good old Duolingo was rather nice, especially early on, to get the basic vocab and some grammar down

Quizlet and thematic Tumblr vocab lists proved rather useful too, especially when I wasn’t too lazy to review them

+ Some cool resources I use for Swedish as well as other languages:

Omniglot (a great place to start with any language: basic info + resources)

Glosbe (Reverso context but make it better)

obviously, Wiktionary (useful to look up declensions)

Last but not least, I encourage my followers to add their tips too!

Jag hoppas att det hjälper dig :)

#ask #language learning #language learning tips #svenska #swedish #swedish langblr

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bxrleskque · 5 months

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Full Norwegian-Resource Index

As many online norwegian learning resources I could find. Thanks to Reddit r/norsk for most of the links on this list. That being said, I have not used all of these sites, but as someone who is weary of online webpages and downloading malicious links, I can tell you that as far as I know, everything is safe to use!

SKAM - Norwegian teen show

LearnNoW - Online course

DinOrdbok - Online dictionary (Bilingual)

Dict - Online dictionary (Bilingual)

Naob - Online dictionary (Monolingual)

Duostories - Short stories from Duolingo

Barnebøker - Short stories for beginners

KlarTale - News site in straightforward Norwegian (beginner friendly)

NorskPrøven Example Tests - Tests of A1-B2 level

NTNU - Paper exams + answers

BliKlar - Short tests of A1-B2 level

Duolingo Forum - Grammar notes from Duolingo

Grammatikk - Free online grammar book

NyNorskBok - Online reading list

#norwegian #norwegian language #polyglot #language learning #norsk #bokmål #language learning resources

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aguacerotropical · 8 months

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The first known written attestation of [Spanglish]—in Spanish rather than in English—in a setting that represents the quintessence of conflicting linguistic attitudes: Puerto Rico. The ambiguous status of Puerto Rico—at once a Spanish-speaking Latin American nation and a colony of the world’s most powerful English-speaking society—has provoked a level of concern about the purity of the Spanish language and an ambivalence towards the English language unmatched in the Spanish-speaking world. The term spanglish (espanglish in Spanish) appears to have been coined by the Puerto Rican journalist Salvador Tio, in a newspaper column first published in 1952. Tio—who certainly considers himself the inventor of this word (an opinion largely shared by others in Latin America)—was concerned about what he felt to be the deterioration of Spanish in Puerto Rico under the onslaught of English words, and waged a campaign of polemical and satirical articles over more than half a century. On the one hand Tio shared with many other Puerto Rican intellectuals of the time the fear that United States cultural imperialism and the crushing weight of English would eventually displace a language that had landed with Columbus and had survived unaltered until only a few decades previously. [Author then speaks of English-enforced schools and the first election of a Puerto Rican governor by Puerto Ricans] Tio, like McKinstry and scores of nameless commentators before and since, deliberately invented pseudo-bilingual monstrosities into order to denigrate legitimate bilingual speech communities individually and collectively. His harshest broadsides are directed at his fellow citizens for their failure to embrace monolinguism, for Tio a primordial virtue. Tio foreshadows a viewpoint that would later be taken up in the continental United States by expatriate intellectuals like the distinguished literary critic Roberto González Echeverría, namely that even educated Latinos willingly allow their language to be overrun by English in the mistaken view that this increases their upward social mobility.

I cannot explain the trash fire of 1970s-early 2000s discourse about the contamination of Spanish in PR that the author is referring to. Suffice to say that when the government shifted every four years to the party that favored a pseudo-independence, they would take English-language learning from public schools. I pretty much grew up with the idea that my Spanish was bad (because I spoke a lot of English) and once had teachers tell me I couldn't write in Spanish. (i'm becoming an author who specializes in Spanish right now).

Most interestingly, when the colonial regime changed towards a more brutal iteration after the hurricanes that pushed out 250,000 out of the island, boricuas relationship to our Spanish shifted towards national pride at the creativity of it. People really really defend our Spanish - especially due to perceived cultural appropriation (a whole other can of worms). My favorite part is that authors frequently translate their own books and sell them as bilingual editions.

EDIT: if anyone wants to check out PR Spanish, there’s a wonderful dictionary called tesoro.pr online.

(thanks so much to @oleworm for the links!)

#idk men its 12 AM and i decided to read ~70 pages on one of my pet topics #on colonialism #puerto rico #linguistics

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olderthannetfic · 2 years

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As a monolingual English speaker, I've realized I have a love of learning about other languages, and the ways that language is influenced by culture and languages are connected to each other and... Ugh.

That weird sense of entitlement some monolinguals have will never make sense to me. I absolutely feel robbed by the fact that my first opportunity to take a language course was in high school, because I didn't get to use my neuroplasticity when I have it.

