Word of the day – cuddle

Cuddle is an example of a false friend or cognate – it has one meaning in English (to hold (sb or sth) close; a close embrace) and one in Welsh (a hiding place). The pronunciation is different in each language: in English it’s /ˈkʌd.ḷ/ and in Welsh it’s /ˈkɨðlɛ/ or /ˈkɪðlɛ/.

The English word is a variant or cull or coll (to embrace,) which possibly comes from the Middle English couthelen from couth (known).

The Welsh word comes from cudd (hiding, concealment, hiding place; concealed, hidden) and lle (place).

Related words include:
cuddfa / cuddfan – hiding place, retreat, hoard
cuddiad – concealment
cuddiedig – hidden, concealed
cuddio – to hide, cover, bury
cuddiwr – hider
cuddlen – curtain, veil
cuddserch – fondness, affection
cuddswyddog – detective

Animated Chinese character dictionary

Arch Chinese is a very useful site I came across the other day. It includes a Chinese character dictionary which provides animations showing how to write six thousand traditional and six thousand simplified Chinese characters, and gives you pinyin pronunciation (with audio recordings), stroke counts, English translations and examples of words and phrases that use each character. You can search characters by pronunciation, radical, English words, etc.

It can also character worksheets in PDF format, converts pinyin with tone numbers to pinyin with diacritics, and keeps track of the characters you’ve studied. You can even add your own characters and phrases, and import and export word lists to/from the flashcard function.

Word of the day – ieithgi

Yesterday I discovered a Welsh term that describes me, and many of you, perfectly – ieithgi [‘ɪəiθgi] (lit. “language dog/hound”), which refers to someone who is very keen on languages, i.e. a linguaphile. There are also some cool Welsh language games on the BBC website under that name, which where I found it.

Are there equivalent words for ieithgi (pl. ieithgŵn) in other languages?

Alphabet and language games

I found some alphabet and language games today on PurposeGames, including one which involves matching writing systems to their names (which come from Omniglot), a multilingual one, an Arabic alphabet one, a Phoenician alphabet one, and many more. You can also create your own games on this site.

Do you know of any other sites with similar games?

Do you know of any other sites with similar games?

I’d like to add these kinds of games to Omniglot eventually.

Pronouncing foreign words

In his essay, England your England, George Orwell wrote of the English working class:

Even when they are obliged to live abroad for years they refuse either to accustom themselves to foreign food or to learn foreign languages. Nearly every Englishman of working-class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly.

I’ve encountered attitudes like this among many English tourists who rate foreign places partly by the ability of the locals to speak English, and even if they know a few words of the local languages, they usually pronounce them with an English accent.

An article I found on this subject – Brits don’t border with local lingo – says that more than half of the British tourists surveyed cannot recognise even basic phrases in the language of their destination, that more than 80% of monolingual British tourists refuse to take a phrase book or dictionary abroad with them, and that a third rely on the locals speaking English. If the locals don’t speak English, then the Brits speak more loudly and slowly in English, use mime, and/or speak English with a foreign accent. Even those who know phrases in foreign languages often get them mixed up and pronounce them incorrectly.

Amusing examples of mispronunciation and misuse of foreign phrases can be found in the British television comedy Only Fools and Horses, in which the character of Del Boy uses “au revoir” to mean “hello”, “bonjour” for “goodbye”, and “bon appetit” for “I hope you choke on the potatoes” – there are more examples here. He pronounces all with a strong Cockney accent.

Ymlacio

Mae’r semestr cyntaf ar ben bellach, a dw i’n gallu ymlacio tipyn bach ar ôl wythnosau o waith ar fy aseiniadau. Ydw i wedi gorffen nhw o’r diwedd Ddydd Iau diwethaf, ac heblaw arholiadau seineg Ddydd Gwener, ’sdim gen i ddim byd i wneud ar gyfer y prifysgol yr wythnos hon. Wrth gwrs mae gen i pethau eraill i wneud – erthyglau i ysgrifennu, cerddoriaeth i ymarfer, ieithoedd i ddysgu, a phethau i wneud ar Omniglot, felly fydda i ddim yn hollol diog. Eto i gyd, dydy’r pethau ‘na ddim yn teimlo fel gwaith oherwydd dw i’n mwynhau gwneud nhw.

