Word of the day – nomophobia

Today’s word, nomophobia, is a recent coinage that means the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. It’s a contraction of “no moblie phobia”.

Something like half the mobile phone users in the UK might suffer from this condition, according to a recent survey undertaken by the Post Office. A lot people apparently feel anxious if their phone out of charge or credit, if they lose their phone or if they can’t get a signal.

Are you a nomophobic?

Offeryn cerdd

Some of my many musical instruments

Weithiau dw i’n meddwl bod fy nghasgliad o offeryn cerdd yn dipyn bach rhy fawr. Mae gen i pymtheg o offeryn – dau gitâr (gitâr clasurol a gitâr tannau dur), pum chwiban tun, dau chwiban isel, ffliwt, clarinét, recorder, harmonica a dau ocarina. Dw i’n gallu chwarae nhw i gyd mwy neu lai, heblaw y ffliwt, ond dw i’n canolbwyntio ar y gitâr a’r chwibanau ar hyn o bryd. Yn ffodus mae y mwyafrif ohonyn nhw yn eitha bach, felly does dim problem dod â lle iddyn nhw.

Gléasanna ceoil

Uaireanta tá mé ag smaoineamh go bhfuil mo bhailiúchán de gléasanna ceoil beagán ro mhór. Tá cúig gléasanna deag agam – dhá ghiotár (giotár clasaiceach agus giotár le téad chruach), cúig feadóige stáin, dhá fheadóg íseal, feadóg mhór, cláirnéid, fliúit Shasanach, orgán béil agus dhá ocarina. Is féidir liom an t-iomlán acu a sheinm a bheag nó a mhór, ach bím ag díriú ar an fheadóg stáin, an fheadóg íseal agus an giotár ar faoi láithir. Níl an chuid is mó de mo ghléasanna go ro mhór go hádhúil, mar sin de is féidir liom áiteanna a lorg dóibh.

Musical instruments

Sometimes I think that my collection of musical instruments is a bit too large. I currently have 15 instruments – two guitars (a classical one and a steel-string one), five tin whistles, two low whistles, a flute, a clarinet, a recorder, a harmonica and two ocarinas. I can more or less play all of them, with the exception of the flute, but I’m concentrating on the guitar and whistles at the moment. Fortunately most of them at fairly small, so finding places to keep them is not a problem.

Dental fricatives

Continuing yesterday’s theme of sounds that can be challenging to pronounce, today we look at the voiceless dental fricative /θ/. This sound is usually written th in English and appears in such words as three [θriː], thought [θɔːt] and thin [θɪn]. In the Spanish of Spain it’s written c (when followed by i or e), as in cien [θien], and z, as in Zaragoza [θaragoθa]. It’s also used in a number of other languages, including Greek – the Greek letter θ (Θήτα/theta) represents this sound in the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).

The voiced version of this sound is represented in the IPA by the letter ð (eth), which comes from Old English. This sound is written th in English and appears in the [ðə] and though [ðoʊ]. In Welsh it’s written dd; in Icelandic ð; in Albanian, Cornish and Swahili dh, and in Greek δ (Δέλτα/delta). In Spanish d can be pronounced /ð/ when it comes between two vowels, as in nada [‘naða].

These sounds are fairly rare among the world’s languages and can be tricky for speakers of languages which don’t use them. They also tend to be the last sounds acquired by native speakers of English, according to this page.

There’s an explanation of how to pronounce the voiceless dental fricative here. You do the same and just let vocal folds vibrate to pronounce the voiced version.

I didn’t learn how to pronounce the voiceless dental fricative properly until the age of 23, when a Taiwanese friend who was studying English at university explained it to me. Before that, I wasn’t aware that there was a difference between three and free – I pronounced both with /f/ at the beginning. I still have to make a conscious effort to pronounce this sound sometimes and tend to slip back to the /f/ sound when not concentrating.

I often pronounce the voiced dental fricative as /v/ when it’s not at the beginning of a word, for example in brother. However, since starting to learn Welsh, which makes quite a lot of use of dental fricatives, my ability to pronounce them has improved. Combinations of /ð/ and /v/ can also trip me up, as in swyddfa [sʊɨðva].

Alveolar trills

One aspect of Spanish pronunciation that can be tricky to master is the trilled or rolled r, which is also known as an alveolar trill /r/. This sound is also used in Italian and many other languages. Some people seem convinced that if you can’t already make this sound, it’s impossible to learn.