I'm an adult now, and I struggle with both finding the time to learn and actually settling on a language to learn. I keep starting the learning process, so I know basic bits and pieces of so many languages but I'm not able to hold a real conversation in any of them, lol.

Oh man. I'm so bad at settling on a language. I'm back studying Japanese again because I know a fair amount and it's sensible to consolidate it, but I really want to get back to Mandarin and Korean.

Finding time and motivation can be hard, but on the bright side, there has never been a better time to study with all the online dictionaries and good apps.

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a-wooden-ring · 1 year

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hey new followers

i think you guys are here bc of the Ousmane Sembene post? which is neat bc i’m always happy to talk about him! but yeah, if anyone is interested, I’m down to talk more about my favorite African writers or how I find/research african literature as a (white and monolingual) American.

Growing up in the US we’re really really discouraged from pursuing or enjoying literary traditions or even films outside the western canon, and it’s definitely a learning and unlearning process to break through white-normative Anglophone literary rules and actually learn how to appreciate art from other literary traditions. Even the novels from international writers sold in my town are...filtered to only include US sympathetic books and books originally written in english. So a lot of the books I recommend I’ve had to find online, borrow from friends, or hunt down second-hand. I’m definitely still in the beginning stages of working through the propaganda i grew up on so i really appreciate any corrections/advice that folks have, especially if i misrepresent or misinterpret one of your favorite books.

that all being said, here’s a couple more african writers whose works i’ve read this month that I recommend: (my keyboard doesn’t let me type accent marks so I have to use the Anglicized versions of several of their names)

-Yvonne Adiambo Owuor: She’s a late 20th century/contemporary writer who’s written a bunch of short stories, plays, novels, and linguistic essays. That being said, tracking her work down in English is a pain in the ass, and the English short stories that are out there have an annoying tendency to only be published in anthologies that can be hard to hunt down. That being said, I definitely think that finding her writing is worth the effort-she has one of my favorite writing styles I’ve come across, it’s really dense and descriptive but also very very visceral when she wants it to be? Expect to have a dictionary or google on hand going in-I found the reading to be a really slow but rewarding process. The two works I’ve been able to read by her are the Weight of Whispers (a “short” story) and Dust (a full length novel). Owuor writes a lot about the tensions between Kenyan, Rwandan, and Ethiopian people caused by migration and the political strife and genocides of the 1990s. Weight of Whispers is a really hard, really heartbreaking story about one wealthy Rwandan family’s struggles in the aftermath of fleeing the genocide, and the way in which their marginalization as refugees slowly robs them of sympathy from their friends and neighbors, and the way that otherwise wealthy and intelligent Africans were forced to debase themselves and conform to european colonizer’s expectations in order to survive. Dust is technically a story of one family’s grieving process after they find the body of their son, who was killed by police in the streets, but it’s also a novel about borders, colonization, the uneven construction and censorship of historical narratives, forgiveness of historical wrongs, and also grief. It’s really really good

-Binyavanga Wainaina: another Kenyan author, if you’re familiar with this guy from his satirical How to write about Africa essay, then you know that he’s fucking funny. A lot of his work is mostly short stories, semi-autobiographical writing and political essays written to his fellow Kenyans. I’m gonna be honest: I don’t understand Gikuyu politics enough to appreciate his political essays (I think the closest english term I have to describe the issues he writes about is “tribalism” but that’s not quite right) but I did like his short story An Affair to Dismember, which I found for free here

-Sony Lab’ou Tansi: This guy is one of the GREATS of 20th century African writing, but since he was Congolese (he lived in both Kinshasa and Brazzaville) most of his writing is only available in French, and English translations can be really hard to come by. I’ve been able to find a couple of his books translated, but I heavily suspect the translations themselves aren’t great: there’s a real difference in quality between the structure of the plot/the pacing of certain scenes (a lot of foreshadowing, dramatic irony, and repetitions on a theme), and the actual sentence-to-sentence writing style, which I found hard to stay engaged with. Like a lot of African writing, I’ve found that Tansi has a tendency to introduce a lot of plot points, minor characters, and political analogies, but he doesn’t hold the readers hand or focus on any one thing in particular, so you have to either take notes or be okay with not really “getting” everything he has to say. I just finished the Antipeople, and I don’t want to give away the plot but just know going in to expect a lot of violence, impossible choices, deceit, and upheaval.

