Monthly Archives: June 2008

Standard written form of Cornish

12/06/2008 Simon

At a meeting of the Cornish Language Partnership last month, a new standard written form (SWF) of Cornish was ratified after much discussion, according to a report on maga. A specification of the SWF, which is also available on that site, states that: “The SWF is not meant to replace other spelling systems, but rather […]

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Origins of the Celts

10/06/2008 Simon

http://thetranslatorscafe.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/celts-are-from-spain-says-professor/”>An article I found recently questions the commonly-held belief that the original Celtic homeland was in central Europea around Hallstatt in what is now Switzerland. In a theory based an extensive overview of the linguistic and archaeological evidence, Professor John Koch of the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies proposes that […]

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Language quiz

08/06/2008 Simon

Here’s a recording of part of a news report in a mystery language. Can you guess or do you know which language it is?

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My favourite kanji

06/06/2008 Simon

The author of a site offering online Japanese lessons has kindly offered one full account for free to Omniglot visitors. The site offers Japanese lessons for beginners, plus some material for more advanced learners. Some of the lessons are free, once you’ve registered, others are available after payment of an annual subscription. The account will […]

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The Nagari Alphabet

05/06/2008 Simon

Today we have a guest post by Marcis Gasuns. The Nāgarī (lit. ‘of the city’) or Devanāgarī (‘divine Nagari’) alphabet descended from the Brahmi script sometime around the 11th century AD. It was originally developed to write Sanksrit but was later adapted to write many other languages. The origin and meaning of devanāgarī (also written […]

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Celtic connections

04/06/2008 Simon

Apart from the odd word here and there, the vocabularies of the two living branches of the Celtic language family, Brythonic (British) and Goidelic (Gaelic), appear to bear little resemblance to each other. So far I’ve only found two words that are exactly the same in Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic: blas (taste/flavour) and glas […]

Breton, Cornish, Irish, Language, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh 8 Comments

Forvo

02/06/2008 Simon

Forvo is a site I heard about recently which contains recordings of tens of thousands of words, phrases and names in over 70 languages. The site is free to use and anyone can submit recordings, which means that their quality varies quite a bit. It looks like it has potential to become a useful language […]

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Name the language

01/06/2008 Simon

Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Do you know or can you guess which language it is?

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