What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of a Japanese summer? A new poll reveals whether those in their 20s and those older than 40 think of the same thing. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/07/05/language/japanese-summer-words-fireworks/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #life #language #nihongo #vocabulary #heat #summer #heatstroke #jlptn3

Digital #language #inclusion is crucial for #equitable #participation in #socialmedia, especially for marginalised communities.

🤝 #Federated social services support vulnerable #languages, preserving #culturalidentity and fostering #belonging.

🏡 #Regional and #country-focused servers create #culturallyrelevant environments, promoting #civicdiscourse and #economicmobility.

👉 https://jaz.co.uk/2025/07/01/digital-equity/?Fedizen.EU#Fedizen#Fediverse#ActivityPub#News

For non-native speakers, reading Japanese books can expand your mind and offer fresh perspectives — about not only Japan itself, but any topic you can name. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2025/06/30/voices/japanese-books-gateway/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #community #voices #language #expats #reading #japaneselanguage #bookstores

Sometimes I think about how words in different languages don't match 1:1. Today it's hat - Hut

English "the hat" = German "der Hut" (pronounced, roughly, like "hoot"), more or less.

The thing is, German doesn't use "Hut" as an umbrella term as much as English does "hat". "Eine Kappe" is not ein Hut, while "a cap" is a hat.

Ein Hut must have a brim all around, otherwise it's eine Mütze, not ein Hut.

(cont.)

#Language #Hats

A little reminder to everybody on climatejustice.social (but it similarly also applies to all Mastodon servers).

If you're posting mostly in one language, please go to https://climatejustice.social/settings/preferences/other and set your primary posting language, if you haven't yet. It does not have to be the same as your interface language.

While you're there you can also filter languages. If you select any of the languages in the list, then only posts in that or those languages will display in public timelines for you. This does not work if people set their posts to the wrong language though.

If you regularly switch languages, please try to make a habit of manually selecting the posting language every time.

Apart from the language filters, some other advantages of setting the correct language:
* climatejustice.social and many other servers have a built in translation function, but it only works if the language is set correctly (this is especially important for moderators - you'll be making our live a lot easier)
* Alt text is also translated, so for accessibility, please always write your alt text in the post's language
* trends are language specific. if you set your posts to the wrong language, you could be spamming the trends for that language
* your account is recommended to people based on the set language(s) of your posts, if your privacy settings allow account recommendation
* if someone follows you and you post in different languages and actually set them correctly every time, they can go to your profile and select which of your languages they wand to subscribe to

#language #accessibility #translation #mastodon#BestPractices

Once you learn the terminology for kabuki, step farther into the world by recognizing the classical Japanese used in its scripts. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/06/26/language/japanese-kabuki-terms-language/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #life #language #nihongo #vocabulary #kabuki #theater

🚨New Publication Alert!🚨
‬ Theresa Matzinger and I have written a little review of " #Language Evolution as an Interdisciplinary and Integrative Research Field."
Out now in "Contemporary #Linguistics Integrating Languages, Communities, and Technologies."
Preprint of our contribution here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/fkpcn_v1

The English proficiency of public junior high school and senior high school students in Japan continues to improve, an education ministry survey for fiscal 2024 showed Monday. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/24/japan/english-proficiency-improvement/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #language #mext #juniorhighschools#highschools #language #english #surveys

Social web lingo proposal:
✘ Follow
✔ Join

What if we thought of ourselves as communally "with" – rather than linearly "following" (or its variant "supporting") – each other?

#SocialWeb#Language

"In Mandarin Chinese, World Wide Web is commonly translated via a phono-semantic matching to wàn wéi wǎng (万维网), which satisfies www and literally means "10,000-dimensional net", a translation that reflects the design concept and proliferation of the World Wide Web."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

via https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114605076806447333

#internet#TheWeb#WorldWideWeb #chinese #language #linguistics

Reminds me of the localization efforts on Mozilla's Firefox OS several years ago.

"Ibrahima Sarr, a Senegalese coder, led the translation of Firefox into Fulah, which is spoken by 20m people from Senegal to Nigeria. “Crash” became hookii (a cow falling over but not dying); “timeout” became a honaama (your fish has got away). “Aspect ratio” became jeendondiral, a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven."

https://archive.is/2025.01.09-014218/https://www.economist.com/international/2014/09/27/cookies-caches-and-cows

#technology #language #linguistics #translation #localization

I was on semi-holiday this week, which means I had more time to ruminate, which means that I have got unusually ped off about things that I am anyway ped off about.

Today's topic: we linguists have messed up. Big time.

And the result of our messing up is that Big Tech is currently redefining #language. /1

Our collective lack of knowledge about #language is allowing Big Tech to redefine it the way they want. /7