-Honorary mention: Jose Eduardo Agualusa is an Angolan writer of Portugeuse/Brazilian descent, so he doesn’t really draw from any inherently Angolan storytelling devices or art movements, but I thought his novel A general theory of oblivian was so so good that it had to be included. At face value, it’s about a old Portuguese settler colonialist living in Luanda who quite literally walls herself into her apartment for three decades to avoid dealing with the Angolan war. This novel is translated into English and is pretty easy to find, and the translation is exceptionally done-it is a very short book and not a word is wasted. Expect some fun experiments with a mixed epistolary and prose format, some very honest descriptions of European bigotry/white supremacy, and a lot of very real, very human side characters.

that’s all for now, let me know if you have any recommendations?

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noxasojaxuj · 2 years

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At dev english to bengali dictionary pdf manuale

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viwebeximug · 2 years

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English grammar sentence formation pdf editor

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letaqejoma · 2 years

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Russian alphabet sounds pdf writer

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greysanswer · 2 years

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Synonym for monolingual

#Synonym for monolingual full#

Greek, all of the first paragraph and each following paragraph up to the end of the first quoted exampleĨ.Latin, all of the first paragraph, each paragraph giving the definitions, and the first quote for each numbered definition.A rule for how much of the D-L to translate. I propose using the core vocabulary lists from Dickinson college. The D-L dictionary has too many entries to start from.

#Synonym for monolingual full#

where the D-L abbreviates, copy that except when they are abbreviations of names of authors, reference sources, languages etc but otherwise unabbreviate the word (so if the D-L refers to a reference from Terence as Ter., copy that, but if they prefer to prosody as Pros., translate that into the full unabbreviated term)Ħ.

in Greek, use polytonic characters (and no combining characters) and use iota adscript rather than subscript.

don’t use smallcaps (in case this does not work on some systems).

put an empty line between each paragraph.

don’t use tab for new paragraphs: left align on the same margin all text, and don’t use tab or more than single spacing anywhere within an entry.

đ2pt Times New Roman for the quotes part.

đ4pt Times New Roman for all parts of the dictionary entry other than the quotes part.

I propose copying the D-L dictionary for that language A dictionary entry format, and spelling conventions, to copy. I propose the Cambridge English Dictionary online: ģ. For Greek I propose LSJ 9th edition including supplement, here. The most authoritative dead to living (D-L) dictionary. The aim is to produce a dead to dead (D-D) dictionary. if not, it probably proves that even if theoretically possible the work invested in it seems less productive than continuing to slog through texts. i'd be willing to work on it here and there with others if there was any interest. i was thinking about this today and came up with the following. i have no view personally on whether this is ultimately going to be useful (because as i said earlier the one thing i've always wanted to see is research on whether immersion in a dead language activates some language learning part of the brain not activated by bilingual materials) but this doesn't mean i can't visualise how the work product might turn out. Hi all, i think ultimately the proof of whether this exercise of working on a monolingual dictionary could be useful is actually (a) looking at how it might look concretely and (b) seeing whether there is any appetite to produce one.

#Synonym for monolingual

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immersedinfrench · 2 years

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Language Learning Tip:

Use a monolingual dictionary as soon as possible!

If you don't understand the definition in the monolingual dictionary, then look it up in your native language. I highly recommend trying out the monolingual dictionary and using those definitions on your flashcards!

Here are my online French dictionary recommendations:

Larousse

Wiktionnaire

#French language #language learning #langauge learning tips #langblr #french langauge

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nordic-language-love · 3 years

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Language Learning Log 2021 - Week 13 (22.03 - 28.03)

Norwegian

2x online lessons (1h 45m total)

Watched 1x Side Om Side episode

Watched 1x Nytt På Nytt episode

Watched 1x Mummidalen episode

Watched 2x Superkrim episodes

Read 2x chapters of Harry Potter og Føniksordenen

Wrote 2x journal entries

Worked on a written task

Listened to 1x Uillustret Vitenskap podcast

Mysteriet om Nils ch 38 exercises + ch 39 reading

Listened to the radio

Japanese

Wrote sample sentences with new vocabulary

Kanji drills

Watched 2x grammar videos on youtube

Listened to the radio (passive listening)

Duolingo: Hobby 1

Norwegian

It always amazes me how some days I feel like I barely understand anything and then others I understand so much. Recently I’ve felt like I barely understand anything at all, but then this week everything has felt super easy - I watched an episode of Side Om Side on Monday and had absolutely no trouble understanding the vast majority of it, even though I distinctly remember the last time I watched it I ended up just turning on subtitles because I had no idea what was going on. Then later in the week I watched an episode of Nytt På Nytt without subtitles and understood it really well for like the first time ever (not every single word, but definitely more than just getting the gist of it). And when I listened to Uillustrert Vitenskap, I had no trouble understanding that either.