If you are having trouble with the Spanish r, this blog post might help. It breaks it down into a four step process and explains clearly what to do at each stage. There’s another explanation of how to make this sound here.

Once you’re got those r’s rolling, here’s a tongue twister to practise with:

Erre con Erre Cigarro
Erre con Erre Barril
Rápido corre el carro
Repleto do ferro en el ferrocarril

It is possible, in fact, to learn to make any sound used in any language, even the rolled r, and other tricky sounds like the clicks used in some African languages and the back-of-the-throat sounds of Arabic. It takes a lot of listening and practise. An understanding of the mechanics of how the sounds are produced can help as well.

There are online introductions to phonetics and phonology here and here, and this site shows you the relative positions of the tongue, teeth, lips, etc when pronouncing various sounds.

I can usually manage alveolar trills, though sometimes find the double rr in the middle of words such as carro a bit tricky and I have to slow down to get it right.

Foreign songs

Recently while looking for songs in various languages I came across the following sites:

Spanish Songs Translations – a blog featuring songs in Spanish from Spain and Latin America with English translations. There are also videos of the songs being sung.

Russian songs – a collection of traditional Russian, Cossack and Ukrainian songs with videos and background information.

I’ll try and learn some of these and add them to my collection of songs on Omniglot.

Do you know of any similar collections of songs in other languages?

City languages

There are few cities in Europe where minority languages are used as the main language. Instead they’re spoken mainly in rural areas where jobs can be hard to find, so it’s not uncommon for speakers of such languages to move to cities for work. Not all of them will continue speaking their languages and they may not return to their original homes, at least until they retire.

The strongest minority language in Europe is Catalan, which is the main language of a number of cities, including Barcelona. Other minority languages are not in such a strong position.

So you might say Teanga gan cathair, teanga gan todhchaí (A language without a city is a language without a future) – this is an up-dated version of Pádraig Pearse’s saying Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam (A country without a language is a country without a soul), which I found today on a blog post discussing this topic.

In Ireland, for example, the main places where Irish is spoken by a significant proportion of people, the gaeltachtaí, are in rural areas where jobs tend to be few and far between. As a result, they’re suffering from depopulation. The only gaeltacht in an urban area is in Belfast and it’s apparently thriving.

Mutual intelligibility of languages

If you’ve ever wondered just how much mutual intelligibility there between different languages, the sites I came across today will go some way to satisfying your curiosity.

One site is a Wikipedia page which discusses the degree of mutual intelligibility between a wide range of languages for quite a few different language families. It divides languages into those that are mutually intelligible in both their written and spoken forms, their spoken forms only, or their written forms only.

Then there’s a long discussion on this site about the mutually intelligibility of Slavic languages. There seems to be many different opinions on this topic.

I find that with a fairly good knowledge of French and Spanish, plus a basic knowledge of Portuguese and Italian, I can read and sort of understand just about any Romance language, with the exception of Romanian. When I hear unfamiliar Romance languages spoken, I can get a basic idea of their meaning as well.

My German helps me to understand written Dutch and Afrikaans to some extent, and to understand a bit of their spoken forms. In fact I understand slightly more of them than of German regional dialects such as Bavarian.

My limited knowledge of Czech and Russian helps me understand bits and pieces of other Slavic languages, at least when they’re written.

Knowledge of Irish enables me to understand quite a lot of Scottish Gaelic, and some Manx, though as Manx spelling is so different, it takes a lot of decoding.

I can understand some written Cornish thanks to my Welsh abilities, though hardly any Breton.

Talking Taiwanese

Talking Taiwanese is the name of an interesting blog I came across today. It’s written by a linguist originally from Belgium who currently teaches English in a university in southern Taiwan, and discusses the Taiwanese language and language education in Taiwan.

The most recent post discusses the current state of the Taiwanese language and suggests that the majority of people in Taiwan are likely to shift to Mandarin within a couple of generations. Apparently many young Taiwanese already prefer Mandarin, and though most speak Taiwanese, few speak it as much or as well as their parents or grandparents. Quite a few Taiwanese-speaking parents are choosing to raise their children as Mandarin speakers as they perceive that Taiwanese is not a useful language to know. Moreover, almost all education in Taiwan is conducted through the medium of Mandarin.

In my own experience, some of my Taiwanese friends spoke Taiwanese at every opportunity, while others only spoke it when absolutely necessary. When I asked the latter group to speak Taiwanese to me so that I could practise it, they often claimed that their Taiwanese wasn’t very fluent and that I should ask people who speak Taiwanese as their first language.