There are a few topics I am interested in that I don’t post on here because they are probably way too narrow and geeky to be of much use to most people. A borderline one is linguistics. If anyone wants more of these recommendations, say so in the comments.
Category Archives: Language
An island where they talk by whistling.
There are more videos on this. Search for “Gomeran whistle” or the Spanish phrase “silbo gomera.”
How did we start writing?
This is not light viewing, and the viewer has to pay attention, but it’s an interesting one worth watching.
Words are fun.
Could you learn a whole new way of reading?
I worked with a guy once who had served at a U.S. Navy base in Japan. He made an interesting observation: as an English-speaking person, if you live in a country where they use the Roman alphabet, you can remember the words you see on streets signs and so forth even if you can’t pronounce them and don’t know what they mean. But in Japan if you’re lost the street signs are of a lot less help because we aren’t used to the characters we see.