I had an extra online lesson this week with a different tutor to my usual one. Classes with this tutor focus a lot on grammar, and they really highlight how shit my grammar actually is. But he’s good at explaining why certain prepositions or phrases or words are used, which is absolutely what I need, and it does feel like I’m progressing towards C1 (I’m a loooong way away, but I feel like I’m going in the right direction). So hopefully my grammar will gradually become less shit lol. I’ve booked in another lesson with him in two weeks time.

Also, I started reading Harry Potter og Føniksordenen. I’ve been highlighting new words as I go along but not necessarily looking them up (most words I can guess from context anyway), and when I do look things up I use a monolingual dictionary. Overall I’m quite pleased with how much I understand and how much things make sense and seem normal now. I remember the first time I tried to read a Harry Potter book in Norwegian I was overwhelmed by “unnecessary” prepositions and word order being different to what I was used to. Now it all seems... right and normal haha. I’m probably not explaining this very well.

All in all, this week felt good for Norwegian.

Last week’s goals

Mysteriet om Nils ch 38 exercises [5/5] ✅

1x written task [215/300 words] ❌

Read a chapter of Harry Potter og Føniksordenen [2/1] ✅

Watch 4x TV episodes or broadcasts [5/4] ✅

This week’s goals

Mysteriet om Nils ch 39 grammar sections

Read 4x chapters of Harry Potter of Føniksordenen

Watch 3x TV episodes or broadcasts

Start the langblrwotdchallenge & make a post for every day

Japanese

I listened to the radio while playing Final Fantasy this week. I still understand nothing, but I can pick out a few words here and there, and I feel like I’m getting more used to the rhythm and sound of the language.

I had my first “this is too difficult I’m never going to learn this language what’s the point” moment this week. But then I stumbled across Japanese Ammo with Misa on youtube and her way of explaining things makes a lot of sense to me, so now I’m back to feeling like, yes it’s difficult but I’m still making progress! And at the end of one of her videos she made a point that Japanese people love it when people try to speak even a bit of the language, which really inspired me to keep going. I may never reach a high level of Japanese - heck, I may never get past the N5 stage - but knowing that a small amount of broken Japanese will go a long way makes me want to learn as much broken Japanese as possible.

I didn’t get round to all the writing/kanji practice I’d hoped to do, so I’ll try to do some more of that this week.

Last week’s goals

Writing practice on at least 2 days [1/2] ❌

Kanji drills on at least 3 days [1/3] ❌

Duolingo: increase Hobby 1 skill to level 2 [6/6] ✅

Listening practice on at least 3 days [3/3] ✅

This week’s goals

Writing practice on at least 2 days

Kanji drills on at least 3 days

Duolingo: start Family 2 skill

Listen to 2x Nihongo con Teppei episodes

Other

I’ve been enjoying training outside this week. I was a bit hesitant to do yoga in public by the lake because it feels a bit obnoxious to me, but it was actually pretty awesome (even in 4-degree weather with a breeze that made it feel like -1). I’ve also been enjoying waking up a bit earlier, getting up between 6:30 and 7am to exercise. On the whole I’m more of a morning person, so getting up earlier feels really good to me and I end up getting a lot more done.

Last week’s goals

Stretch on at least 3 days [3/3] ✅

Train pole/hoop on at least 2 days [2/2] ✅

Train at home/outside on at least 2 days [3/2] ✅

Practise with fans ❌

This week’s goals

Stretch on at least 3 days

Train pole/hoop on at least 2 days

Train at home/outside on at least 2 days

Do something creative on at least 2 days

#progress report #langblr #language blog #learning languages #norwegian langblr #japanese langblr

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perennialessays · 3 years

Text

A: Michaelmas Term. The Colonial, the Postcolonial, the World: Literature, Contexts and Approaches (A/Core Course)

The A course comprises 8 1.5 hour seminars and is intended to provide a range of perspectives on some of the core debates, themes and issues shaping the study of world and postcolonial literatures in English. In each case the seminar will be led by a member of the Faculty of English with relevant expertise, in dialogue with one or more short presentations from students on aspects of the week’s topic. There is no assessed A course work, but students are asked to give at least one presentation on the course, and to attend all the seminars. You should read as much in the bibliography over the summer – certainly the primary literary texts listed in the seminar reading for each week. The allocation of presenters will be made at the meeting in week 0.

Week 1

Theories of World Literature I: What Is World Literature?...What Isn’t World Literature? (Graham Riach)

This seminar will consider what we mean when we say ‘world literature’, looking at models proposed by critics as Emily Apter, David Damrosch, the WReC collective, and others. The category of ‘world literature’ has been in constant evolution since Johan Wolfgang von Goethe popularised the term in the early 19th Century, and in this session we will explore some of the key debates in the field.

