EDX update

I scored 9/10 on the blog post. Got some decent feedback and now have to write another one. Debating my schwa story or my favorite example of how hard it is to translate idioms. That post is due Monday so I guess I'll stew about this for a while. Maybe I'll just write both :)

EDX courses

So the Marvel course got me sucked into EDX MOOC courses. I'm loving them. I've done three now.The Marvel course, one on coding and one on HTML5. I'll be honest, I'm mostly doing the homework and tests without watching all of the videos, but I'm learning and applying the skills to my job.  This time around I'm taking an editing course with a focus on grammar. This is the homework for this week. I decided to publish it so that I can claim it as mine in case of any plagiarism. Sad but true. 

As this week’s topic in my EDX class is about verbs, I’ve decided to focus on a news article for my blog post.  If the assignment was allowed about any grammar topic, I was going to write about the schwa, but with this change in topic, that will be a future post. 

According to The Guardian, a British newspaper, there is a new verb being used by German teens. The verb “merkln” appears to be based on the politician Angela Merkel. From the article, ““Merkeln’, which means being indecisive or failing to have an opinion, is topping a poll to choose Germany’s favourite new ‘youth words’” (read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/04/angela-merkels-influence-now-extends-to-german-slang-merkeln).

The most interesting thing to me about this topic is the evolution of words, how new words enter the lexicon and how quickly social media shares these new terms around the globe.  And while newspapers in the traditional sense are dying, they still manage to have a luster and authority with their online posts. I am willing to consider this discussion because it was published by them as an article and not just because I saw a tweet using it.

Also from the article “The competition has been held by Langenscheidt for the past seven years and aims to reflect the evolving nature of the German tongue. On 31 October, a jury will choose 10 winners – ranking the top five – which will be included in an ever-changing e-book.”  Langenscheidt is a publishing company and I love that they are getting people excited about language.  I think that many languages are open to new words, such as English and German, whereas some languages are protected (i.e., French) and others die from a lack of change (i.e. Latin). Every three months the Oxford Dictionary updates a list of new words (read more: http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/) 

Cleaning out the basement

Finding all kinds of interesting things.  Like the fact that I freelanced for the University at Buffalo in 1998, long before I ever started working here in 2006.  The assignment for Buffalo Physician was Roswell Park focused, and since I started working at RPCI around this time, I guess I just figured it was a part of that job. Turns out it was not. I found the UB contract over the weekend.  I guess I was meant to be here :)

Here is a PDF file from the Buffalo Physician Winter 1999 issue with my three articles extracted. Kind of a fun weekend. Now I have more sorting, scanning and cleaning to do. But perhaps soon my basement will be organized and the stuff I want to keep will be safe.