Author: Simon

I am a linguist, web developer and musician. I live in Bangor in Wales and run Omniglot - the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages, as well as making the Radio Omniglot Podcast.

Mandarin v English

By Simon

I came across an interesting article about the relative importance of Mandarin and English in South East Asia today. It talks about children from Malaysia being sent to school in Singapore because their parents want them to be fluent in English – schools in Malaysia teach in Malay, while those in Singapore teach in English. The parents believe that the standard of English used in Malaysia has declined significantly since the 1980s, when Malay had become the main language used in Malay schools, and they think the fluency in English is important for the children’s future.

Meanwhile in Singapore Mandarin is becoming increasingly important as more and more business is done with China. However English remains an important language. The article suggests that while both Mandarin and English are useful, English is a dominant position in terms of culture (music, movies, etc).

In Vietnam there is apparently a resistance to learning Mandarin and many people prefer to learn English and do business with the USA.

Haste and speed

By Simon

A friend asked me to investigate the expression more haste, less speed as it doesn’t seem to make sense. I’ve always interpreted as meaning you should do something more hastily and less quickly, which seems illogical to me.

The OED defines haste as:

1. Urgency or impetuosity of movement resulting in or tending to swiftness or rapidity; quickness, speed, expedition (properly of voluntary action).

2. Such quickness of action as excludes due consideration or reflection; hurry, precipitancy, want of deliberation, rashness.

The primary meaning of speed is given as:

Quickness in moving or making progress from one place to another, usually as the result of special exertion; celerity, swiftness; also, power or rate of progress.

So both words are related to swiftness, but haste can also indicate imeptuousness. There are a number of other meanings of speed though, which are now obsolete:

1. abundance; 2. power, might; 3. Success, prosperity, good fortune; profit, advancement, furtherance.

I suspect that the speed part of ‘more haste, less speed’ might be using speed in the sense of success, good fortune, etc. That would make more sense.

Then again, maybe the saying means that if you doing something hastily, you will also do it more slowly. So maybe it’s encouraging you to slow down, take your time and do it better.

How do you interpret this expression? Do you know any simliar ones?

By hook or by crook

By Simon

I went to two talks by David Crystal at Bangor University yesterday – one was entitled “By Hook or by Crook” and the other was on Shakespeare’s English, focusing particularly on original pronunciation (OP) – a reconstruction of the way people spoke in Shakepeare’s day. Both talks were fascinating and full of information and anecdotes.

In the first David explained how he finds interesting linguistics tidbits wherever he goes, and that when he’s at a loose end, he’ll go wandering in search of them. For example, on a visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, he also went to Snitterfield, a small village nearby where Shakepeare’s grandfather lived. He discovered that the snitter in Snitterfield comes from snyten, an old word for snipe, from the Old English sníte. So he wondered whether there were any snipe around and asked a local, who said that he’d seen a wisp of snipe recently.

The word wisp caught David’s attention, and this set him thinking about where collective nouns like this come from. He discovered that the first known appearance in writing of a lot of them is in lists compiled in monastries in the medieval period. He thought that the monks might have come up with some of these collective nouns as a game – the sort of thing that still happens.

As he was describing some of the linguistic tangents he pursues, I realised that I often do something similar and write about them here. Although I haven’t written any books yet – David has written over 100.

The second talk gave examples of how some passages in Shakespeare work better in OP. Some rhymes and jokes, for example, only work in OP. He gave lots of examples, which I don’t remember, unfortunately.

Visiting with

By Simon

I’ve noticed in novels and other things in American English that I’ve read recently that people talk about ‘visiting with’ friends or other people, in the sense of spending time with them. In British English you might visit a place with a friend, but you don’t usually visit with a friend in the American sense.

I just put “visit with” into Google.co.uk and the first site in the results is one entitled “Places To Visit With The Family UK”. In Google.com though, one of the first results is a story about someone who can “visit with his grandchildren while out on bail”. I would use see in place of visit with in this context.

