Of Mice and Muscles

In the European sphere there appears to be an interesting interplay between the words for “mouse” and “muscle”. Continue reading

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Web-Logging the Recovery

After a month of industrious work-for-hire, it’s time to devote some of the same fanaticism to getting in shape both physically and financially.

This winter was brutal; luckily, most of the external stressors have already been checked after a drawn-out spring back-and-forth. I’m going to log and blog getting ripped for autumn and cutting the fat from my budget.

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How to Reproduce your Synesthesia

Copyright 2011

The Hoary Question of Synesthesia and Phonetics

Synesthesia refers to the simultaneous conversion of one type of sense data (color, smell, sound, touch) into another. Some people feel tactile sensations when they listen to music, others see colors when they read text. I have always seen colors in my “mind’s eye” when thinking about phonetics and historical sound change, I am positive that I am not alone in that regard. I am delightfully shocked that the colors I have seen in my mind’s eye can be reproduced below in a mathematical manner.

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Are the words mother, meter, and music all related?

There was recently an interesting post on one of our favorite blogs, bradshaw of the future, regarding a statement by a well-known doctor regarding the kinship of the words.

Myth, mother, mater, meter, matter, time, music, mata, matrika, measurement, they’re all the same word. They refer to the womb of creation.

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atha

अथ

transcription: atha
meaning: behold!
origin: o-to?
cognates: Polish oto, Russian vot, Proto-Slavic ata

This is a variation on Sanskrit ta-h (PIE to-s), which is the source of the English word the. Continue reading

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How to Talk to Translation Agencies as a Freelancer

Many translators are unnecessarily verbose. Agencies don’t really want you, they want your product – and within their budget. Many people write beautiful long cover letters, but these are never going to be read. Continue reading

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Choosing a Freelance Translation Specialization

To make a long story short: pick specializations as if you were choosing a major and second major when going to university. These will be the fields that you will be learning all about and working in. Continue reading

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Wikyos "village" – an interesting inherited Indo-Slavic word

*wikyos “village”
Sanskrit vit, viś-, Avestan vīs-, Slavic vьsь, but Latin vīcus, Greek woikos

note: why -i- stem in the East and -o- stem in the West?

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Some things never change – words that are still identical

*gwrīvā “neck”
Sanskrit grīvā, Avestan grīvā “neck”, Slavic griva “main, neck of a horse”
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On the Similarities Between Slavic and Iranian

Two language families, Slavic and Iranian, have much in common historically and phonetically. Common phonetic changes have led to a situation where there is a similar “feel” to both languages, leading many scholars to speculate on a “Slavic-Iranian” league of languages. Continue reading

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