Primary:

+ David Damrosch, What is World Literature? 2003

+ ------ What Isn't World Literature, lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfOuOJ6b-qY

+ WReC (Warwick Research Collective), Combined and Uneven Development: Towards a New Theory of World Literature

+ Extracts from Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Karl Marx and Friechrich Engels, Franco Moretti, Pascale Cassanova, Emily Apter and others.

Secondary:

+ David Damrosch, World Literature in a Postcanonical, Hypercanonical Age in Haun Saussay ed, Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization 2006 pp.43-53

+ Franco Moretti, Conjectures on World Literature, New Left Review 1 2000 54-68

+ Mariano Siskind, ‘The Globalization of the Novel and The Novelization of the Global: A Critique of World Literature’, Comparative Literature 62 (2010) 4: 336-60

Week 2

English in the world/Language beyond relativity (Peter McDonald)

Primary:

+ The Oxford English Dictionary (especially 1989 print edition and online, 2000-)

+ You should also read Sarah Ogilvie, Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary (2012)

+ Florian Coulmas, Guardians of the Language (2016)

+ Perry Link’s short essay ‘The Mind: Less Puzzling in Chinese? (New York Review of Books, 30 June 2016), which is available via: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/06/30/the-mind-less-puzzling-in-chinese/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Krugman%20on%20King%20Als%20on%20Martin%20Cole%20on%20police&utm_content=NYR%20Krugman%20on%20King%20Als%20on%20Martin%20Cole%20on%20police+CID_9def725d3263b14fe6dce4894ed64907&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=The%20Mind%20in%20Chinese

Secondary:

+ Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, or The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah, 1998 (French edition, 1996)

+ Charles Taylor, The Language Animal (2016)

Preparation

A (2 students: position papers, maximum 1000 words, on ONE of the following. Please ensure both topics are covered. Also bring along a handout with your key quotations—copies for the entire group) 1. Explain the significance of the epigraphs from Glissant and Khatibi for Derrida’s argument and analysis in Monolingualism. 2. Explain Taylor’s distinction between ‘designative-instrumental’ and ‘expressive-constitutive’ theories of language.

B (all remaining students: single-sided A4 handout—copies for the entire group) Browse the OED, especially using the online feature that allows you to group words by origin and/or region, and select ONE loanword from a non-European language. On one side of an A-4 sheet give an account of the word, explaining why you think it has particular significance in the long history of lexical borrowing that constitutes the English language and the shorter history of the linguistic relativity thesis

Week 3

The (Un)translatability of World Literature (Adriana X. Jacobs)

This seminar will examine the role of translation in the development of the category of world literature with a particular focus on the term “translatability.” We will consider how translation into “global” English has shaped contemporary understandings of translatability and how to reconcile these with the more recent turn to “untranslatability” in literary scholarship. To what extent are the parameters of world literature contingent on a translation economy that privileges certain languages, authors and texts over authors? What room is there in current configurations of world literature for works that “do not measure up to certain metrics of translational circulation” (Zaritt)?

Primary:

+ Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (New York: Verso, 2013)

+ “To Translate,” in Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon, Barbara Cassin, ed., ed. and trans. Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra, and Michael Wood (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014): 1139- 1155. (read introduction online: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10097.html)

Secondary:

+ Antoine Berman, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign,” trans. Lawrence Venuti, in The Translation Studies Reader, 3rd edition (New York/Abingdon: Routledge, 2012): 240-253.

+ Johannes Göransson, “‘Transgressive Circulation’: Translation and the Threat of Foreign Influence,” Cordite Poetry Review (November 1, 2016): www.cordite.org.au/essays/transgressive-circulation.

+ Ignacio Infante, “On The (Un)Translatability of Literary Form: Framing Contemporary Translational Literature,” Translation Review 95.1 (2016): 1-7

+ Lydia Liu, “The Problem of Language in Cross-Cultural Studies,” in Translingual Practice:Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900-1937 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995): 1-42

+ Ronit Ricci, “On the untranslatability of ‘translation’: Considerations from Java, Indonesia,” Translation Studies 3.3 (2010): 287-301.

+ Saul Zaritt, “‘The World Awaits Your Yiddish Word’: Jacob Glatstein and the Problem of World Literature,” Studies in American Jewish Literature (1981-) 34.2 (2015): 175-203.

Week 4

Literature and Performance of the Black Americas (Annie Castro)

In this seminar, we will engage with a variety of writings by Black authors across the Americas that emphasize issues of race, nationality, cultural heritage, and performance. This course will serve as an introduction into critical debates regarding the complex interchange of Afro-diasporic persons, ideas, and discourse across the Western Hemisphere. Please come prepared to share a short (approximately 200 words), informal written review of the assigned readings. This review, which is intended to aid group discussion, should place the assigned texts in conversation with one another, particularly in regards to their conceptualizations of race and culture in artistic expression.

