adj characterised by legs falling off.
eg. “Daddy, I’m scelolytic. Pick me up.”
From Greek σκελος part, leg + λυω to loose, unhitch.
Variant Podilytic.
Seek and you may find
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Scelolytic
‘Al Gore’ quotes from over a century before
A couple of curious Wikipedia lookups in the realm of History turned up an intriguing Irish-origin French General who gets remembered for unfortunate quotes, including these:
- Concerning the floods of the Garonne river of 1875, in Toulouse he exclaimed “So much water! So much water!” (Que d’eau! Que d’eau!).
- After the Republicans’ victory in the elections of 1877, Léon Gambetta told him to “submit or resign (se soumettre ou se démettre) to which Mac-Mahon replied: “I’m here. I’m staying here!” (J’y suis. J’y reste!)
- On typhoid: “Typhoid fever is a terrible sickness. Either you die from it or you become an idiot. And I know what I’m talking about, I had it.” (La fièvre typhoïde est une maladie terrible. Ou on en meurt, ou on en reste idiot. Et je sais de quoi je parle, je l’ai eue.)
- On the Foreign Legion during the Battle of Magenta: “The Legion is here, it’s in the bag!“ (“Voici la Légion! L’affaire est dans le sac!”).
I think I like the typhoid one best.
Posted in Odd
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Surprisingly effective fan-less laptop cooling in hot places
I never really had a problem in the UK with my MacBook Pro getting too hot, but Nigeria’s another story.
With ambient temperatures often around 35°C rather than 20°C, and when stressing the processor a fair bit, the processor was often running up to 90s°C, so that the fan had to kick on. Eventually it had to even slow down the processor to protect it. All of that is bad news for battery life and component life and it is uncomfortable to have such a beast on your lap! What’s the solution? Continue reading
Posted in News
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Here’s a great site about using WeSay to document languages and collect words for dictionaries from someone working in East Congo.
New keyboards for typing Nigerian languages
I’ve issued my first releases of keyboards for typing special Nigerian letters easily on a Mac.
These facilitate producing the following special letters: əɛɨɔa̱e̱u̱i̱o̱ɓɗƙ₦, and hígh tóne, lòw tòne, fâllîng tône, and nãsãl fõrms.
Posted in Minority Languages
Tagged IPA, keyboard, language development, Linguistics, Nigeria
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Instant Linguistic Workstation: just add netbook and stir
For linguists and Bible translators frustrated with the many problems of Windows machines (mainly viruses) this looks quite interesting: A beta release of Balsa ‘Basic Language Software Appliance’:
Wycliffe and Vision 2025
Nigeria’s a great example of a place where Wycliffe’s Vision 2025 needs to be worked out. But what’s that vision? Here’s a video to explain in general:
Nigeria has the complete Bible in 19 or 20 languages. It has over 500 living languages. There are quite a few languages with New Testaments, but still over 300 with nothing much at all and which probably need translation. So if an exceptionally ambitious 20 projects started every year, it would still take over 15 years for all the projects needed just to start. But then they can only go somewhere if churches/Christians locally, elsewhere in Nigeria and in the world can fund them, if more translation/linguistics consultants and teachers and IT support personnel come to help the teams along etc.
Posted in Bible Translation
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OK, headlines sometimes grab the reader unjustifiably, but this is a bit too much:
RAIL WORKERS’ WIVES DESERT
On 20 June, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) commenced long distance intercity service between Minna and Kaduna (158km)…
and if you read the (mildly interesting) article you’ll find out it’s about Nigeria opening up railways, but nothing at all about any wives deserting anyone!
Updated ReallyOnline
ReallyOnline, the Mac OS X dashboard widget for seeing and hearing when the internet comes and goes, has been updated to version 1.2.
Main new feature: turn the voice on or off!
Posted in Mac OS X
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Swearing
That’s another workshop finished and one issue that always crops up for translation teams is what to do with Key Biblical Terms – important words and concepts that have a lot of significance and come up throughout the Bible. Often there’s a term in the translators’ language that seems an instinctively good match, but which ends up giving completely the wrong idea to the reader/hearer. One such term is often ‘swear’. Continue reading
Posted in Bible Translation
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