Biting The Wax Tadpole

Download or read book Biting the Wax Tadpole written by Elizabeth Little and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Chinese shopkeepers tried to find a written equivalent of Coca-Cola, one set of characters they chose was pronounced “ke-kou ke-la.” It sounded right, but it literally translated as “bite the wax tadpole.” Language, like travel, is always stranger than we expect and often more beautiful than we imagine. In Biting the Wax Tadpole Elizabeth Little takes a decidedly unstuffy and accessible tour of grammar via the languages of the world—from Lithuanian noun declensions and imperfective Russian verbs to Ancient Greek and Navajo. And in one of the most courageous acts in the history of popular grammar books, she attempts to provide an explanation of verbal aspect that people might actually understand. Other difficult and pressing questions addressed in Biting the Wax Tadpole include: *Just what, exactly, the Swedish names of IKEA products mean *Why Icelandic speakers must decide if the numbers 1-4 are plural *How Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) was able to take an otherwise unexceptional pair of breakfast foods and turn them into literary fodder for generations *Why Joanie Loves Chachi was Korea’s highest rated television show ever *Why Basque grammar seems downright kooky to just about anyone who isn’t a native speaker

Download or read book Biting the Wax Tadpole written by Elizabeth Little and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2008-06-05 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can Johnny Cash�s lyrics teach us about the little-known Tangut dialect? Is �tabernacle� really a swear word in Quebecois? Which language has absolutely no verbs? What is Earth�s politest insult? And what is biting the wax tadpole actually a translation of?* Prepare for a hilarious rollercoaster ride through hundreds of well-known, obscure, difficult, dead and even made-up languages. Elizabeth Little has waded through innumerable verb tables in every available mood and tense, untangled up to eighteen cases of noun, and wrestled with all kinds of complicated adjective, participles and glottal stops to bring you the best and most bizarre quirks of the ways people communicate all around the globe. From the language that has no different word for �blue� or �green�, to why Icelanders need official permission to name their children, from what makes a Korean TV hit to what people might think you�re saying if you order eggs in Spain, Biting the Wax Tadpole will ensure you�re never lost for words again. *Coca-Cola, would you believe it?

Download or read book For God, Country, and Coca-Cola written by Mark Pendergrast and published by . This book was released on 2000-03-17 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of the Coca-Cola soft drink company.

Download or read book Trip of the Tongue written by Elizabeth Little and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the author's travels throughout the country, where she witnesses firsthand the nation's many cultures and languages and what they say about who we are individually, socially and politically.

Download or read book Pretty as a Picture written by Elizabeth Little and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Wall Street Journal, Seattle Times, and CrimeReads Best Mystery Book of 2020 "Funny, fast-paced, and a pleasure to read." --The Wall Street Journal An egomaniacal movie director, an isolated island, and a decades-old murder--the addictive new novel from the bestselling author of Dear Daughter Marissa Dahl, an up-and-coming film editor with a flair for faux pas, travels to a small island off the coast of Delaware to work with the legendary--and legendarily demanding--director Tony Rees on a feature film with a familiar logline. Some girl dies. It's not much to go on, but the specifics don't concern Marissa. Whatever the script is, her job is the same. She'll spend her days in the editing room, doing what she does best: turning pictures into stories. But she soon discovers that on this set, nothing is as it's supposed to be--or as it seems. There are rumors of accidents and indiscretions, of burgeoning scandals and perilous schemes. Half the crew has been fired. The other half wants to quit. Even the actors have figured out something is wrong. And no one seems to know what happened to the editor she was hired to replace. Then she meets the intrepid and incorrigible teenage girls who are determined to solve the real-life murder that is the movie's central subject, and before long, Marissa is drawn into the investigation herself. The only problem is, the killer may still be on the loose. And he might not be finished. A wickedly funny exploration of our cultural addiction to tales of murder and mayhem and a thrilling, behind-the-scenes whodunit, Pretty as a Picture is a captivating page-turner from one of the most distinctive voices in crime fiction.

Download or read book Design, User Experience, and Usability. Theory, Methods, Tools and Practice written by Aaron Marcus and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The two-volume set LNCS 6769 + LNCS 6770 constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2011, held in Orlando, FL, USA in July 2011 in the framework of the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011, incorporating 12 thematically similar conferences. A total of 4039 contributions was submitted to HCII 2011, of which 1318 papers were accepted for publication. The total of 154 contributions included in the DUXU proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on DUXU theory, methods and tools; DUXU guidelines and standards; novel DUXU: devices and their user interfaces; DUXU in industry; DUXU in the mobile and vehicle context; DXU in Web environment; DUXU and ubiquitous interaction/appearance; DUXU in the development and usage lifecycle; DUXU evaluation; and DUXU beyond usability: culture, branding, and emotions.

Download or read book Dear Daughter written by Elizabeth Little and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Pretty as a Picture, a sensational thriller featuring an unforgettable heroine who just might have murdered her mother • Winner of the Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel • Nominated for the Barry and Macavity Awards for Best First Novel • Longlisted for the CWA John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger Award “Quick-witted and fast-paced.” —People magazine “A really gutsy, clever, energetic read, often unexpected, always entertaining.” —Kate Atkinson "This is an all-nighter . . . The best debut mystery I've read in a long time."—Tana French Former “It Girl” Janie Jenkins is sly, stunning, and fresh out of prison. Ten years ago, at the height of her fame, she was incarcerated for the murder of her mother, a high-society beauty known for her good works and rich husbands. Now, released on a technicality, Janie makes herself over and goes undercover, determined to chase down the one lead she has on her mother’s killer. The only problem? Janie doesn’t know if she’s the killer she’s looking for. Janie makes her way to an isolated South Dakota town whose mysteries rival her own. Enlisting the help of some new friends (and the town’s wary police chief), Janie follows a series of clues—an old photograph, an abandoned house, a forgotten diary—and begins to piece together her mother’s seemingly improbable connection to the town. When new evidence from Janie’s own past surfaces, she’s forced to consider the possibility that she and her mother were more alike than either of them would ever have imagined. As she digs tantalizingly deeper, and as suspicious locals begin to see through her increasingly fragile facade, Janie discovers that even the sleepiest towns hide sinister secrets—and will stop at nothing to guard them. On the run from the press, the police, and maybe even a murderer, Janie must choose between the anonymity she craves and the truth she so desperately needs. A gripping, electrifying novel with an ingenious and like-it-or-not sexy protagonist, Dear Daughter follows every twist and turn as Janie unravels the mystery of what happened the night her mother died—whatever the cost.