Month: December 2006

More language exchange

By Simon

I came across yet another language exchange site today. It looks similar to other ones I’ve joined and I’ll give it a go. The site has a subscription-based ‘Gold’ membership, for $6 per month, which gives you extras not available with free membership, such as being able to contact other members. Regular members can only receive and reply to messages from gold members.

So far, the only language exchange site which has produced results for me is Mixxer. I’ve been contacted by people from all over the world via this site, with the majority of my contacts coming from China. Today I’ve chatting to people from China, Japan, Bulgaria, Norway and Korea.

Making recordings

By Simon

Yesterday I came up with an alternative way of making recordings for Omniglot. I was talking to a Bulgarian contact on Skype and he was willing to make some recordings of Bulgarian, but wasn’t sure how to do so on his computer. I realised that I could record him at my end – I tried it and it worked well.

If you’re able to help me by making some recordings of useful phrases, article one of the UDHR, the Tower of Babel, country or language names, or the alphabet in your native language, but don’t know how to do so, or don’t have a microphone, then we now have a solution. You can call me on Skype (omniglot), and I will do the recording.

Singing in tonal languages

By Simon

When people sing in Mandarin, they usually don’t stick to the tones, but in Cantonese I understand that singers try to incorporate the tones into the tune. According to an interesting blog I came across today, the tones are discarded in Thai when singing.

Does anybody know what happens to tones in other languages when they’re sung?

If any of you are able to sing in a tonal language, don’t be shy! It would interesting to hear a recording.