How to laugh properly in the US of A

Stumbled upon these during my stroll by the sea. I recognize образ "image"/"shape" and дом "house" from a few Slavic languages. Does anyone know what оборище and образцов mean?

Have you ever heard a tale / nursery rhyme / whatever along similar lines to this Galician Yiddish one? (Several of its details remind me very much of one I've discussed in Korandje, but there must be similar forms somewhere in between...)

Two interesting things going on in this sentence: تلبرل talabrala from English liberal, “to liberalise (superficially?).” And إخونجي ikhwanji, with the Turkish suffix -ji, meaning “Ikhwan guy” in a dismissive way. Good examples of how confidently Arabic absorbs foreign element, often to add nuance.

Robert Lorimer forbade his children from speaking English at the dinner table. Hilda ("Hiddo") taught about Greece at Oxford. David published books on Burushaski. William taught Greek at St Andrews & translated the NT into Scots. Gordon wrote a grammar of Pashto & his inimitable gazetteer.

As Translation Editor of Lakeer, I’ve been working on Avaaz, "a project to put marginalised languages in conversation with each other". In this first column on Welsh/Cymraeg, I've translated poems by Menna Elfyn, Iestyn Tyne & Gareth Evans-Jones into Urdu & Panjabi lakeermag.com/avaaz-welsh/

Newly digitized @gallicabnf.bsky.social: 🙏 [trilingual ms. dictionary French-Manchu-Chinese, ca. mid-18th c.] @ gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b... (BnF, Mandchou 280)

Reading an essay by Pamuk on Rushdie's Satanic Verses in Öteki Renkler. Pamuk acknowledges Rushdie’s fondness for wordplay, pointing to his use of Bostan بوستان as the name of a plane, then goes on to translate Saladin Chamcha as Samça, comparing him to Kafka's Gregor Samsa. He prob doesn't realise

Went to Prague for the first time this year. My Czech is rudimentary, so most chats were in English - not ideal. Then on my last day, my taxi driver turned out to be from Bukhara! My longest conversation of the trip was in Persian. Pure bliss!

N4 Kanji Book is released! It's free! Hey! You! Do you like #kanji? Are you studying #Japanese? Here's some free kanji practice for you! It's got kanji! It's got awkward sentences which force a single kanji into them over and over! Download it here: wesleycrobertson.wordpress.com/2025/09/04/n...

Issue 1:1 of the journal Arabic Linguistics is now available online. Our Dr Uri Horesh is one the editors of the journal. The issue is available here: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

Fall into your #Yiddish studies at the Workers Circle! Registration opens mid-September with classes for all levels. Here’s a sneak peek at our incredible instructors and the courses they’re teaching this semester. Find the full details here: shorturl.at/40WWq and sign up here: shorturl.at/mRCZa

Ustad Qamar – rat-catcher Fee per rat/mouse 60 rupees Urdu doesn’t differentiate between rat & mouse, though the word چوہا chūhā is more common for rat & the fem. form چوہیا chūhiyā for mouse. This is similar to the usage of موش mūš in Persian & فأر faʾr in Arabic, both gen used for both mouse/rat

Thrilled to share that I'll be soon starting a PhD in Welsh this year, exploring the elegiac traditions of Welsh (marwnad), Persian & Urdu (مرثیہ/marsiya),with a focus on hist tragedies like Karbala & Cilmeri at Bangor University. Deeply grateful to have full funding from Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol

Probably the first person from Shahpur to have made it to the Welsh Learner of the Year competition finals Hapus iawn o fod ar restr fer Dysgwr y Flwyddyn eleni شیئت میں شاہپور چ جمن آلا پہلا بندہ ہاں جہڑا ویلش سکھن آلیاں دے مقابلے دی اخیرلی منزل تائیں اپڑیاں

Darllenwch fwy yma:

🗣️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Llongyfarchiadau i Leanne Parry, Rachel Bedwin, Hammad Hassan Rind a Lucy Cowley sydd wedi cyrraedd rhestr fer Dysgwr y Flwyddyn Eisteddfod Wrecsam

This is μούτζα (moutza) / φάσκελο faskelo, a traditional Greek gesture of insult and contempt. It reminds me of a similar Sindhi gesture, ٻڄو (bbujjo) - or ٻُڄه (bbujja) in Saraiki and Shahpuri - which carries the same cultural meaning.

