Book picks similar to
Dirty Sign Language: Everyday Slang from "What's Up?" to "F*%# Off!" by James T. Van
non-fiction
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humor
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Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value
Reed K. Holden - 2012
Regardless of their size, industry, country, customer type, nature of the relationship or amount of value they provide, sales professionals are finding that purchasing decisions are increasingly being limited by procurement. The modern procurement function is purchasing on steroids. Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials attempt to dictate. Procurement deploys a variety of tactics designed to do one thing: gain unprecedented discounts and concessions out of even the most sophisticated sales professionals. This book is a strategy guide for salespeople to help them level the procurement playing field by showing readers how to assess the game procurement plays, describing proven ways to resist discounting and protect margins, demonstrating ways to keep value at the forefront of negotiations, offering targeted tactics to protect hard-earned profits from mindless discounting, and detailing eight strategies effective in any type of pricing negotiation. This book will be an invaluable resource for B2B sales professionals, customer-facing professionals, and executives responsible for leading successful sales organizations.
The World's Major Languages
Bernard Comrie - 1987
Written by acknowledged specialists in the field, the volume begins with a general introduction to language and language families, followed by language-family sections that provide an informative essay about that language, and individual chapters that discuss the history, distribution, syntax, grammar and punctuation, writing and spelling systems, standards of usage, and other important aspects of each language.
Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It
Gabriel Wyner - 2014
At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school -- who does? -- rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources. In Fluent Forever Wyner reveals what he’s discovered. The greatest challenge to learning a foreign language is the challenge of memory; there are just too many words and too many rules. For every new word we learn, we seem to forget two old ones, and as a result, fluency can seem out of reach. Fluent Forever tackles this challenge head-on. With empathy for the language-challenged and abundant humor, Wyner deconstructs the learning process, revealing how to build a foreign language in your mind from the ground up. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You'll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you'll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery, rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you'll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. Soon, you'll gain the ability to learn grammar and more difficult abstract words--without the tedious drills and exercises of language classes and grammar books. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.
Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen
Mary Norris - 2015
Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage—comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language—and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.Readers—and writers—will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise and witty new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, "The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around."
Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting It Right
Bill Bryson - 1984
A revised and updated edition of a humorous primer on the English language, expanded for an American audience, contains entries on correct and questionable usage, a glossary, and a pronunciation guide.
A Journey Into the Deaf-World
Harlan Lane - 1996
Bringing the latest social and cultural findings and theories into sharp focus, the authors take us on a fascinating journey to discover what deaf culture is; the benefits of signed language and deaf culture for deaf children and hearing people; how deaf children are now educated and how they could be; how deaf people integrate into the larger society; the nature of American Sign Language; how technology helps (and hurts) deaf people; what can be learned from deaf societies in other lands; the future of the deaf world. Combining thought-provoking intellectual perspectives with enlightening first-hand accounts of life in the deaf world, this landmark volume is vital for professionals working in fields involving deaf people and for those with an interest in deaf studies.
Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions
Dorothy Richmond - 1996
Containing concise, user-friendly explanations with generous and varied practice, the book helps students develop their knowledge of how and why pronouns and prepositions are used. Plus it encourages students to use the pronouns and prepositions in real-life contexts.
Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World
Benny Lewis - 2014
Lewis is a full-time "language hacker," someone who devotes all of his time to finding better, faster, and more efficient ways to learn languages. Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World is a new blueprint for fast language learning. Lewis argues that you don't need a great memory or "the language gene" to learn a language quickly, and debunks a number of long-held beliefs, such as adults not being as good of language learners as children.
A World Without "Whom": The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age
Emmy J. Favilla - 2017
As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of "correct" writing? When Favilla was tasked with creating a style guide for BuzzFeed, she opted for spelling, grammar, and punctuation guidelines that would reflect not only the site's lighthearted tone but also how readers actually use language IRL.With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of internet-age expression, Favilla makes a case for breaking the rules laid out by Strunk and White: A world without "whom," she argues, is a world with more room for writing that's clear, timely, pleasurable, and politically aware. Featuring priceless emoji strings, sidebars, quizzes, and style debates among the most lovable word nerds in the digital media world--of which Favilla is queen--A World Without "Whom" is essential for readers and writers of virtually everything: news articles, blog posts, tweets, texts, emails, and whatever comes next--so basically everyone.
Anonyponymous: The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words
John Bemelmans Marciano - 2009
Eponymous, adj. Giving one's name to a person, place, or thing.Anonymous, adj. Anonymous.Anonyponymous, adj. Anonymous and eponymous.The Earl of Sandwich, fond of salted beef and paired slices of toast, found a novel way to eat them all together. Etienne de Silhouette, a former French finance minister, was so notoriously cheap that his name became a byword for chintzy practices—such as substituting a darkened outline for a proper painted portrait. Both bequeathed their names to the language, but neither man is remembered.In this clever and funny book, John Bemelmans Marciano illuminates the lives of these anonyponymous persons. A kind of encyclopedia of linguistic biographies, the book is arranged alphabetically, giving the stories of everyone from Abu "algorithm" Al-Khwarizmi to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Along with them you'll find the likes of Harry Shrapnel, Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, and many other people whose vernacular legacies have long outlived their memory.Accented by amusing line portraits and short etymological essays on subjects like "superhero eponyms," Anonyponymous is both a compendium of trivia and a window into the fascinating world of etymology. Carefully curated and unfailingly witty, this book is both a fantastic gift for language lovers and a true pleasure to read.
Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture
Carol Padden - 1988
A long, painful experience of hearing intolerance has generally kept Deaf culture fairly closed to outsiders, even sympathetic ones. But now Padden & Humphries...have written a charming small book that invites the rest of us at least part way in...A most welcome addition to that very small shelf of books that truly illuminate the experience of being deaf.--Beryl Lieff Benderly, Psychology TodayPrefaceIntroductionLearning to be deafImages of being A different center Living in others' world A changing consciousness The meaning of sound Historically created livesReferencesIndex
Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing
I.S.P. Nation - 2008
By following these suggestions, which are organized around four strands - meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development - teachers will be able to design and present a balanced program for their students.Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing, and its companion text, Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking, are similar in format and the kinds of topics covered, but do not need to be used together. Drawing on research and theory in applied linguistics, their focus is strongly hands-on, featuringeasily applied principles,a large number of useful teaching techniques, andguidelines for testing and monitoring,All Certificate, Diploma, Masters and Doctoral courses for teachers of English as a second or foreign language include a teaching methods component. The texts are designed for and have been field tested in such programs.
Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing
Elmore Leonard - 2006
From adjectives and exclamation points to dialect and hoopetedoodle, Elmore Leonard explains what to avoid, what to aspire to, and what to do when it sounds like "writing" (rewrite).Beautifully designed, filled with free-flowing, elegant illustrations and specially priced, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing is the perfect writer's—and reader's—gift.
A Basic Course in American Sign Language
Terrence J. O'Rourke - 1980
Both grammar and new vocabulary is introduced in an intuitive progression to build a solid understanding of the concepts.It is the perfect written complement to the award-winning CD-ROM, Sign Langauge for Everyone. The lessons include:
Pronouns
Adjectives
Negatives
Yes/No Questions and their responses
Negative Questions
Past, Present and Future Tense
Directional and Non-Directional Verbs
Using Numbers
Use of "This"/"That"
Quantifiers
Time Measurements
Conditional Sentences
Motion, Shape and Detail
Roger's Profanisaurus: The Magna Farta.
VIZ - 1998
Now, with over 10,000 entries, this edition features the latest in expletives, sexual obscenities and lavatorial euphemisms.