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Monthly Archives: October 2010
Jumpers and sea pigs
Llamhidydd, (n/m) [pl. llamhidyddion] – porpoise, dancer, acrobat, jumper Today’s word appears in a book I’m reading at the moment and is a new one to me. I’m not sure about the etymology of the hid part, but llam means jump, and the suffix -ydd indicates a person or agent. As well as jump, llam […]
Puzzle
This sign appears in the window of a Thai restaurant in Washington DC, and was sent in by a visitor to Omniglot who would like to know what it means. Can you help?
Language quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language and where it’s spoken?
3 Unique Ways to Learn Spanish
Today we have a guest post from Ian at Fluently Spanish: If you’re like most people who want to learn Spanish, you are sick of the boring methods used by old-fashioned school and college lecturers. All that hope, promise and excitement of learning Spanish can only last so long if you are stuck reading books […]
Koro
Koro is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 1,000 people in Arunachal Pradesh in north-eastern India. Until recently it was unknown outside this region and was discovered by a team of linguists who are part of the National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project, which aims to document endangered languages [source]. The linguists started documenting two other […]
Casual water
casual water – “a temporary accumulation of water on the golf course”. Technically the accumulation of water has to be above ground and visible, and this does not include lakes; wet, spongy, mushy or muddy ground; dew or frost, or snow or ice [source]. So in other words casual water is another way of describing […]
Puzzles
Can anyone decipher the writing around this disc? It was sent in by a visitor to Omniglot who’s been told that it’s in a Kufic version of the Arabic script, and who thinks it could be Ottoman Turkish or Persian. A speaker of Hmong who wrote to me recently mentioned that consonants are called tsiaj […]
Language quiz
Here’s a recording in six different languages. Can you identify the languages and work out which is the odd one out?
Word of the day – spurtle
I came across today’s word, spurtle, in a book I’m reading at the moment. It’s described as “a wooden utensil for stirring porridge” in the book, while according to Wikipedia it is: a Scots kitchen tool, dating from at least the fifteenth century. It was originally a flat, wooden, spatula-like utensil, used for flipping oatcakes […]