March 2, 2009

New Feature: Word of the Day

For those readers on Twitter, I'm trying out a new feature: Word of the Day. I'll tweet a new vocab word every day, along with its romanized form and definition, plus a link to the dictionary. I'm using "word" looesly -- could be a phrase, an idiom, or whatever. Whatever strikes my fancy.

If you don't know what Twitter is, it's a sort of micro-blogging service, where you "follow" whoever you want to. That means you see the updates (known as "tweets") that they post. If they follow you, they see yours. Each tweet has a 140-character limit.

Read more about it, along with suggested clients, in David Pogue's recent New York Times writeup. Or try the Wikipedia article.

If you want to start following, head to the Thai 101 page at Twitter. You can also see my Twitter updates in the sidebar right now.

For Word of the Day, I'll use the modified-Haas romanization employed on the SEAlang.net Thai Dictionary. (That way I can just copy-and-paste it.) I'm including romanization to allow everyone who doesn't read Thai to get something out of it, too.

I could also post the Word of the Day on here, or do a weekly roundup, or even add it to the sidebar. Let me know what you'd like to see.

And by the way, today's WotD (the very first) was this:
Word of the Day: สองจิตสองใจ /sɔ̌ɔŋ ˈjìt sɔ̌ɔŋ ˈjai/ To be of two minds (about something), undecided, hesitant. http://tinyurl.com/bul6n7

3 comments:

  1. Hey, thanks for the new feature.. yeah i reckon a weekly round-up or something would be great..

    also could you include an example or two because i find that when i learn a new word it's almost useless unless i know how to use it in a sentence

    thanks

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  2. Based on your suggestion, james, I decided post on the blog along with the WotD tweet. That way I can give examples and other usage tips.

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  3. Rikker, you've just given me a reason to go back to twitter.

    Previous, I pretty much only posted on twitter when up late at night waiting for something (a Western client getting back to me, US elections, etc), or when bored.

    So my posts were pretty much useless chatter (and I imagine, when late at night, difficult for some to understand ;-)

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