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Monthly Archives: November 2006
Mystery language
You can identify the language in the following audio clip? This language is part of a language family that spans several continents.
Name the language
Here’s a short sound clip in a mystery language. Can you work out what language it is? This language is spoken mainly in one country and has no close relatives.
Climbing mountains
My studies of Czech are progressing slowly. So far I’ve only really got to grips with the first lesson of Colloquial Czech, and am working on lesson 2. Yesterday I had a quick look at the later lessons and wondered whether I’ll ever get that far. I know I shouldn’t let this put me off, […]
Whistle This!
Today I came across a website for (tin/penny/Irish) whistle players called Whistle This! which is based on an interesting idea: every two weeks a new tune is posted on the site with the sheet music, whistle notation and a recording. Visitors are invited to learn the tunes, record themselves playing them, and to send in […]
Comments
When writing posts on this blog I’m never sure whether anybody will comment and how many comments there will be. Yesterday’s unresearched, ill-thought-out little post has stirred up plenty of discussion, which, to some extent, was the idea. You could say I was playing devil’s advocate. Other posts that I spend hours crafting from nothing […]
Polyglots
It struck me today that many polyglots and hyperpolyglots are male. I wonder if this has something to do with the instinct to collect things and the tendency to get a bit carried away with particular subjects, traits that seem more common in males than females. Perhaps it might also be a result of the […]
Books books books
If, like me, you have a large collection of books, trying to put them in some sort of order is can become quite a time-consuming task. In fact, just trying to fit them all on your shelves can be a real challenge. Every so often I go through my books and try to decide which […]
Mystery symbols
Where might you see symbols like these, and what do they signify? No clues today. Good luck!
Mystery language
Can you identify the language of this recording? This language is a member of a widely-scattered language family, most of the members of which are spoken by relatively few people.
Postilions and lightning
There’s an urban legend that sometime during the 19th century a phrasebook was published that including the extemely useful phrase “My postilion has been struck by lightning”. There seems to be various theories about the origins of this phrase, and a number versions of the phrase, including “Our postillion has been struck by lightning!”, or […]