Babel

The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas. There's a heaven above you, baby.

Babel

Archives for August, 2010

Prises de vues interdites

Posted by  on Tuesday, August 31st 2010     

Contexte : Sur les quais de la Goulette, le port de Tunis. Les pêcheurs rentrent à terre à l’aube après une sortie en mer. Arrivé à Tunis depuis quelques jours déjà, je décidai d’aller au port tôt un matin pour y prendre des photos du retour de la pêche. Je me levai alors à 5h [...]

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Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

Posted by  on Monday, August 30th 2010     

I truly enjoyed reading the article, Does Your Language Shape How You Think? by Guy Deutscher in the New York Times Magazine, because the linguist author shows how different languages appreciate color, space, directions and gendered nouns and how these differences may effect the way we see and experience the world. As a speaker of [...]

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Si ou Non: Learning French debate in the UK

Posted by  on Saturday, August 28th 2010     

I’ve read several articles from the UK criticizing the Labor government’s move in 2004 to not make it obligatory for schools to teach foreign languages to 14-16 year olds. I can’t believe a government in this day and age thinks foreign languages are not of supreme importance. This BBC piece by Will Smale, Should British [...]

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L’Immolation pour Saint Thaddée

Posted by  on Wednesday, August 25th 2010     

Contexte : Pendant le pèlerinage arménien en l’honneur de Saint-Thaddée, à mi-chemin entre l’église-monastère et le village d’éleveurs voisins, en bordure d’une petite rivière. Le pèlerinage en l’honneur de Saint Thaddée suivi par la communauté arménienne d’Iran battait son plein depuis l’aube du jour précédent. En ce jeudi matin de juillet, j’avais décidé d’aller prendre [...]

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CBS interview about foreign language learning

Posted by  on Wednesday, August 25th 2010     

Here is my interview about how to learn foreign languages easily and my book Language is Music on August 22, 2010 on CBS. My interview was after the leggy Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and before a clip from “Beauty and the Beast”. I was in good musical company:) The reporter was interested in the [...]

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Bilingual nannies in demand!

Posted by  on Thursday, August 19th 2010     

I had heard that Chinese speaking nannies were in high demand in New York City, but I didn’t know that other languages were also popular. The article Looking for Baby Sitters:  Foreign Language is a Must in the New York Times is good news! It’s inspiring to see monolingual parents actively seeking out bilingual baby [...]

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How to learn foreign languages using music & media

Posted by  on Monday, August 16th 2010     

“How can you speak so many languages with such good accents?” This is a common question I get as I speak seven languages (Russian, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian and Italian) with perfect or almost perfect accents. I didn’t spend years majoring in foreign languages in college or specialize in pedagogy. I did take foreign [...]

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Une défaite au backgammon

Posted by  on Monday, August 16th 2010     

Contexte : Une maison de thé tenue par des émigrés de Turquie d’origine Kurde, dans le 10ème arrondissement de Paris. J’aime me promener dans le petit quartier turc de Paris, coincé entre trois rues à proximité de la mairie du Xème arrondissement. C’est dans cette zone que se trouvent concentrés la plupart des commerces tenus [...]

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Night Garden: Surreal Photography

Posted by  on Friday, August 13th 2010     

The photographic collage Night Garden uses digital manipulation to create a surrealistic architectural landscape that propels the viewer to look deeper into the center of the doorway, and by doing so, to ponder the reality of the space.

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Spiral Stairs: Surreal Architectural Photography

Posted by  on Thursday, August 12th 2010     

As a work of surreal photography, this fine art collage combines three fractal forms, the elegantly curving organic form of the stairs, the branching trees, and the digitally cloned yellow and purple scaffolding into a mystical composition with its own logic and cohesion.

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