Omniglot - the blog

Here’s a recording of a well-known Christmas carol in a mystery language. Do you know or can you guess which language it is?

Here’s a recording of Silent Night in a mystery. Do you know of can you guess which language it?

I’ll be making the long track north to the parental home tomorrow, and will probably be offline for most of the week. So you’ll have to wait until next week for the answer.

A Multilingual Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it.

Here’s a text in a mystery alphabet sent in by one of my correspondents. Any ideas which alphabet it is and which language it’s being used to write here?

As today is the shortest day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere, I thought solstice would be a good word to choose. It comes, via French, from the Latin solstitium, the point at which the sun seems to stand still, from sol, sun, plus sistere, to come to a stop, make stand still.

Today is the winter solstice, or hibernal solstice in Latin, and the point where the earth tilts away from the sun the most. In some cultures, solstices are seen as marking the end and beginning of years or periods, while in other, they mark mid points. In English, for example, the winter solstice is also known as midwinter, while the summer solstice is know as midsummer.

Details of festivities connected with the winter solstice in many different cultures

Do you do anything to celebrate or mark the winter solstice?

Most British managers think they should make more effort to learn about the business practices of other countries before visiting them, and two thirds find their lack of knowledge about other cultures embarrassing, according to an article I found today.

A survey of just over 200 senior managers and directors of major UK companies found that the vast majority rely on their foreign colleagues being able to speak English, only one fifth said they spoke another language, and a quarter of them admitted making cultural faux-pas when dealing with foreign business people. In spite of this, 80% said that they often do business with people from other cultures, and 66% said they travel overseas regularly on business.

Perhaps what they need are cultural interpreters, who could accompany them on their trips and explain the culture and etiquette of the countries they visit, maybe acting as interpreters of language as well. Do such people exist?

The other day while listening to Raidió na Gaeltachta, the Irish language radio station, I heard an interview with a guy from New York who has taught himself Irish over the past year or so. He works for the NYPD and has Irish ancestry, hence his interest in the language. He’s never been to Ireland and rarely gets chances to use his Irish, but he speaks it with a fluency that amazed the interviewer. He also sang a song in Irish, and did so very well, but was very modest about his achievement, saying that he still has a lot to learn.

It’s good to hear about successful language learners. It also makes me think I could do better with my studies.

This week we’ve had a Secret Santa style exchange of gifts at the office. Quite a few of those involved asked for the money to be donated to charity, but there were a few actual presents. Someone very generously gave me what I thought was a large cake, but have since discovered is a kind of cake-shaped bread from Milan called panettone.

The name panettone comes from the Italian word panetto, a small loaf bread. The -one end indicates it’s large, so is a “little big loaf”, and very tasty as well. Here’s a recipe, if you want to try making a panettone yourself.

The British Library website, which I came across today, has some interesting information about language and writing in the Language and the written word section. It tells the story of written English from the Beowulf, the earliest known narrative poem in English, to Virginia Woolf’s early 20th century novels, with samples of each.

The site also includes recordings of the accents and dialects of the UK, details of cook books through the ages, and a history of English language dictionaries, among other fascinating information.

Here’s a recording of a mystery language. Can you guess or do you know which language it is? Or at least which language family it belongs to.

Here’s a photo of a mystery city. Do you know which city it is, and which language is spoken there?