Beth am roi copi o Chwarter Eiliad i dad arbennig?! 💙💙xx

װער װעט בלײַבן? װאָס װעט בלײַבן? בלײַבן װעט אַ װינט, בלײַבן װעט די בלינדקײט פֿונעם בלינדן, װאָס פֿאַרשװינדט. . . װער װעט בלײַבן? גאָט װעט בלײַבן, איז דיר ניט גענוג? Avrom Sutzkever "Who will remain, what will remain? A wind will stay behind. The blindness will remain, the blindness of the blind.

“A grammar of Khowar: descriptive and comparative analysis” by Elena Bashir (June *30* 2025) uclpress.co.uk/book/a-gramm...

Animal History event! 🦁🦤🦌🦓🐿️ Next Wednesday @animalhistories.bsky.social will be hosting a free, online discussion on the Animal History of JAHANGIR 4th Mughal Emperor! 🇮🇳👑 All welcome. Just sign up here and we will send you the primary sources! 💚 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ahg-readin...

Publication day! My new article in ASCHKENAS has appeared: "The Mother Tongues of Medieval English Jews"—ever wondered if the Jews of medieval England might have spoken English? This article's for you, #medievalsky. Check it out: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Interested in getting more involved in #JewishStudies in the UK and beyond? We'd be delighted to welcome you to our team. As an NGG committee member, you'll get to shape our programmes and connect early career scholars with more senior ones. @jewishhistorical.bsky.social

📢 Applications are open for EHRI-UK Summer placements! EHRI-UK Placements are open to undergraduate and postgraduate students based in the UK looking to improve their employability and learn new skills whilst undertaking project work at museums, archives and charities... buff.ly/e0UihM5

Over the moon for Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi! A historic win on so many levels. Stories of Muslim women from South India, the first Kannada work to win the International Booker, and Deepa’s brilliant, brilliant translation!!

Congratulations to Deepa Bhasthi and Banu Mushtaq, winners of this year’s International Booker Prize. We’re hugely honoured to publish HEART LAMP. Our deepest thanks to the judges and, indeed, to all of you who have read and loved this extraordinary collection.

A new Turoyo (Surayt) - Dutch / Dutch - Turoyo lexicon!

Today I learnt - Koroshi dialect of Balochi

"In September 2025, Aaron Koller will become the first Jew to join [Cambridge University's] department of Middle Eastern Studies as the Regius Professor of Hebrew, a role established by King Henry VIII." @biajs.bsky.social www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-sin...

جنگ نہیں امن

"آج" کے تازہ ترین شمارے میں میرے اردو ناول "پانچویں درویش کا قصہ" کا ایک حصہ شائع ہوا ہے۔ احباب Book N Art کی پوسٹ میں دیئے گئے نمبر پر رابطہ کر کے منگوا سکتے ہیں ۔ شمارے میں ونود کمار شکل، ژولیاں اور جیم عباسی کی کہانیاں بھی شامل ہیں۔

CALL FOR PAPERS: We're seeking papers, position pieces, & practice-led contributions of 20 minutes max, celebrating the art, craft, praxis, and labour of translation — and the new perspectives and futures it makes possible. buff.ly/EsJxOmw

Wondering about the etymologies of the words for "to fold" in Arabic (طوى ṭawā, verbal noun طي ṭayy), Persian (تا / تا کردن tā/tā kardan), & Urdu (تہہ کرنا teh karnā), which sound similar despite seeming unrelated. Also, Urdu uses طے کرنا (tai karnā) idiomatically to mean "to cover" (a distance)

