hello, I'm a newbe :D
i have a question, yesterday I saw this video on youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch

many of those galaxies I've never
seen before.. are they all real?
and can someone please tell me their names?
plz help!

Need urgent help, please.

I'm editing a Ukrainian translation of a 'Ghost Whisperer' episode for TV. Here's a piece of dialogue from it (between Melinda and a detective who was acquainted with a deceased woman whose ghost Melinda is helping):

- You were telling her about your first arrest.
- She told you that? It was just a purse snatcher. I chased him into this lake and collared him about chest-deep in water.
- And for 2 weeks after that, you had flippers in your locker and wet wings on your desk.
- She laughed so hard.

What kind of 'wings' could those be? (The translator just rendered it literally).

Thanks everyone in advance.

UPD: SOLVED.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020908.html

Older woman: She's still a butthead for moving out so soon.
Girl: Grandma, she had a baby!
Older woman: I don't care.

--Brooklyn Heights

Overheard by: JEI

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020907.html

Guido: Excuse me, miss? Miss? Have I seen you in my church?
20-something girl: No.
Guido: No, no, I definitely saw you in my church. We go to the same one.
20-something girl, sighing: Sir... If I went to any house of worship, it'd be a synagogue. And I stay as far away from those as possible. Have a nice day now.
Guido: Aaaaawww, I liiike you!

--82nd & Broadway

My husband just linked me to this article/post, which I found quite interesting, and relevant to this comm, so I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Legos & language

Quick summary to decide if you want to click:
A father and son use Legos frequently; son has friend over and they have minor incident over the "name" of a type of piece - father realizes children tend to name them, but clearly different children choose different names - makes a simple survey of a few children to compare what they call all the pieces.

It sounds a little dull from that, but it really was an interesting read, and some surprising differences & similarities arise in the children's naming. Check it out. =)

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020906.html

Park ranger: Boat to New Jersey to the left, New York to the right.
Guy heading to boats: Why would we ever want to go to New Jersey?
Park ranger: Good question.
K-9 cop: I guess you won't be visiting me... I'm living in exile over there.

--Liberty Island

Overheard by: ZANSR

Hi everyone,

I am looking into renting a  video camera on campus. Has anyone had any experience with this? Please help me out if you have. I tried searching the website but I came up empty. Thanks in advance!

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020905.html

Guy: I'll give you what I normally give you.
Girl #1: A toothbrush?
Girl #2: A penis in your face.

--113th & Amsterdam

So, I have a tongue-tie, aka ankyloglossia. If you aren't familiar, it basically means my tongue is tethered far too far forward. I can't stick my tongue out more than maybe at most a centimeter. And even then, only in a V-shape since the tip of my tongue is held back by the tie. Most of my childhood I had to go to speech therapy classes because I wasn't able to make "TH" sounds and "F" sounds distinctly different. (Needless to say, it was pretty freakin' rotten to be an elementary kid in 'speech therapy'.. endless taunting, but that's beside the point.)

The problem is, I'm trying to learn Arabic and my pronunciation sounds awful because I can't perform the proper trilling motion with my tongue to roll the "R"s. Makes me rather embarrassed to even try speaking in front of anyone.

Has anyone else dealt with this problem in Arabic or any other language that rolls their "R"s? Anybody got any suggestions on how I can make this sound? Or at least some way to fake it? It's extremely frustrating. I've contemplated getting surgery to correct it, but it's rarely done on adults (usually this problem is corrected shortly after birth) and it's expensive (and probably not covered by my insurance either.)

So... any suggestions out there? Rolling "R"s with a tongue tie, anyone? I'd really appreciate some guidance, thank you! =)

Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I think my best luck is going to be faking the sound in the back of my throat or finding a dialect that doesn't emphasize the trill. Beyond that, I may have to consider looking into the surgery eventually anyway... it would be nice to have some tongue mobility for other aspects of life too. ;)

Hi all!

I've taken CHIN 111 and CHIN 212, the first two courses in the sequence for Chinese for heritage speakers, at my university. However, because of a class conflict, I wasn't able to take CHIN 313 and won't be able to take the next class in the sequence next semester because of it. I still want to learn Chinese though and get up to a level of fluency.

So I was wondering—what online resources (or books that I can look for at my library) do you guys recommend for a heritage speaker learning Chinese? At my school, completion of 212 is equivalent to completion of 204, or four semesters of Chinese, putting me at roughly an intermediate level. So either materials that teach Chinese for heritage speakers or intermediate-level Chinese would be great. Also, this is a little nitpick, but I prefer learning traditional characters.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020904.html

Hipster chick with "valley girl" accent: Ya, like, ohmigod, ewwwwww... So I was reading Cosmo, and like, there was this story, about like, guys' confessions, you know? And like, this random guy actually said, like, "Sometimes, I rub my dick on my cat's fur, and it feels good."