Primary:

+ Erna Brodber, Louisiana (1997)

Secondary:

+ DeFrantz, Thomas and Anita Gonzalez, “Introduction.” In Black Performance Theory (2014)

+ Edwards, Brent Hayes. “Prologue,” “Variations on a Preface.” In The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (2003)

+ Harris, Wilson. “History, Fable, and Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas” (1970). In Caribbean Quarterly: The 60th Anniversary Edition (2008)

Week 5

Theories of World Literature II: Is World Literature Beautiful? (Graham Riach)

Traditional definitions of world literature are heavily based on the idea of universal cultural value. This seminar will consider some of the main issues in universalist conceptions of world literary value, particularly in relation to aesthetics, and the role of interpretive communities in dealing with distances in time, culture and language.

Primary:

+ Simon Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton University Press, 2014)

+ Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012)

Secondary:

+ Isobel Armstrong, The Radical Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)

+ Bill Ashcroft, ‘Towards a Postcolonial Aesthetics’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 51, 4 (2015), pp. 410-421

+ Elleke Boehmer, ‘A Postcolonial Aesthetic: Repeating Upon the Present’, in Janet Cristina Şandru Wilson and Sarah Lawson Welsh eds., Rerouting the Postcolonial: New Directions for the New Millennium (2010), pp. 170-181

+ Peter de Bolla, Art Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)

+ Simon Gikandi, ‘Race and the Idea of the Aesthetic’, Michigan Quarterly Review, 40,2 (2001), pp.318–50.

+ Peter J. Kalliney, Commonwealth of Letters: British Literary Culture and the Emergence of Postcolonial Aesthetics (Oxford: OUP, 2013)

+ Catherine Noske, ‘A Postcolonial Aesthetic? An Interview with Robert Young’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 50, 5, 609-621 (2014)

+ Rethinking Beauty, special issue of diacritics (32.1, Spring 2002)

Week 6

Cultural Memory and Reconciliation (Catherine Gilbert)

In this seminar, we will explore representations of conflict and its enduring impact in narratives from South Africa and Rwanda. In particular, we will consider questions surrounding the relationship between testimony and literature, how writers work to convey the complex nuances of trauma and memory, and the role of literature in remembrance and reconciliation.

Primary:

+ Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit (London: Atlantic Books, 2004 [2001]).

+ Jean Hatzfeld (ed), Into the Quick of Life. The Rwandan Genocide: The Survivors Speak (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2008).

+ Please also listen to: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘The Danger of the Single Story’ (TED talk, 2009): https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Secondary:

+ Jean Hatzfeld (ed), Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, translated by Linda Coverdale (New York: Picador, 2005). Esp. the chapters ‘In the shade of an acacia’, ‘Remorse and regrets’, ‘Bargaining for forgiveness’, and ‘Pardons’.

+ Madelaine Hron, ‘Gukora and Itsembatsemba: The "Ordinary Killers" in Jean Hatzfeld's Machete Season’, Research in African Literatures, 42.2 (2011), pp. 125-146.

+ Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull (London: Vintage, 1999 [1998]). Esp. Chapter 3, ‘Bereaved and Dumb, the High Southern Air Succumbs’, pp. 38-74.

+ Achille Mbembe, ‘African Modes of Self-Writing’, Public Culture, 14.1 (2002), pp. 239-273.

+ Ana Miller, ‘The Past in the Present: Personal and Collective Trauma in Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit’, Studies in the Novel, 40.1-2 (2008), pp. 146-160.

+ Zoe Norridge, Perceiving Pain in African Literature (London: Palgrave, 2012)

+ Richard Crownshaw, Jane Kilby and Antony Rowland (eds), The Future of Memory (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). Esp. the introductions to each of the three sections on memory, testimony and trauma.

Week 7

Comics and Conflict: Witness, Testimony and World Literature? (Dominic Davies)

In this seminar we will explore the seemingly prevalent tendency of the use of comics –that is, sequential art that combines juxtaposed drawn and other images with the (hand)written word – to depict conflict zones in geo-historical areas as diverse as Palestine, Bosnia and Afghanistan. Why have comics, a highly mediated form that draws attention to the contingency of its own perspective, been used to document witness testimonies from war zones across the world? How do comics, constructed from a sophisticated architecture of borders and gutters, communicate these testimonies across national borders, perhaps even forging alternative kinds of ‘world literature’?

