Month: February 2007

Websites that speak

By Simon

The Welsh Language Board / Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg recently added a text-to-speech facility to their website which reads out the text in either Welsh or English. They are using a system called ReadSpeaker, which can make your website talk in various languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, English (US and UK), French, German, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese and Welsh. The ReadSpeaker website itself has been translated into quite a few languages and has the text-to-speech facility for most of them.

Text-to-speech technology for English and other major European languages, and for a few Asian ones, has been around for years and works quite well. However I think Welsh version is quite new and could do with more work to improve the voice quality and intonation.

Here is an example of it reading the following text:

Iaith Geltaidd yw’r Gymraeg, sy’n perthyn yn agos at y Gernyweg a’r Llydaweg. Mae’r Gymraeg sy’n cael ei siarad heddiw yn ddatblygiad uniongyrchol i iaith y chweched ganrif.

Ychydig iawn o enghreifftiau ysgrifenedig o Gymraeg Cynnar sy’n bodoli heddiw, gyda’r cynharaf yn dyddio o ganol y nawfed ganrif. Gwelir nodweddion Hen Gymraeg yng ngwaith y Cynfeirdd, sy’n dyddio o ddiwedd y chweched ganrif, er fod y llawysgrifau’n llawer mwy diweddar.

Gwrandewch y fersiwn Gymraeg

Welsh is a Celtic language, closely related to Cornish and Breton. The Welsh we speak today is directly descended from the language of the sixth century.

Very few examples of Early Welsh exist today, with the earliest dating back to the middle of the ninth century. Elements of Old Welsh are seen in the work of the Cynfeirdd, originally dating back to the sixth century, although all manuscripts are much later than this date.

Listen to the English version

Source: http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk

Terracotta bureaucrats

By Simon

According to a report I heard on the radio this morning, the British Museum is going to stage a major exhibition of the terracotta warriors who guard the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), who unified China and was its first emperor from 221-210 BC. The exhibition will include not just some of the warriors, but also terracotta bureaucrats, acrobats and musicians. Apparently the emperor is attend in death by his army plus quite a few other members of his court.

The term ‘terracotta bureaucrat’ is not one you hear everyday and caught my ear.

The word bureaucracy combines bureau, meaning desk or office, with the Greek suffix -kratia, which denotes ‘power of’, and was coined by the French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-59). The word bureaucrat first appeared in writing in 1842. A bureau was originally a type of cloth used for covering desks and tables. It comes from the Latin Latin burra, wool, shaggy garment; via the Old French burel, coarse woolen cloth.

Terracotta comes from Italian and means ‘baked earth’.

Welsh and Gaelic education

By Simon

According to an article on Eurolang, education through the medium of Welsh is becoming so popular in Wales that there aren’t sufficient places in Welsh medium schools for all those who would like to attend them. As a result, the growth of Welsh medium education is being held up.

Increasing numbers of parents are wanting to send their children to Welsh medium schools, even in mainly English-speaking areas, such as Newport, where 31% of parents surveyed said they would probably send their kids to Welsh medium schools if such schools where available nearby.

At the same time enrolment in English medium schools has been dropping and many schools have empty places.

In other news, a brand new Gaelic medium school opened in Glasgow recently. It has 320 places and provides nursery, primary and secondary for children between the ages of 3 and 18.

Education through Welsh or Gaelic seems to be a very effective way for kids to acquire fluency in those languages, and the popularity of such education is encouraging.

Chinese and Arabic to be taught in UK schools?

By Simon

According to British Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, UK schools should have more flexibility in the choice of languages they teach. He believes “it is right to vary the curriculum to add languages which might be economically useful or help community cohesion.” The languages he’s talking about include Arabic, Mandarin and Urdu.

I wonder where they will find enough teachers and how they will fit the extra languages into an already over-stuffed curriculum. Since the foreign languages were made optional in UK schools after the age of 14, the numbers of pupils studying them has fallen dramatically. The government worries about this and keeps on coming up with ways to try to encourage more kids to continue learning languages.

I’ve met numerous people who tell me they studied French, German, Spanish or whatever language at school, but who have since forgotten it completely, or only remember bits and pieces. This seems to suggest that language teaching in schools is not entirely effective.

Learning any language is a good thing, even if it isn’t ‘economically useful’. Learning a language spoken in the area where you live is perhaps better in some ways than learning a language perceived as ‘economically useful’ because you will be able to use it regularly. You will probably also learn something about the culture of those who speak the language and come to understand and appreciate it more, which is what Mr Johnson means by ‘community cohesion’.

Sources: 24dash.com and The Guardian

Quote of the day: “Happiness comes from wanting what you get, rather than getting what you want.” from the Carpetblogger.

Language quiz

By Simon

In which country might you find the following dishes on the menu, and which of them is the odd one out?

Zupa ogórkowa
Śledź w śmietanie
Kurczak de volaille
Sztuka mięsa w sosie chrzanowym
Kasza gryczana z kwaśnym mlekiem
Księgarnia
Placki kartoflane
Makowiec

Bonus points if you can translate them into English as well.

How long does it take to learn a language?

By Simon

There’s no single answer to the question posed by the title of this post. It depends on number of factors, including what hope to do with the language, how often and how intensively you study, which language you’re learning, and which language(s) you already know.

Some language learners find it helpful to set themselves targets and goals, such as passing a language proficiency exam. This gives you something to aim for, but also puts quite a lot of pressure on you. If you don’t achieve your targets and goals, or it seems likely that you won’t, it’s easy to become disheartened and possibly to give up altogether.

Here’s an alternative way of thinking about learning, from the Effortless Language Acquisition blog:

…learning is a lifelong process. There is no end. There is no graduation. There are no “permanent grades” or records.

The author of the blog argues that if you see learning a language, or indeed anything else, as a lifelong project – Constant And Neverending Improvement (CANI) is the phrase he uses, you won’t feel so stressed or worried. Instead you can just try to improve every week, even if it’s only by a small amount.

Yiddish in Lithuania

By Simon

According to an article on the BBC, Jews in Lithuania are trying to revive Yiddish, which was spoken by around 250,000 people before the Second World War. Today there are about 5,000 Jews in Lithuania and only a few hundred still speak Yiddish. Children at the only Jewish nursery school in Lithuania are being taught Yiddish songs and nursery rhymes, which they enjoy a great deal, and a Yiddish class at Vilnius’ Jewish secondary school started last month.

One of people interviewed comments that:

“…the only way to make sure Yiddish survives is to interest all Lithuanians in the country’s Jewish history and art, and above all, its music.”

The position of Yiddish in Lithuania sounds quite similar to that of other endangered languages – most of the remaining speakers are elderly, few families are passing the language on to their children, and a lot of people see speaking the language as a hobby rather than an everyday means of communication.

The BBC article has quite an optimistic tone, however another article I just found paints a more gloomy picture. One of the people quoted in the second article says “There is no real revival of Yiddish, … It’s a club, it’s a fetish, it’s a hobby.”

By the way, I’d be interested to know if there are any Yiddish speakers who read this blog.