Laten we lekker leerzaam doen

Interessante dingen & interesting things

[hadewicht]

The Most Disastrous Typos In Western History

While typos are usually harmless little annoyances, sometimes they can completely change the meaning of a religious edict, embarrass a nation, or cause an engineering project to end in disaster. Here are some particular doozies from the history of typos.

[hadewicht]

Naughty Nuns, Flatulent Monks, and Other Surprises of Sacred Medieval Manuscripts

"Imagination is a much freer thing in the margins of a book; it’s allowed to run amok."Kaitlin Manning, an associate at B & L Rootenb...

[hadewicht]

Prikschilder

Het woord dat tot het einde van de achttiende eeuw gebruikt werd voor tatoeëerder. 

De trema in de nieuwe benaming indachtig, stel ik voor om dit terug in gebruik te nemen.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

In the year 2 billion the Doctor  finds out that there are three great works of human literature that shall never be forgotten.

[wayward-mobs]

#WeNeedDiverseBooks has been trending on Twitter for a while, and I’m glad to see it.

So I made a website called Kwerey.com to help people find books that represent them: you can search for books with a female main character, a POC as a main character or a bi or lesbian main character…

This is specifically about genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy in particular, but also romance, crime fiction etc) by women, because those are the things I realised I’d hardly read any of and really wanted to!

if you’re into those things, please drop by and check it out. it’s designed like a wiki: if you make an account, you can add books and post reviews, or even link to a review on your own website! the more different peoples’ bookshelves there are in the database, the more awesome a resource it’ll be for readers everywhere.

(And if you’re into other genres and you’re interested in doing something similar, feel free to get in touch!)

[tastykake]

You have five hundred a year. From who? Five hundred what? No one knows. No one cares. You have it. It’s yours. Every year. All five hundred of it.

How To Tell If You Are In A Jane Austen Novel | Mallory Ortberg (via tastykake)

[damienkempf-deactivated20170504]

We know of only a few examples of heart-shaped Books of Hours, all dating from the 15th or the 16th century. Here is the list of the four presented here:

Biblioteca Oliveriana, 1144, 16th c.

KB, Thott 1510, 1550s.

BnF, latin 10536, 15th c.

BnF, Rothschild 297, 15th c.

[harveymilkmustache]

Oh my god I was comparing the censored and uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray again and in the uncensored version Lord Henry has 27 pictures of Dorian in his possession but they censored it to be 17. 27 whoa way too gay bring that down to a reasonable heterosexual number like 17 no homo! 

[kozacy]

one thing I believe all Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans have in common is that we’ve on at least one occasion mistakenly said “ice bear” instead of polar bear

[drhairball]

In Dutch, we don’t say amount, we say hoeveelheid, which would literally translate into howmuchness, which I think sounds absolutely moronic.

[dduane]

[iamtheparadoxoflife-deactivated]

WATCH THIS VIDEO IT’S THE COOLEST THING I’VE EVER HEARD. 

Accents all over Britain. 

[internetmessiah-deactivated2017]

I’ve decided I want to be cremated. Not when I die, just whenever. Surprise me.

[talaricula]

#THE FUNNY THING IS THAT THE DUTCH WORD FOR CREMATION IS ‘VERASSING’ #SIMILAR TO THE DUTCH WORD FOR SURPRISE: ‘VERRASSING’ (x)

[beholdingslut]

things linguistics has taught me: do not fuck with the welsh

[scipsy-blog]

[powerflouncing]

Test Your Vocabulary: how many words do you know?

Most Native English adult speakers who have taken the test fall in the range 20,000–35,000 words. And for foreign learners of English, we’ve found that the most common vocabulary size is from 2,500–9,000 words.

I scored 21,500 FUCK YES

[agentmapal-blog]

25,200 - nice and in the middle :)

[cherribalm-deactivated20140609]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

[bumblebeebabie]

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

[the-clutterhead]

[hadewicht]

European word translator: an interactive map

Translate any word from English to more than 30 other European languages, on a map