Un o'r nifer o bethau newydd a diddorol a ddysgais i o'r bennod @yrheniaith.bsky.social ar Yr Wylan gan Dafydd ap Gwilym oedd bod y gair dyn, sy'n cael ei ddefnyddio'n gyffredinol am "man" (yn Saesneg), hefyd yn gallu golygu "merch" yn yr ystyr o berson "Grudd y ddyn lanaf o Gred"

Former Welsh national poet Ifor ap Glyn has been on 160-mile poetry tour of Wales to raise money for refugees ✍️Emily Price buff.ly/D7tGJta

"Since it is only recently that the Moslems have conquered the Land of the Rhomaioi and begun to sail the seas, most of the terms and names given to things pertaining to ships and to the sea are some Spanish, some Italian and some Greek; ... " Epigraph by Hadji Khalifa (1609-1657)

Came across this Urduized form of the word sober in an online comment. The word is fairly common in spoken Urdu, used in the sense of 'sensible,' 'serious' or sometimes even 'graceful' - though never in the sense of 'not drunk.' I found the choice of the letter ص for representing the 's' interesting

Very excited about this شدت سے منتظر! #Urdu

Three different realizations of the letter غ (/ɣ/ in Arabic and Classical Persian) across 3 modern varieties of Persian, acc to the Wiktionary entry for سوغات. Unsurprisingly, the Dari variant retains the classical pronunciation, while the Tajik variant is reportedly pronounced like the French /ʁ/?

Pages from a 1924 edition of ‘La Rose de Bakawali’ by Garcin De Tassy, French translation of the famous Urdu tale ‘Mazhab-e Ishq’(Gul Bakawali) by Nihalchand Lahori, which was in turn based on Izzat Ullah Bangali’s Farsi version. Illustration by the Russian artist Boris Zvorykin.

Also in the Persian Gulf, but Persian Wikipedia gives the names fīl-e daryåyi ‘elephant of the sea’ and gåv-e daryåyi ‘cow of the sea’. No idea what it is in the smaller languages of the Persian coast. What about coastal Gulf Arabic?

דו זאָגסט: "דו ביסט ייִד און ביסט דיכטער און שרײַבסט ניט קײן לידער פון חורבן. ווי קען דאָס אַ ייִדישער דיכטער ווען גרויס אזוי גרויס איז דער חורבן?" You say: "You are a Jew and a poet And you've written no poems On the destruction. How can a Yiddish poet not, When the destruction is enormous So enormous?"

Revisiting a favourite etymology: Φουκαράς (foukaras) meaning 'poor', 'pitiable', which I first came across in a WWII-era Greek song by Sophia Vembo (youtu.be/1w6bv_V7Shk). The word sounded familiar, and just as I'd imagined, is from Arabic فقراء fuqarā, pl of فقیر faqīr 'poor' (via Turkish fukara)

Finally got my hands on this translated Urdu mystery from 1957 based on this recommendation (together with its masterful alt text). Totally old school and generally a silly delight. Please scroll down to enjoy some of the book’s internal skulls, swords etc. that help keep you in the mood as you read

For someone who grew up reading Ibn-e Safi’s Imran Series, stumbling upon this today via @jay-king-art.bsky.social was a delightful surprise. The series revolves around Ali Imran, an eccentric detective and spy. As a kid, I was especially fascinated by Imran’s flair for languages. One instance that

Join us next week for the talk 'Writing Jerusalem, Erasing Jerusalem: on Arabic and Hebrew texts in the streets of modern Jerusalem' by Yair Wallach @yairwallach.bsky.social 📅 Tuesday 29 April, 6pm (GMT) 📍 Avenue Campus (Southampton) & online Register now 👉 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/writing-je...

Larry David writing a NYT guest essay as a man having dinner with Hitler, just to roast Bill Maher as a smug, self-important clown, is the stuff of comedy legend. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/o...

Meer Baqar Ali, considered the last traditional 'dastan-go' (storyteller) of Delhi, loved tea. According to him, the ideal cup of tea should have 3 qualities : 1. 'Lab band' - excessively sweet (lit. 'lips shut') 2. 'Lab rez' - a full/overflowing cup 3. 'Lab soz' - piping hot