Primary:

+ Joe Sacco, Safe Area Goražde (2000), Palestine (2001)

+ Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, and Frederic Lemercier, The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders (2009)

Secondary:

+ Ayaka, Carolene, and Hague, Ian eds., Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels (2015)

+ Chute, Hillary, ‘Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative’, PMLA 123.2, 45-65 (2008)

+ ——, Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (2016)

+ Denson, Shane, Meyer, Christina, and Stein, Daniel eds., Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads (2014)

+ Hatfield, Charles, Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature (2005)

+ Mehta, Benita, and Mukherjee, Pia eds. Postcolonial Comics: Texts, Events, Identities (2015)

+ Mickwitz, Nina, Documentary Comics: Graphic Truth-telling in a Skeptical Age (2015)

+ Worden, Daniel ed. The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World (2015)

Week 8

World Poetry: A Case Study from India (Rosinka Chaudhuri)

Here, we will look episodically at the development of modern poetry in India in relation to the world; that is, we shall see how the world entered Indian poetry at the same time as it transformed poetry in the ‘West’. The very word for poet - ‘kavi’ - began to be redefined as the Sanskrit word came in contact with modernity in the nineteenth century, at the end of which we have the phenomenal figure of Tagore, who was perhaps the first ‘World Poet’ recognised as such from East to West. The decades of the 1960s-’80s - when Pablo Neruda was common currency and Arun Kolatkar sat at the Wayside Inn in Bombay - to present-day studies of multilinguality and the role of translation shall be explored to devise a notion of poetry in the world over time as it happened in India.

Primary:

+ Buddhadeva Bose, ‘Comparative Literature in India’, in Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature, Vol. 45; see http://jjcl.jdvu.ac.in/jjcl/upload/JJCL 45.pdf

+ Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes,’ in Partial Reccall: Essays on Literature and Literary History (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2012)

+ Amit Chaudhuri, ‘Arun Kolatkar and the Tradition of Loitering,’ in Clearing A Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2008).

Secondary:

+ Roland Barthes, ‘Is There Any Poetic Writing?’ in Annette Lavers and Colin Smith translated Writing Degree Zero (1953; New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

+ Rosinka Chaudhuri, The Literary Thing: History, Poetry, and The Making of a Modern Cultural Sphere (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014).

+ Bhavya Tiwari, ‘Rabindranath Tagore’s Comparative World Literature,’ in Theo D’haen, David Damrosch and Djelal Kadir ed. The Routledge Companion to World Literature (London: Routledge, 2012).

+ Deborah Baker, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India (New York and Delhi: Penguin, 2008).

+ Laetitia Zechhini, Arun Kolatkar and Literary Modernism in India: Moving Lines (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)

+ Anjali Nerlekar, Bombay Modern: Arun Kolatkar and Bilingual Literary Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016).

#oxford #world literature #A Course #the colonial the postcolonial the world: literature contexts and approaches

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marcmaccoy · 3 years

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”LA DIVERSIÓN EN IDIOMAS”

The title above is translated as, “The fun in languages”, something that I never really felt and had at the beginning. Ever since the quarantine started, I really did not plan to do anything nor to improve myself in any of my hobbies at all. Maybe it’s because I expected that all these crisis will be over in a week or two, which obviously and sadly, did not happen. Before, I just like to play my musical instruments, paint, and I got into Korean Dramas as well because of my friends. Sometimes, I bond with my pets and do cooking experiments too. All of these are done in order for me to avoid boredom. However, as time goes by, those things became a bit dull to me and I felt the need to discover something new.

Let me share a bit of my journey first.

As I watch Korean Dramas, I got this tendency to copy what they say and it became a habit of mine whenever I want to express something. So instead of saying, “Salamat” or “Thank you”, I often say, “감사”(gam-sa) which is an informal way of saying “Thank you” in Korean. Also, “안녕”(an-nyeong) which means “Hi”, “네”(ne) which means “Yes”, “아니”(ah-ni) which means “No” and many more. At that time, I didn’t know how to read their alphabet yet but because of my curiosity, I’ve thought of studying it. Surprisingly, I learned “한글”(han-geul) or the Korean Alphabet in just a day! Nine total hours to be exact. I was dumbfounded by how I was able to understand that in just a short manner of time. This inspired me to continue moving forward until I decided to finally learn the Korean language.

In the middle of my journey learning the said language, I began to encounter a lot of interesting facts about it. Such as it wasn’t the writing system of Korea before and how it only existed at about 578 years ago during King Sejong’s reign. It is said that “한글”(han-geul) was created in order for people with little to no education could learn how to read and write. Because before, many Koreans are illiterate due to their very complex Chinese-based writing system called Hanja (漢字) which is difficult to understand. Meaning to say, it was created by the King for the purpose of literacy. Also, the shapes of the letters in 한글 was based on the surroundings and how you say it. These are among the facts that I knew while I became deeply interested in Korea’s traditions, history, and cultures. I was so excited to be fluent that time. I even made flashcards to enhance my vocabularies, watched a lot of tutorials on YouTube, surfed many websites on the Internet, and proceeds to watch Korean series. Little did I know, I was going to unexpectedly give up studying this language. Why? Well, when I got into its grammar, I was surprised by how complicated it is. I also saw videos on YouTube about Filipino learners of the Korean Language that aren’t still fluent after years of studying. So I got a bit down and frankly, I lost my motivation.