Bydda yr ail semestr yn cychwyn wythnos i yfory a bydda i’n gwneud modiwlau dewisol mewn anhwylderau iaith a materion cyfoes yn ddwyieithrwydd. Yn anffodus, dydy’r modiwl mewn caffaeliad iaith plentyn ddim ar gael yn yr ail semestr, felly roedd rhaid i mi ddewis rhywbeth arall.

Lig mo scíth

Tá an chead téarma críochnaithe anois, agus is féidir liom lig mo scíth giota beag i ndiaidh a bheith ag obair go dian le seachtaine ar mo thascanna ollscoile. Chríochnaigh mé na tascanna faoi dheireadh Déardaoin seo caite, agus lasmuigh de scrúdú foghraíocht Dé hAoine seo chugainn, níl obair ar bith agam ar an ollscoil. Tá rudaí eile i dhéanamh agam ar ndóigh – airteagail a scríobh, ceol a chleachtadh, teangacha a fhoghlaim, agus rudaí a dhéanamh ar Omniglot, mar sin de ní bheidh mé go hiomlán díomhaoin. Ach is maith liom na rudaí sin a dhéanamh, agus dá bhrí sin, ní bhíonn iad mar obair dom.

Tosóidh an dara téarma seachtain ón lá amárach, agus beidh mé ag déanamh modúil i neamhord teanga agus ceisteanna reatha dátheangachais. Ní bhíodh an modúl sealbhú teanga an pháiste ar siúl sa dara téarma, ar an drochuair, dá bhrí sin bhí orm rud éigin eile a roghnú.

Relaxing

The first semester is over now and I can relax a bit after weeks of work on my assignments, which I finally finished last Thursday. Apart from phonetics exams on Friday next, I don’t have anything else to do for uni this coming week. Of course I have plenty of other things to do – articles to write, music to practise, languages to learn, and stuff to do on Omniglot, so I won’t be completely idle. Then again, these are all things I enjoy doing, so they don’t feel like work.

The second semester starts a week tomorrow and I’ll be doing modules in language disorders and current issues in bilingualism. Unforunately the module in child language acquisition is not available in the second semester, so I had to choose something else.

Faclair Dwelly

I heard recently that there is now an online version of Dwelly’s Gaelic Dictionary, the most comprehensive Gaelic dictionary currently available. You can search for words via Scottish Gaelic or English, a significant improvement on printed version. You can also search for whole words, parts of words, exact spellings or similar sounding words. Another advantage of the online version of the dictionary is that you can read the text clearly and change the size if necessary – in the printed version the text is quite small and not always easy to read.

Edward Dwelly (1864-1939) was an English man with no Scottish connections who became fascinated by Scotland and learned to speak Gaelic like a native, and to play the bagpipes to a virtuoso level. He was also an active member of Comunn Gàidhealach an Lunainn (the Gaelic Society of London). He started work on his Illustrated Gaelic-English Dictionary in 1891, and it was published between 1902 and 1911. He not only compiled the dictionary, but also edited, illustrated, proof-read and printed it.

While the dictionary is somewhat out of date, the guys who digitised it are planning to add new words, recordings and images to it to bring it up-to-date.

Email etiquette

A correspondent has asked about email etiquette and would be interested to know about formal and informal email openings and sign offs. Do you, for example, always start with a greeting of some kind and finish with a farewell? Or do you sometimes omit one or other of these? What kind of greetings and sign offs do you use, and do they depend on the context?

In my previous job some of the emails I sent were simple one word or one sentence ones without greetings or sign offs which said things like “Done”, “Sorted”, “I’ve done that now”, etc., but I only wrote in this way when replying to colleagues I knew well. Normally I almost always include greetings, such as Hi or Hello, and farewells, such as Regards or Best wishes, in my emails, except in some replies.