Freelang’s blog

Quite frequently, fellow webmasters use our submission form to add their websites to our directory. Our directory has not been updated for a long time and we are thinking of reorganizing it, probably by mentioning the most useful links in the dictionary pages. So instead of having a whole page dedicated to links to other websites, we will keep only a short paragraph, like you can see on our Spanish page, for example. Google likes it better, and I think our users and our fellow webmasters will like it better too.

In the meantime, here are a few interesting websites that have been submitted recently.

Let’s begin by Helcio Domingues’ personal homepage, dedicated to Brazilian Portuguese. You will find grammar lessons and thematic vocabulary lists, as well as a detailed pronunciation guide with MP3 files to download.

Türkiye Sözlük is an interactive online dictionary. It’s all in Turkish so I’m not sure how exactly it is “interactive”, but it looks like a unilingual dictionary. So it’s not a translator, it gives definitions in Turkish.

Our third website is for English learners (beginner level or children) and is actually made of two blogs. The first blog presents vocabulary lists and vocabulary games, with pictures and sound. The second blog offers Flash games: Hangman, Memory, Drag & Drop games…

So McCain is a “maverick”. Palin used that word again, 6 times, during the last debate with Biden on October 2. To her it probably means some kind of a rebel, a nonconformist. But not everybody is happy with the use of the word, especially Terellita Maverick, whose last name has given its origin to the word. It began as far the XVIIe century, when Terellita’s ancester fought for the rights of workers. Then at the beginning of the XIXe century, Samuel Augustus Maverick was known in Texas for not branding his cattle. Non branded cattle was thus referred to as “Maverick’s”. Samuel’s grandson and great-grandson also lived by their name, fighting for individual freedom respectively as a congressman and as a lawyer.

So Terellita Maverick, Samuel’s great-granddaughter, now aged 82, is “enraged” when she hears that McCain is referred to as a maverick, because he has nothing of it, according to her. You know we don’t do politics at Freelang, but we found this story in the New York Times about the origin of the word, and we wanted to share it with you.