Even so, my language learning journey did not stop there. I still want to learn a foreign language that interests me other than the ones I already know which is Filipino, my native mother-tongue and English, my second language. I tried Japanese because of Animes but it was a bit complicated too. They have three kinds of writing systems and the grammar is similar to Korean. French because I have a French uncle and a Filipino cousin and aunt which speaks fluent French but when I knew how it sounded and how the words were pronounced, I already lost hope. French pronunciation is too complicated for me. I also dig up about German because my main to-go-to country in the future is Switzerland and of course, I would want to communicate with people there. However, German is laborious too! The words, the combinations of letters, and the grammar is too confusing. Until I finally encountered the language that’s spoken by the first colonizer of my motherland and it is no other than Spanish.

I started by memorizing basic phrases such as, “Gracias”, “De nada”, “Hola”, and a lot more. I was, once again, amazed by how easy this language is spoken. It is because Spanish is a phonetic language. Meaning, the words are pronounced exactly the way they are spelled. Also since Spain colonized my country for about 333 years, we adopted a lot of words from them which are now considered as loan words. It is estimated that about 4,000+ Tagalog and 6,000 Visayan words came from Spain. Some of the examples include baso(vaso), lamesa(la mesa), tinidor(tenidor), kutsara(cuchara), bumbilya(bombilla), and banyo(baño). As well as the number system, the names of the months, days, expressions, greetings, and many more. For this reason, I was determined to continue learning it because unlike in the other languages, there is no need for me to struggle in memorizing new vocabularies.

I did the same things I did to Korean and just added some new tactics. While my school is on a term break after the first semester, I enrolled at a Spanish Beginner course online where we are taught by a Filipino teacher who is fluent in 5 languages: English, Tagalog, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. My cousin from France, who’s also fluent in Spanish, gave me books like Spanish dictionaries and grammar textbooks for writing and reading purposes. I was also able to use my Netflix binge-watching skills and started to watch a lot of Spanish series for listening purposes. And on YouTube, I began to discover facts about Spain. Their rich culture, history, and traditions, and how their language was influenced by Arabic as well. Additionally, Spanish is the 2nd most spoken language in the world, surpassing the English language, having over 460 million native speakers located in Spain and in Latin American countries. It is also the 3rd most used language on the internet. That’s a lot of people to talk to!

Furthermore, did you know that being multilingual gives your brain several remarkable advantages? Some of it can be seen such as higher density of the grey matter that contains most your brain’s neurons and synapses. It also helps our brain engage in more activities in certain regions where that language is spoken. And although not yet definitively proven, learning many languages decreases the rate of having dementia by 5 years! In addition, more businesses nowadays are seeking applicants who can navigate the modern global economy. It can be seen that in the 21st Century, knowing a second language is not only beneficial, but necessary for success in life. The continual globalization of the world’s economy is bringing diverse cultures and communities into more frequent contact with each other.

Looking back in time, I was nothing like this way before the quarantine started. Learning languages was never really included in my interests. But now, it is! In fact, I am even determined to shift my college course to something related to languages and pursue a master’s degree about linguistics. Indeed, it changed my life. It changed how I see things from a monolingual perspective and it opened a new horizon for me. Gladly, I was even able to have Spanish speaking friends! I have this one friend from Peru who speaks fluent Spanish and I happily encountered Spanish native people here in Facebook who are trying to learn a different language as well.

Overall, my experience was a blast! There are times that I became tired and almost lose my motivation because of how slow my progress is. But even so, I will not give up. I am not fluent yet and I still have a lot to know but I will keep on practicing until I become one. I believe that in the near future, it will open new opportunities that will be helpful for me too. Moreover, It has always been my dream to travel and I truly think that language learning will be an aid to that. Hoping that I’ll be able to talk to that nearing 500 million people soon!

Before I end my blog, I just want to share this quote from Charlemagne, also known as Karl and Charles the Great, a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe during 768-814, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.”

Bueno. Eso es todo. Gracias por su tiempo leyendo mi blog. Espero que encuentres algo interesante. Además, a aquellos que están aprendiendo otro idioma, nunca perder la esperanza! Pronto seremos fluidos.

Truly, there is fun in languages.

#languages #languagelearning #spanish #korean #french #german #learninglanguages #studying #culture #idiomas #linguistics #fun #writing #reading #listening #speaking #journey

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