Ancient Greek names

Here’s a question for any Classicists out there – how do you pronounce the Ancient Greek names Lycos, Nycteus and Epirus? This question was sent to me by Persephone Vandegrift, who is writing a play based on the Bacchae by Euripides and has added these new characters, who are associated with Pentheus and the story of his altercation with Dionysus, but isn’t sure how their names should be pronounced.

If you can help, you can contact Persephone at:
pkimberlyv@hotmail.com

The strangeness of some of the questions received at Omniglot HQ never ceases to surprise me!

Polly Glotto

I came across a very useful online translation site today – Polly Glotto. It not only translates text between ten different languages (Chinese, English, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish), but also uses text-to-speech technology to speak the translations. The translations it produces aren’t always perfect, but they are generally quite good, and most of the voices sound fairly natural as well.

Here’s a example of the phrase ‘Hello, I am Polly Glotto’ in French.

Smilin like a bylt haddie

I hope you’ll be sae cantie as a sou amang glaur (as happy as a pig in the mud) with today’s selection of Scots idioms, which I found on Wir Ain Lied, An Innin tae Modern Scots (An Introduction to Modern Scots). As you may have noticed, A hae an ee til (I have a liking for) idioms, and I hope you’ll be smilin like a bylt haddie (smiling like a boiled haddock) at some of the idioms here.

So tak tent (pay attention) but ye needna fash yer thoum (you needn’t worry) about understanding them as I’ll provide translations. So let’s get on wi the crack (get on with the conversation) and make sure we don’t spik pan loaf (speak with an affected English accent). If you’re short o the Greek (stuck for words) don’t tyne the heid (lose your temper), but why not birl the wulkies (turn somersault)? So let’s caw cannie (proceed carefully) or somebody might cowp wir hurl (upset our plans). Mony wirds, muckle drouth (much talking makes one thirsty), so maybe it’s time to cock the wee finger (have a tipple/drink) but be sure you don’t droun the miller (put too much water in the whisky). That’s quite eneuch (enough) for now, I think.

You can hear recordings of some of these idioms here.

How many languages = polyglot?

There’s an old joke that someone who speaks four languages is quadrilingual, a speaker of three languages is trilingual, someone with two languages is bilingual, and someone who knows only one language is an American, or British. There’s certainly some truth in this.

How many languages do you have to speak before you can claim the much coverted title of polyglot? The prefix poly means (1) more than one, many or much; (2) having an excessive or abnormal number or amount, and comes from the Greek polus (much, many). This doesn’t help much really. As far as I’m concerned, a polyglot is someone who speaks four or more languages.

What do you think?

Sign languages

According to Ethnologue, there are 114 sign languages around the world. The most widely used is American Sign Language (ASL), with an estimated 500,000 to 2 million users, according to this site. Probably the next most widely used is British Sign Language (BSL), with up 250,000 users, between 30,000 and 70,000 of whom use BSL as their first language, according to the BBC.

Does anybody know whether there are any sign language polyglots – those familiar with many sign languages? Or whether there are many blind people who can read many languages in braille? I wonder what kind of challenges users of one sign language face when learning different sign language, and how difficult would it be for blind people to learn another language through braille.

Language exchange

Last week I found a useful online community website called Gumtree where you can post all kinds of messages. The site was originally just for London, but there are now local versions for many other cities in the UK, including Brighton, and other places around the world. One section that particularly caught my attention is called skills & language swop, where you can find language exchange partners.

I posted a message there and already three people have contacted me – one from Venezuela, one from Spain and one from Belgium. I met the Venezuelan today and we talked mainly in Spainish for about an hour – the longest conversation I’ve ever had in that language. I was able to express myself quite well, inspite of my sometimes muddled word order and dodgy grammar.

A similar community site with versions for even more cities and countries is Kijiji, which means village in Swahili apparently.

Word of the day – zmrzlina

zmrzlina [zmrzlɪna] = ice, ice cream, sherbet, sorbet

This tongue twister of word came up in today’s Czech lesson. I had to listen to it many times before attempting to pronounce it. This is quite an extreme example of the tricky consonant clusters common in Czech. I also find the ř [rʒ] sound particularly difficult, especially at the beginnings of words, such as in řízek [rʒi:zɛk] (schnitzel), and řekne [rʒɛknɛ], as in Jak se řekne česky …? (How do you say … in Czech?). According to this site, even some Czechs have difficultly with this sound!

Comparing language courses

One reason why I chose to learn Czech with the Pimsleur course was because I hadn’t done a Pimsleur course before and I want to test as many different types of language course as I can find. To date I’ve tried quite a few Colloquial and Teach Yourself courses, one Rosetta Stone course (Russian), which I’ve yet to finish, and a few lesser-known courses.

When comparing language courses for the same language you can’t start each one from the same level because you can’t erase from your memory what you’ve learnt in each one before trying the next one. If you try comparing a course from the same series for several different languages, you often find that the courses are not identical – the basic format is probably the same, but each one has a different author and the quantity and quality of material varies. Each language also presents you with a different set of challenges, and you may find that some types of course work better for some languages than others.

Generally I find that no single course is sufficient to learn a language, so I often use several different courses during my studies.

Pimsleur

I’m now half way through my Pimsleur Czech course and am enjoying it. I like the way the lessons are arranged and the way you’re asked to construct new sentences using the words you already know. The focus on listening and speaking really suits me as these are the skills I prefer to focus on. The relatively small amount of material covered by the course is covered in some detail, so I feel confidient about using it.

When I’ve completed this course, I plan to tackle Routledge’s Colloquial Czech. After that, I’ll be able to say mluvím český and I’ll have another go at Russian.

Have you learnt any languages with Pimsleur courses? What do you think of them?