covid digital humanities

2020 走到一半，乜嘢係全世界人都在談論covid-19,華文圈就是武漢肺炎、新冠肺炎等等。一年多前首次聽到『數碼人文』digital humanities這詞，雖則其意思在變，但用電腦、資訊科技等來研究、來咬文嚼字的人士對於這半年來新創，或重現的字必定嘆為觀止!

j’ai entendu    digital humanities (humanidades digitales / humanités numériques / DH ) pour la première fois  en 2018. alors au plein milieu de 2020, les chercheurs de DH doivent d’avoir beaucoup de mots logiques et illogiques (comme social distancing, pourquoi pas physical distancing? quelle occasion ratée de régler les choses)

de toute façon, voici quelques mots qui ont fait leurs tours au monde:

隔離, 觀察, 檢疫, 防疫, 社交距離, covid, covid-19, corona, virus, coronavirus, quarentena,  cuarentena, quarantine, quarantaine, confinement, déconfinement, isolation, lockdown,  social distance, social distancing, physical distancing, distanciation sociale

did you know quarantine stems from forty days in one or those romance languages? whatever you think, i simple don’t want to deal with the messy, confusing orthography!

what are those words and neologisms in your own languages? let’s make a bigger pool for the DHers to play with!

 

under the udala trees

under the udala trees

 

this is the second book i read in the past year that relates to nigeria. no longer revolving around the capital lagos region, the story unfolded in the eastern state called biafra.

going to a book club meeting meant i got some off-wikipedia information on the biafra war of independence, which wasn’t a civil war.

the protagonist is a girl with an affinity for girls. strangely stepping right into the intersection of black lives matter and lgbt+ pride, or struggle rather, i felt the violence, the jubilation, the compromise of various characters mirror the non-stop protests and chatter you see and feel everywhere these days. of course there is the usual critique of expatriated africans telling stories from afar. how much would this oeuvre bring about progressive change? it is not a one-of-a-kind story, it won’t give you a thorough inception to the most populous african nation, i would still recommend it if you want an escape to the continent while sipping tea on your rocking chair on the verandah.

clean hands save lives

“clean hands save lives” is a book i received as a gift from an academic public health event but never got around to read. that changed earlier this year because of covid-19.  thanks to the virus, medical professionals and laymen alike talked non-stop about infections and how not to get infected. so a long-held simple fact’s importance resurfaced and became à la mode again, for unfortunate reasons. here you can download numerous versions of the book for free!

https://tcrouzet.com/le-geste-qui-sauve/downloads/