Publisher Jiyu Kokuminsha recently released its annual list of the 60 most popular Japanese expressions of the year. The words and phrases reflect some of the major trends, events, and people that captured the attention of the Japanese mass media in 2009. Included are plenty of references to Japan’s recent political shake-up, the ailing economy, and the blurring of traditional gender roles.

German researchers have discovered that babies may start bonding with their mothers by trying to imitate the accents and speech patterns they hear while in the womb. The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German. The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.

A device that can more or less instantly translate any language as someone speaks it has long been a dream of science fiction. And while the NEC TeleScouter isn't quite the Babelfish you're looking for, it's a step in the right direction. Unfortuantely, the device is quite a bit bulkier than it appears in the photo below. It requires a computer strapped to your waist, which then transmits the info to a remote server that does the translation.

ICANN, the nonprofit body that oversees Internet addresses approved Friday the use of Hebrew, Hindi, Korean, Chinese, Arabic and other scripts not based on Latin characters in a decision that could make the Web dramatically more inclusive.

From NPR:

In the most extensive cross-national study ever, Philip Seymour of Dundee University and his team compared the reading abilities of children in 15 European countries. They found that those learning Romance languages such as Italian and French progressed faster than those learning a Germanic language such as German and English. "Children do seem to find English particularly complex and problematic though," says Seymour. The problem with English seems to be those pesky weird context-relative consanents.

I love the way Germans string words together in a way that few other languages have the balls to and create words for conditions that many other languages don't recognize. Thanks to German, we have words like earworm, schadenfreude, gestalt, gemütlichkeit, angst, zeitgeist, doppelganger, Fahrvergnügen, realpolitik and ubermensch. So it's no surprise that the three German youth words of the year are equally as awesome.

This is pretty cool-- it's a user-contributed dictionary of words heard on NBC's The Office or made up words for things there should be words for. Think of it if you will as an Office wiki-dictionary or the Urban Dictionary version of slang from The Office. Words like: "man-fresh: Bathing at the sink of restroom, most typically the men's room, using damp paper towels, in an attempt to freshen up after some mid-day exertion" or "fwidgerling: An unidentified object that is or was stuck in one's shoe.

When I was in high school, we had several foreign exchange students living with us and so of course this sort of thing is the first thing a teenage boy does when he encounters a friend who speaks a foreign language-- hey tell me how to say "pussy" in Swedish.

Time for some English lessons in Japanese! No, we're not saying stupid things like "Where is the bathroom?" or "Please direct me to the library" or "No sushi, thank you." Instead, we'll learn how geishas learn important phrases like "You make my juices flow" and "I'm hornier than a bitch in heat". Happy traveling!

"You're so good!"

"You make my juices flow!"

"I give good head"

"I'm feeling hornier than a bitch in heat"

"I can't stand it any longer, give it to me baby"

Via: Cotton and Sand