--Washington Square Park

10-year-old girl to another: I bet his idea of a hot girl is the crazy cat lady across the street.

--34th St, Astoria

Overheard by: Samantha

Woman to another: I have a friend in Belgium now--we both have cats!

--One World Financial Center

Overheard by: macgeekgrl

Brunette on phone: Do you want to play with your cat or do you want to play with me?

--60th St b/w Park & Madison

Overheard by: Adam B.

20-something on cell: And when I woke up, I had no idea where I was. Then I realized I was spooning his cat.

--Houston & Broadway

Overheard by: J Cox

man, i really love doing trippers on days like today (stat holiday that has a rush hour). im able to consistanly finish my trip on express routes ranging from 8 to 12 min early.

really forwrd to xmas eve!

Dear Linguaphiles,

This may be a somewhat unusual request... I'm trying to convince my (French Major) advisor to let me change my senior project. We've been reading nothing but Molière's plays, and next semester we'll be expected to write a paper on a topic having to do with Molière.

I enjoy Molière, but this has been done SO OFTEN. And I know I'm not well-informed enough to be contributing anything new to the field. I hate feeling like I'm wasting my time.

One of the women doing Honors in the major (which I should have done, but was misinformed...) is translating a book that she had read for a previous class. I don't know what it is, but it's a collection of (autobiographical?) stories by French-speaking Algerian women, I believe. She's translating the book into English, then writing a short paper on the life of Algerian women, plus another short paper on her experience translating the book.

... I WANT TO DO THIS.

However - and here's where my real question comes in! - I have no idea where to find French books that haven't yet been translated. As far as I can tell, I have to pick something either really obscure or really, really recent. I'd like something *worthwhile* - does Camus have any unpublished works or letters? What about Sartre, Hugo, Racine, even Molière? Or is there a particularly interesting collection of letters somewhere - perhaps by one of les précieuses? - that has NOT been translated into English before? I'd like a book of between 50 and 250 pages, if possible... Those are probably the absolute limits.

Any suggestions of books, or of resources? A novel, a collection of letters, a critique, an analysis... something having to do with French history, philosophy, or culture, if it's not actual fictional literature.

Thanks so much for anything you can suggest!! I want to have some ideas before I try to convince my advisor that this would be a good alternative project for me, even being proposed this late in the year.

My Kodak Easyshare camera kind of broke (the lens part of it wont come out all the way) I know I can send it into Kodak to get it fixed, but is there any where in Ottawa I can take it to get it fixed? (I know it's a cheapish camera, but I just bought an $80 memory card for it so I want to get it fixed if I can).


Also, Can anyone recommend a Travel Agent who has experience with Caribbean vacations. I want to get some quotes for a group vacation (I'm also looking into going directly though Air Canada Vacations).


Thanks!

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020903.html

Man on cell: Yeah man, she is so not anyone that I would be willing to invest years in... I mean I don't want to have to spend my time actually working on it. I figured, hell, I kind of want to wake up next to someone a couple of days a week, so I might as well hang on through the summer. No, she has no idea...

--Columbus & 62nd St

Grad student: They have this symbiotic relationship in which he does all the eating and she does all the drinking.

--Columbia University

Woman to herself: God, I asked you for a good man; not a fucking joke!

--Spring & Hudson

Overheard by: Oscar Gamble

Firefighter to others: It's not that I have anything against commitment; I just like diversity.

--125th St Fairway

Overheard by: Just Shoppint

Man in shorts to another: I wouldn't date a girl with double vision, period.

--Williamsburg

Overheard by: Dr No-Eyes

Businesswoman to hobo: If you get back in the dating scene, I'll kill you.

--Houston & Lafayette

Overheard by: Homeless guy must be hung

Hi, does anyone know how I can get a family doctor in Ottawa? I moved here from Toronto in February and I still haven't been able to find one who is accepting new patients.

thanks in advance.

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020902.html

Guy wearing a promotional cardboard to another: I think I'm going to treat myself to health insurance next month.

--Broadway & 43rd St

Overheard by: Maria

Woman on phone: My urologist wanted to stick a microscope up my urethra! (pause) No! (pause) Because it's going to hurt!

--Vandam St & 6th Ave

20-something woman on cell: Yeah, the doctor told me not to exfoliate my labia.

--R Train

Overheard by: Note to self....

Bartender: I gotta get sexy for my doctor tomorrow. I'm gonna be like, "doctor, I need you to examine me. I need you to remove my garments." Nah... I'm just playin'. My doctor's cute, though. For real. I'm just gonna show some cleavage or somethin'.

--Jamaica, Queens

Woman on phone: She wants to be a doctor. She likes it when the guts fall out. (pause) No, she wouldn't do that. She's too lazy to be a serial killer.

--Fox Newsroom, 6th & 48th

Overheard by: Newsbunny

Remembering why we fight: