As a student in a foreign country, I deal with a minimum of two languages. Mostly, it’s English and Russian. When I first started using Mac, I was surprised to find that it had built-in support for an abundance of keyboard layouts as well as some phonetic ones. Phonetic keyboards have the same layout as the US keyboard but the letters are transcribed phonetically into the foreign language. Having a phonetic keyboard means that you won’t need to learn the keyboard layout for that particular language. That way, it’s much easier for an English-speaker to type Cyrillic, for example.
Although language relies on certain rules, a story requires more than simple definitions to unfold. Look at this example to see how a simple sentence can be rewritten word by word to turn into a whole paragraph.
Certainly this is not art and it contains a considerable amount of redundant and superficial information. However, its creation did require imagination. The thing is, whether you’re writing a diary, a blog or a column for a magazine, writing remains a creative process.
We are only scratching the surface with the built-in OS X Dictionary application. Dictionary is integrated into the system so if you need to define a word while surfing with Safari, all you need to do is select that word and press Command+Control+D. It even works directly in Spotlight without opening the Dictionary application.
If you’ve always wanted to look up another language besides English, you have several options:
When you talk for a living, it’s usually a good idea to know the proper pronunciation of the words you’re using. As a radio newscaster, I come across the occasional word that baffles me, either because I’ve never seen it before, or because I’ve seen it written, but have never heard it pronounced.
Case in point, recently a Canadian tourist fell off a building and died in the resort city of Cebu, Philippines. I’d never heard of Cebu before. Often a quick Google search for something like “pronounce Cebu” will provide a link or two with a written pronunciation guide, but there’s nothing like actually hearing someone who knows, pronounce the word.
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