A website I found today compares how people from many different regions and countries pronounce English words. It also gives the pronunciation of equivalent words in related languages, and in older forms of English and other Germanic languages. The pronunciations are all given in the IPA, and there are recordings of many of the modern words as well.
Ecpod is a language learning site I found the other day that’s designed to teach you conversational English and Mandarin Chinese. It contains videos made by members, some of which feature everyday activities such as cooking, shopping or playing; others focus on particularly aspects of English or Chinese. There are also funny videos, cartoons, and a variety of others. The videos are vetted by language tutors commissioned by the site, who sometimes also add transcriptions.
It’s free, but you have to join to site to submit your own videos.
This sounds like a good idea. Do you know of similar sites for other languages?
Languages Quick Fix is a very useful site I discovered today. It includes words, phrases, and idioms in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, and German, plus a basic introduction to each language. There are recordings of the words, phrases, and idioms in all the languages - in the case of Chinese, the recordings are in Mandarin, Shanghainese and Cantonese. There are also links to news stories, dictionaries, and Chinese paintings (in the Learn Chinese - One At a Time section).
Another useful site I came across today is SmallMarble, a multilingual phrase book to which anyone can contribute. At the moment it has Spanish translations of most of the phrases, but few translations in other languages.
A locavore, which was the Oxford Word of the Year 2007, is someone who tries to eat only locally-grown food. The word was coined in 2005 by a group of four women in San Francisco who come up with the idea of only eating food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Since then, quite a few similar groups have emerged in other areas.
Locavores buy food from farmers’ markets, or grow or pick their own food, and argue that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. They also tend to avoid buying food for supermarkets because they argue that transporting food over long distances is wasteful of energy and produces much pollution.
There’s more information at: www.locavores.com
As today is the shortest day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere, I thought solstice would be a good word to choose. It comes, via French, from the Latin solstitium, the point at which the sun seems to stand still, from sol, sun, plus sistere, to come to a stop, make stand still.
Today is the winter solstice, or hibernal solstice in Latin, and the point where the earth tilts away from the sun the most. In some cultures, solstices are seen as marking the end and beginning of years or periods, while in other, they mark mid points. In English, for example, the winter solstice is also known as midwinter, while the summer solstice is know as midsummer.
Details of festivities connected with the winter solstice in many different cultures
Do you do anything to celebrate or mark the winter solstice?
The British Library website, which I came across today, has some interesting information about language and writing in the Language and the written word section. It tells the story of written English from the Beowulf, the earliest known narrative poem in English, to Virginia Woolf’s early 20th century novels, with samples of each.
The site also includes recordings of the accents and dialects of the UK, details of cook books through the ages, and a history of English language dictionaries, among other fascinating information.
This evening I’ll be going to the office Christmas party. This year it’s called “the Ice Ball”, which got me thinking about the names of such events.
A ball, as in a formal party involving dancing, comes from the Greek, ballizein, to dance, jump about, via the Latin ballare, to dance, and the Old French baller, to dance. The words ballet and ballad share the same root, as does bailar (to dance) in Spanish and Portuguese.
The word dance comes from the Old French dancier, which possibly came from Frankish.
Other dance names include:
waltz, from the German walzen, to roll, dance
polka, from the Czech polka, Polish woman, or from pulka, half, for the half-steps of Bohemian peasant dances
tango, from Argentine Spanish tango, which was originally the name of an African-American drum dance, and possibly came from a Niger-Congo language.
jig, from the Middle French giguer, to dance; or from the German Geige, violin, meaning a piece of sport or trick.
In the Roman and Byzantine Empires of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the comes stabuli (count of the stable) was the person in charge of the stables at the imperial court.
The Franks borrowed the title but changed the position slightly to the head of the royal stud. During the 12th century in France, the comes stabuli became an important commander in the army and the title became conestable in Old French.
Eventually the word was borrowed into English as constable and referred to “an officer of the peace” - this meaning was first recorded in 1596. During the 19th century, a regular police force was established in England and the police officers were given the title constable under a chief constable.
Today constable is the lowest rank in the British police, followed by sargeant, while Chief Constable is the highest rank.
Lullabies, from the Middle English lullen, to lull, + bye, are soothing songs usually sung to babies to lull them to sleep. An alternative name is berceuse, from the French for lullaby or “cradle song”.
According to an article I found today, lullabies are not only a good way to get babies to sleep, but can also help with their language development.
A study at the University of Warwick has found that babies whose parents sing to them regularly tend to develop language and communication skills earlier than babies whose parents don’t sing to them. Lullabies help babies to relax and get them used to hearing vocalisations and verbal sounds. They can also help parents to bond with their babies and to relax.
There are about three times as many people who speak English as a second or foreign language as there are native speakers. Many people use English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) to communicate with others with whom they don’t share a common language. When they do so, the English they use isn’t necessarily the same as the English used by native speakers. ELF tends to have a more restricted vocabulary, a simplified grammar and pronunciation, and fewer idioms than native English.
According to an article in the Financial Times I came across today, via this blog, ELF users tend to find it easier to communicate with one another if no native speakers of English are present. Native speakers who don’t adjust their language for non-natives tend to be difficult to understand. The article mentions a student conference in Amsterdam where everyone spoke English and where the sole British participant was asked to be “less English” so that the others could understand her.
I first heard the term English as a Lingua Franca a few years ago on a radio programme in which the linguist Jean Atchinson discussed the phenomenon. She suggested that native speakers of English should become familiar with ELF in order to communicate effectively with non-native speakers. I sure this isn’t too much of a problem for those who communicate regularly with non-native speakers, but probably can cause difficulties for others.
In another article about ELF, the author mentions research from Sweden and the Netherlands on the widespread use of English as a medium of instruction in higher education. The research found that “Test results were about ten percent lower on average in English taught courses than in courses taught in the mother tongue.”
