“There was a Russian joke in the 1950s, during the cold war. It claimed that America had 2 classes of people… the optimist and the pessimist. The optimist was teaching their children how to speak Russian… and the pessimist was teaching their kids Chinese!”

comment on the February 7th Room for Debate feature on Americans learning Chinese in the New York Times

"If I were a boy
I would turn off my phone
Tell everyone it's broken
So they'd think that I was sleeping alone"

If I Were a Boy by Beyonce
(great grammar example)

"Do you have any hand-written letters belonging to former President George W. Bush for your readers to critique? How about a Post-it-Note?"

comment on a NYTimes City Room blog post about a stolen Lincoln letter (and a grammatical error therein)

"In anticipation of his visit, we hoped to schedule an Electronic Enlightenment webinar..."

snippet from a forwarded email

"The first evening I thus fell asleep on sand with thousand miles of any inhabited ground. J' stays much more insulated qu' a shipwrecked man on a raft in the middle of l' ocean. Then you imagine my surprise, at daybreak, when funny of small voice m' awoke. She said: - S' you like it… draws to me a sheep!"

Babel Fish translation of:

"Le premier soir je me suis donc endormi sur le sable à mille milles de toute terre habitée. J'étais bien plus isolé qu'un naufragé sur un radeau au milieu de l'océan. Alors vous imaginez ma surprise, au lever du jour, quand une drôle de petite voix m'a réveillé. Elle disait: -S'il vous plaît... dessine-moi un mouton!"

from "Le Petit Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéy

found in a New York Times feature putting Google Translator (and two competitors) to the test

"What will survive of us is love."

- Larkin, quoted by Helen Dunmore in the Guardian article about writing

"Learning a language sometimes seems as difficult as dieting. The solution is to figure out how to stay interested after the novelty wears off."

from a NYTimes article on Rosetta Stone

"To counter boredom, online language programs have introduced crossword puzzles, interactive videos and other games to reward users for making progress."

NYTimes article on Rosetta Stone and other computer-based language learning products

"Det är bara att ta bort ett A..."

"It's only taking away an A..."

headline in today's Vasabladet

"Rysskarna älskar sitt njet, det används i de mest skilda sammanhang, och ofta på ett sätt som gör utlänning fullständigt konfys."

"The Russians love their nyet. It's used in the most varied of contexts and often in a way that makes a foreigner completely confused."

Anna-Lena Laurén in Hufvudstadsbladet 7 September 2009