Omniglot - the blog

Here is a recording of a mystery language. Can you guess or do you know which language it is?

Clue: This language is spoken in parts of Europe.

There’s a hypothesis that we have a critical period for acquiring languages during our childhood, and that learning a language in later life, roughly after the age of 12 or 13, is difficult because of this. As a result of this theory, it’s widely believed that the earlier you start learning a foreign language, the more successful you’ll be.

According to an article I came across today, the different aspects of language acquisition take place at different times and rates. If there is a critical period, there probably isn’t one single one but many. We continue to improve our knowledge of our language(s) throughout our lives.

The article suggests that one reason why most of us find it difficult to learn new languages is because our brains have are set up to handle the language(s) we already know, and find other languages challenging, especially ones that differ significantly from our native ones.

The conclusion is that our language learning abilities decline with age, so the earlier you start learning languages the better, but “there is no particular age beyond which the effort is hopeless”.

The Welsh word moron, which means carrots, is an example of a false friend (cyfaill anwir?). The word for carrot is moronen, one of a small group of Welsh words that become shorter in the plural. Confusingly, the English word moron, which comes from the Greek for ‘foolish, dull’, has been borrowed into Welsh and has the same meaning.

Here are a few more Welsh/English false friends that I’ve noticed recently. Some look the same as English words, but are pronounced differently, so are only false friends in writing.

pan = when (pan is padell)
pant = hollow (to pant is dyhefod)
dim = nothing (dim is pŵl or aneglur)
mud = mute (mud is mwd)
hurt = silly (hurt is dolur (n) or dolurio (vb))
hen = old (hen is iâr)
brain = crows (brain is ymennydd)
nod = aim (nod is amnaid (n) or amneidio (vb))

Hypercorrection happens when people try to avoid making one type of ‘error’ in speech or writing, but overcompensate and apply the corrections to too many words. For example, those who habitually ‘drop’ their h’s sometimes add an h an just about any word beginning with a vowel when trying to speak ‘proper’.

One case of hypercorrection that has become part of the language is the saying ‘to eat humble pie‘, meaning ‘to behave or be forced to behave humbly; to be humiliated’. To word humble in this saying comes from the word numbles, which means the offal of a deer. In the 14th century, a numble pie was one made from such offal. By the 17th century, a pie of this type was called ‘an umble pie’, which eventually acquired an initial h through hypercorrection and became ‘a humble pie’.

Numbles comes from the Old French word nombles (loins), from the Latin lumbulus (little loin).

Other words the have changed in a similar way to numbles include apron - originally napron, newt - originally ewt. This kind of change of word boundries, which is common in English, is called metanalysis.

George Bernard Shaw once said:

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him”

Shaw, an Irish man, was to some extent poking fun at the English, but there certainly is some truth in his statement. English speakers have been complaining about the way other people speak English for very long. The same is probably true of other languages.

One of the things people complain about is the dropping of certain letters, such as the initial h, or of the g in ing endings. This is getting things the wrong way round and assuming that we should speak as we write. English spelling certainly isn’t the most reliable guide to English pronunciation. Initial h’s aren’t being dropped - they just doesn’t exist in some dialects.

Words borrowed from French, such as hour, heir and honest are usually pronounced without the initial h most varieties of English. Moreover, in American English herb also lacks the initial h sound, though the h is pronounced in some varieties of British English.

This post was inspired by the book I’m reading at the moment: ‘A Plum in Your Mouth’ - Why the way we talk speaks volumes about us, by Andrew Taylor.

mac tíre, noun = wolf (literally ’son of the country(side)’). The tíre sounds roughly like cheer-uh.

I came across this Irish word while searching for the Scottish Gaelic for word for wolf, which someone asked me today. Another Irish word for wolf is faolchú, while the equivalent in Scottish Gaelic is faol or madadh allaidh (wild dog). In Manx a wolf is a filliu or moddey oaldey (wild dog).

Here are some wolf-related proverbs:

O wilku mowa, a wilk tuż (Polish)
Talk of a wolf and the wolf is here = Speak of the Devil (and he will appear).

La fame caccia il lupo dal bosco (Italian)
Hunger drives the wolf out of the woods

There are many more here, though few of them are in their original languages, unfortunately.

Here is a photo of mystery city somewhere in Europe. Can you work out which one it is and which languages are spoken there?

Here’s a recording of someone talking in an obscure language. Can you work out which language it is?

This language is spoken on one of the groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

According to an article I came across today, dyslexic children tend to it easier to read and write Welsh, with its regular and consistent spelling system, then English, with its somewhat eccentric orthography. Similarly, few children have problems spelling other regular languages like Italian and Spanish.

However dyslexic children who start by learning Welsh, then later learn English tend to find English spelling very challenging and often use Welsh-style spelling when writing English.

Here are some examples of English spelled with Welsh phonetics:

Ddy cwic brawn ffocs jymps owfer ddy leisi dog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Tw bi o not tw bi: ddat is ddy cwestiyn.
To be or not to be: that is the question.

The article also mentions that dyslexic children tend to have more trouble getting to grips with Welsh grammar than with English grammar.