Category Archives: Language Technology

Studying Mandarin via online game

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Kevin

American middle school and high school students who want to study Mandarin Chinese can look to the Internet for a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) (article (registration required). Zon – The New Chengo Chinese is an expansion of … Continue reading →

Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology | Comments Off

MS Office embraces Australianisms

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Kevin

If you’re Australian and using MS Word or other MS Office products, you’ll soon get fewer words marked as spelling errors. After a recent online word-survey with over 24,000 voters, Microsoft Office 2007 will include more Australianisms like sickie and … Continue reading →

Posted in Dialects, Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Language-Sites, Words / Dictionaries | 1 Comment

Follow-up: Oral language-play for speech impaired

Posted on October 6, 2006 by Kevin

Back in August I posted (Oral language-play for speech impaired) about the System to Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using Puns (STANDUP) project that helps speech-impaired children develop language analysis through puns. The Discovery Channel has a little more information. The program: … Continue reading →

Posted in English as a Second / Foreign Language, Foreign Languages, HUMOR, Humor Research, LANGUAGE, Language Media, Language Technology, Linguistics | Comments Off

Signing animation, VR to teach math to Deaf

Posted on September 29, 2006 by Kevin

Two professors, sign language researcher Ronnie Wilbur and animator Nicoletta Adamo-Villani, at Purdue University (Indiana, U.S.) are developing computer animation and virtual reality (VR) using motion capture of human signing to teach math/maths to signing Deaf children via American Sign … Continue reading →

Posted in LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Sign Languages | Comments Off

Camera-phone dictionary input

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Kevin

Japan’s Mediaseek (site) has announced a cellphone/mobile phone dictionary with which you can look up an English word in the English-Japanese dictionary by scanning it with the phone’s camera. With this “Camera Dictionary” (カメラ辞典, Kamera-jiten), you can also get access … Continue reading →

Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Words / Dictionaries | Comments Off

Oral language-play for speech impaired

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Kevin

Researchers at the Universities of Dundee, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh in Scotland have developed experimental pun-generating software for children who use computerized assistance to communicate. It’s called System to Augment Non-speakers Dialogue Using Puns (STANDUP). Kudos to the researchers for recognizing … Continue reading →

Posted in HUMOR, Humor Research, LANGUAGE, Language Technology, Linguistics | 1 Comment

More languages for Internet speech synthesis

Posted on August 5, 2006 by Kevin

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is working to update Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) to let people use the Internet more easily via cellphones/mobile phones in languages that distinguish words not only by vowels and consonants but also by … Continue reading →

Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology | 1 Comment

More writing systems for Internet addresses

Posted on August 5, 2006 by Kevin

According to a recent article in the Guardian Unlimited, the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC) is working to facilitate internationalized domain names (IDNs) for the Internet: Web site URLs and E-mail addresses available in other writing systems like Chinese characters. … Continue reading →

Posted in Foreign Languages, LANGUAGE, Language Technology | 1 Comment

IBM Viascribe transcription device

Posted on August 2, 2006 by Kevin

Viascribe, an in-development speech recognition/dictation device for making college lecture transcripts available to deaf and hard of hearing students, is being broadened to English as a second language students and corporate uses, such as teleconferencing. Liberated Learning Consortium, an IBM-university … Continue reading →

Posted in English as a Second / Foreign Language, LANGUAGE, Language Technology | Comments Off

Spell checker, heal thyself

Posted on July 31, 2006 by Kevin

Note: The following fits into both “LANGUAGE” and “HUMOR,” so it’s the first category-shattering post. Please install the SafetyGoggles plugin before reading it. TextTrust, an Internet spell checking company, issued a press release with a typo. They wrote “we pages” … Continue reading →

Posted in Comedy / Humor Media, HUMOR, LANGUAGE, Language Error, Language Technology | Comments Off