Month: October 2012

Yezhoù, kanaouennoù ha sonerezh

By Simon

The Breton couchsurfers arrived yesterday, with an Austrian friend, and we’re having a great time. They’ve taught me a bit of Breton, we’ve also talked in French, English, Welsh, Irish and German – I love having opportunities to use my languages like this. I’ve learnt more about Brittany and Breton and have shown them round Bangor – they particularly like the older parts of the university.

Last night we did some silly singing at the crazy choir – a small group of us who get together every other week to improvise songs and harmonies and generally be silly. After that we went to a folk music session at a nearby pub. Tonight we’re going to a cèilidh, which will the first time they’ve been to one, though they do have something similar in Brittany – fest-noz.

PEBCAC

By Simon

I discovered an acronym today that is used by IT support types to indicate that the problem is with the user rather than the computer – PEBCAC, or ‘problem exists between computer and chair’. An alternative version is PEBCAK, or ‘problem exists between keyboard and chair’.

Related acronyms I found in the Urban Dictionary include PEBE, or ‘problem exists between ears’; PEBLARE, or ‘problem exists between left and right ear’, and PEBKAF, or ‘problem exists between keypad and floor’ (used by security companies to describe user error).

Have you heard or used any of these? Or any related ones?

Couchsurfing and languages

By Simon

Last week when looking for people in Bangor to practise my languages with I found mention of a polyglot conversation group on couchsurfing.org. I’m not sure if it’s still going, but after looking around the site I thought I’d register. A few days later I got a couch request for this coming weekend from some Breton-speaking students who are currently studying Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. So I decided to learn some more Breton this week. I’m using Colloquial Breton, doing a little every day, and listening to Radio Breizh.

I’ve heard about others using couchsurfing to find people to practise languages with, but haven’t tried it myself yet. It looks like a good way to do so. Have you used it to find in this way?

Cromarty fisher dialect

By Simon

According to a report I found today in the Herald Scotland, the last fluent speaker of the Cromarty fisher dialect of Scots, Bobby Hogg, died recently. It was a dialect spoken by fisherfolk in the northeast of Scotland. According to experts, it was “the first ever linguistic demise to be so exactly recorded in Scotland.” While there are still a few people who know bits of the dialect, nobody speaks it anymore.

There are some recordings and examples of the dialect on Am Baile an interview from 2007 with Bobby Hogg and his brother Gordon.

There is a book, The Cromarty Fisherfolk Dialect, which contains words and phrases in and information about the dialect.

Here are a few examples:
– At wid be scekan tiln ken? = What do you want to know?
– Am fair sconfished wi hayreen; gie’s fur brakwast lashins o am and heggs. = I’m so fed up with herring, give me plenty of ham and eggs for breakfast.
– Foamin for want = Desperate for tea
– Theer nae tae big fi a sclaffert yet! = You’re not too big for a slap!

The dialect appears to include a number of words from Scottish Gaelic, though the spelling disguises them.

A foreboding sky

By Simon

Last night when I went out the sky was dark with very low clouds, and I expected it to rain at any moment. It did start raining while I was outside, but fortunately I was inside by the time the heavy rain arrived. I said to a friend that the sky had looked decidedly foreboding. He agreed, and we wondered how you would say this in the past tense if you use forebode as a verb – e.g. the sky foreboded/forebod/forebad/forebid rain. It’s not a word I use every day so I wasn’t sure. Now I know that it’s foreboded.

To forebode means to warn of or indicate (an event, result, etc.) in advance; to have an intuition or premonition of (an event) [source]. Fore comes from the Old English prefix fore- (before), from the Proto-Indo-European root *per- (forward, through), and bode from the Old English word bodian from boda (messenger) [source].

Fore comes from the same root as the Latin words pro (before, for, on behalf of), prae (before) and per (through, for) [source], and related words in other languages.

I like the word bode – you could say that something bodes without specifying whether it bodes well or ill, it just bodes.

Mandarin in UK schools

By Simon

According to an article I found today in The Independent there is a dire shortage of qualified teachers of Mandarin Chinese in the UK – only about 100 at the moment – and at the same time increasing numbers of schools want to offer Mandarin lessons. Apparently some 500 schools in the UK currently teach Mandarin, though most do so as a taster course or as an after school club.

The government has a plan to train a thousand new Mandarin teachers, but that’s going to take quite a while. In the meantime one school mentioned in the article is using video conferencing to provide Mandarin lessons, which is a good temporary solution, though not as good as having a real, live teacher in the classroom.

So if those learning Mandarin in school continue studying it at university, there should be plenty of jobs available to them as teachers, at least.