Omniglot - the blog

A team of intrepid researchers from Icelandic and Turkey are planning a three-month journey through Central Asia to research the origins of Runic writing, according to the Zaman online newspaper. They believe that Runic writing was transmitted to Europe from Mongolia via the Silk Road.

The usually explanation of the origins of the Orkhon script of Mongolia is that it developed from the Sogdian script, and that resemblances between it and the Runic scripts of Europe are probably coincidental. Perhaps the Turkish and Icelandic researchers will be able to shed new light on these scripts.

If any of you have tried to email me at questions[at]omniglot[dot]com this week, your messages have probably bounced back. For reasons I don’t understand, this mailbox has been refusing to accept any emails at all. After trying a number of solutions, I’ve given up on the questions address and created a new one: feedback[at]omniglot[dot]com.

Today I came across another interesting language learning method on Language learning tips, which was used by the 19th-century German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), who excavated Troy. In order to learn Greek he read a Greek translation of one of his favourite books, and compared the translation word by word and line by line with the original text. This enabled him to learn a lot of vocabulary and grammar in context without having to refer to dictionaries or grammar books all the time. Here’s some more information about Schliemann’s language learning methods, which enabled him to acquire eighteen languages quite quickly and successfully.

The reading method would be even better if you had an audiobook version of the translation and/or a native speaker to help you with pronunciation. Moreover, if you choose a book that includes a lot of colloquial dialogues, you can learn everyday conversational words and phrases as well.

Grammar books and vocabulary lists are useful, but I find that if I discover a grammatical pattern or the meaning of a word on my own, I’m more likely to remember it.

Fe ffeindiais i dwy straeon diddorol o Gymru heddiw:

Pwyleg yn Wrecsam
Mae plismon o Wrecsam yn dysgu Pwyleg oherwydd fod tuag 10,000 o fewnfudwyr o’r Wlad Pwyl yn byw yno, a fe wnaeth e ddod yn ail yng Ngwobrau Blynyddol i Swyddogion Cymunedol.

Selsig ddraig
Oherwydd does dim cig draig yn y selsig gydag enw ’selsig y Ddraig Gymreig’ (a wneir gyda chig moch, cennin a chilli), mae rhaid i gwmni o Grug Hywel newid yr enw, yn ôl Gwasanaeth Safonau Masnach.

Two news stories from Wales caught my eye today:

Polish in Wrexham
A policeman from Wrexham is learning Polish in order to communicate with the numerous Polish immigrants who live there, and he came second in the Jane’s Police Review Community Police Officer of the Year Award.

Dragon sausages
A Welsh company may face legal action because of the potentially misleading name of one of its products: Welsh Dragon Sausages. After analysing the sausages, the fine people at from Trading Standards determined that not one trace of dragon meat was to be found in them, so are advising the company to change the name. The sausages actually contain pork, leek and chilli.

Today’s mystery language comes from an online news bulletin. Can you work what it is?

This language is part of a large family and is written with its own alphabet.

Can you work out what language this short conversation is in, and what it means?

This language is spoken mainly in one large city and has no official status.

There’s some useful advice on a site I found today called Language Learning Tips. One of the tips for building vocabulary is that you try to learn three new words in the language(s) you’re studying every day, and that you write them down in a diary or blog. After a year, you’ll have a vocabulary of over a thousand words.

I think this technique could be expanded by trying to use the new words in sentences, and maybe even building up a story with them.

I tried to learn five new words a day in seven languages for several months with some success. Though I think maybe I was a bit overly ambitious. Maybe three words a day in five languages would be more achievable. The trouble is, which languages? Definitely Welsh, Irish and Spanish, and perhaps Japanese and Czech.

Have you used this technique or something similar?

It’s extremely windy here today, which has got me thinking about the names given to particular winds in different parts of the world. My favourite wind names are Sirocco, a southerly wind that blows from north Africa to southern Europe, and Mistral, a cold northerly wind that blows from central France and the Alps to the Mediterranean.

The name sirocco is Italian. In North Africa this wind is known as قبلی (qibli), in Greece it’s σιρόκος (sirokos), in Croatia it’s jugo, and by the time it reaches Southern France it known as the marin.

The name mistral comes from the Provençal word for “master”. Another name for this wind is le vent du fada, or “the idiot wind”, so-called because the Mistral is believed to be more than capable of driving even the sanest weather scientist to gibbering insanity.

Do any of your local winds have interesting names?

It struck me today that the Irish word for artists, ealaíontóirí, sounds like ‘alien tory’. I hadn’t really noticed this before. When I hear or read the word, it usually brings to mind artists and art, though hearing it out of context triggered the thoughts of extraterrestrial members of the Conservative Party.

I try to think in the languages I’m studying as much as possible, and to picture in my mind the things and actions I hear or read about. Sometimes I only notice that a foreign word sounds funny to English speakers when someone who doesn’t speak the language points this out to me, or if my brain is in English mode.

A number of you have suggested that I add a forum to Omniglot. I’ve been investigating this and it doesn’t appear to be too difficult to set up. What I’m not sure about is how long I’d need to spend administering and moderating it.

Do any of you act as forum adminstrators or moderators? How much time do you spend on this? Would you be willing to act in this role on an Omniglot forum? Also, do you have any suggestions for discussion categories?

In the meantime, there’s quite a good forum for language-related discussion over on How to Learn any language.