Comments for Omniglot blog

Comment on Everything but the kitchen sink by Darryl Shpak

Darryl Shpak — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:29:33 +0000

“Everything but the walls” reminds me of another English idiom, “Everything that wasn’t nailed down”.

Comment on Coal biter by J. Mitchell

J. Mitchell — Fri, 24 May 2013 11:12:58 +0000

I’ve heard the expression ‘coal biter’ before when I lived in the UK and worked on construction sites around London. The context in which it was used however was to describe someone who was, let’s say ‘rough and ready’ rather than someone who is lazy. It seems using the expression to describe a lazy person would be a more correct use of the term. Interesting to learn the origin of the expression.

Joe.

Comment on It’s on the knitting needles by Chris

Chris — Thu, 23 May 2013 18:13:16 +0000

I love idioms like this in language. They’re always so interesting to learn and put more personality into the language you’re learning. You also get a sort of taste for the culture when you see what their idioms directly translate to in English.

Comment on It’s on the knitting needles by Sarah - Crafts from the Cwtch

Sarah - Crafts from the Cwtch — Thu, 23 May 2013 09:25:58 +0000

This is awesome! I might change the name of my “WIPs and Books” feature on Wednesdays! :)

Comment on Language quiz by David Eger

David Eger — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:10:02 +0000

That was meant to be @Rauli.

Comment on Language quiz by David Eger

David Eger — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:09:23 +0000

“he even says “terebi rimokon” (television remote control). That was my main reason for thinking it’s a form of Japanese.”

@Chris: Those are ultimately loan words from English (Ironic, considering many of them are manufactured in Japan or by Japanese companies), albeit through the route of Japanese. It is logical that a minority language should borrow words from the dominant language for concepts that have come from the dominant culture.

Comment on Language quiz by Rauli

Rauli — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:41:01 +0000

Chris, he even says “terebi rimokon” (television remote control). That was my main reason for thinking it’s a form of Japanese. I couldn’t make myself think another language would borrow that from Japanese. I also thought I heard “onna” (woman) and other very Japanese sounding words. But that’s probably just because of close contacts. And the fact that the speaker was a Japanese person.

Looking at the Japanese transcript in the video, the “onna” had nothing to do with women.

Comment on Language quiz by Simon

Simon — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:42:12 +0000

The answer is indeed Ainu (アイヌイタク / Aynu itak), a language isolate spoken in Hokkaido in Japan. The recording comes from YourTube

Comment on More on grammar by Shimmin Beg

Shimmin Beg — Mon, 20 May 2013 07:10:31 +0000

I tend to find studying chunks is most helpful. So I’ll start off learning common phrases, then when I want to learn a new bit of vocabulary or a new feature (conditionals, say), I’ll look for authentic phrases that use them. I find it easier generally to learn a sentence than isolated vocab, plus that gives you some grammatical context, which is crucial for things like inflection, mutation, particles or other modification. Learning sentences from a known context also helps you pick up on nuances of usage, like whether certain structures tend to give a negative tone. For me, reading grammar is generally a reminder or a preliminary to understand what I’m looking for.

For languages with roman script, I read regularly to help reinforce the use of structures in context. Sadly in non-roman languages my reading’s far too slow to casually read things and gain much from it, because all the effort ends up going into looking up characters and so on. I also find podcasts helpful, because they give more indication of tone than reading can (picking up tone in written L2 is hard!) and you’ll often hear similar structures come up repeatedly because the hosts like to use them.

Comment on More on grammar by michael farris

michael farris — Mon, 20 May 2013 05:32:33 +0000

For whatever reason (cause I’m a linguist?) I can only learn through grammar and would undoubtedly flounder in a course that neglected it.

By grammar, I mean structure, so I learn languages best in terms of conscious knowledge of structure.

A colleague of mine attended a seminar on very multilingual people (people who deal with three or more languages on a daily basis) and as it turns out they all go about learning a new language the same way (apart or in addition to some kind of programmed course)

1 Read some kind of descriptive grammar (teaching or reference) through as quickly as possible to get an overall view

2 Go back and look at individual parts in greater detail (as need and/or interest indicate).

That’s what I do too.