Tag: English

Bionic Duckweed

bionic duckweed, noun

An as-yet-non-existent innovation, hyped with the aim not to sell it or to invent it, but simply to put a stop on or stalling the actually-existing competition.

In its broader sense, bionic duckweed can be thought of a sort of unobtainium that renders investment in present-day technologies pointless, unimaginative, and worst of all On The Wrong Side Of History. […] A a sort of promissory note in reverse, forcing us into inaction today in the hope of wonders tomorrow.

from Bionic Duckweed: making the future the enemy of the present.

Mother’s Day Haikus

Here some Haikus for Mother’s Day:

Mothers never stop
No weekends nor holidays
A whirlwind of care

Ein Geschenk Allahs
Zu Füßen das Paradies
Auf Erdn zu Lieben

Tanten wie Mütter
Unermüdlich, hilfsbereit
Sonntags Kaffeklatsch

Sadly this is not from me. :/

Anne Babamız
Allah dâim korusun
Cennette mekân

Double Positive = Negative

A linguistics professor was lecturing to her class one day. “In English,” she said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah . . .right.”

Source: http://www.enginesofmischief.com/makers/evan/humor/doublenegative.html

Fixing Bioshock’s Language Settings

I got myself Bioshock 1 and 2 during Steam’s Summer Sale and just came around to play it.
After installation I found out that the game was in German (while my Windows and Steam are in English)!?!? … I hate dubbed films and games!

Sadly Bioshiock doesn’t allow you to change the language in the settings menu so I had to look around. After piecing together information from several 5+ year old, outdated forum posts I found the solution.

  1. Close the game
  2. Open C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Bioshock\bioshock.ini
  3. Find the 
    [Engine.Engine]

      section

  4. Set 
    Language=int

      (“int” is for international i.e. English)

  5. Save the file and restart the game

Everything should be in English now. 😀

A Feast For Language Geeks

My brother just gave me a great present for ‘Eid: he sent me a link to the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center’s (DLIFLC) Language Survival Kits. It’s unsurprisingly a little heavy on the vocabulary necessary/useful for foreign occupants (yay, USA!) … but it’s still a lot of fun. 😀

They provide the same set of sentences in several dozen languages with translations, transliterations and native writing. To top it off they have audio samples for unfamiliar sounds in each language and with a native speaker saying the sentences out loud and then saying them slow in order for you to repeat them … awesome! 😀

Interesting omissions from the list are German and South Korean, while the list even contains separate entries for several regional dialects of Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Pashto, etc. … o.O