To me at least, going to visit somewhere or someone sounds like a relatively formal activity – you might visit someone in hospital or prison, or visit relatives, especially if they live quite a way away, but you would go to see your friends.

In American (or other flavours of) English is there a differences in meaning between going to visit someone and visiting with someone?

Do other languages distinguish different types of visit?

Projects and practice

By Simon

When you learn a language because it’s useful, interesting, fun and/or necessary (all of which are good reasons to do so), the language itself tends to be the main focus, and acquiring the ability to understand, speak, read and/or write it is perhaps the main goal. An alternative approach is to see a language as a means to do others things – to make friends from different countries; to read foreign literature and other material; to understand foreign radio, TV and films; to spend time in other countries, and so on. This kind of project or task-based language learning is almost certainly not a new idea, but I think it’s worth trying.

I find languages themselves fascinating and can spend a lot of time learning about them, and also tend to focus on listening to and reading them. In order to become proficient using them in speech and writing though, I find it helps to set myself specific tasks or projects which give me opportunities to actually use the languages.

For example, when I was gathering material for my MA dissertation, which focused on the Manx Gaelic language, I tried to communicate with Manx speakers in Manx. It took me quite a while to compose emails in Manx, as I had to look up many of the words and check the grammar, but the process of doing this really helped to improve my written Manx. My spoken Manx also improved as I read everything I wrote aloud quite a few times, and did my best to chat in Manx with my informants.

I’ve also found that writing on my multilingual blog in languages I’m learning is very helpful. When I do write things there, which I haven’t done much recently, I tend to write in Welsh, Irish and/or Manx, and sometimes in other languages. I tend to write about my life, though in some ways the process of writing is more important than the content.

Another example: if you’re learning French you might want to learn to make some French dishes. This could be a project you do in French – finding recipes online, learning the relevant words and phrases, then making the dishes. Perhaps you could also invite French-speaking or learning friends to help you to eat what you’ve made, which would be a good opportunity to discuss what you made and how, thus reinforcing what you’ve learnt, both in terms of language and cooking skills. If French cuisine really appeals to you, you could even do a cookery course in France or another French-speaking country.

Do you set yourself tasks and projects to do using foreign languages?

Sporange

By Simon

Sproange /spɒˈrændʒ/ is another name for the sporangium /spɒˈrændʒɪəm/ of a plant, which the OED defines as “a receptacle containing spores; a spore-case or capsule.” Sporange comes via Latin from the Greek σπορά spore + ἀγγεῖον (vessel).

Sporange is also the only English word that rhymes with orange, a factoid I discovered on Lexiophiles, which lists a number of other English words that have no rhymes, including month, vacuum, obvious, penguin, husband and whilst. Do you know of words that rhyme with any of these?

A blog called Skorks lists a number of made up words that rhyme with orange, including:

– amoreange – an orange you instantly fall in love with
– quantorange – an orange that is both here and somewhere else at the same time
– tetrahedrorange – an orange shaped like a pyramid

According to the Oxford Dictionaries site, lozenge is a half-rhyme or pararhyme for orange.

Baragouiner

By Simon

Bara ha gwin / Pain et vin / Bread and Wine

The French words baragouin and baragouiner came up in conversation yesterday and I thought I’d write about them today as they have an interesting etymology.

According to Reverso baragouin means ‘gibberish, gabble or double Dutch’ and baragouiner ‘means ‘to gibber, jabber, gabble’. The Larousse Dictionary defines baragouin as language that is incomprehensible due to poor pronunciation, vocabulary or syntax, or an incomprehensible foreign language; and baragouiner as to talk a foreign language, incorrect pronounciation, or to express something in an incomprehensible way.

According to Wikitionaire and Le Dictionnaire d’étymologie française, these words come from two Breton words – bara (bread) and gwin (wine) – things that Breton-speaking travellers often asked for from French-speaking inn keepers during the Middle Ages and which the French speakers particularly noticed. As the French speakers didn’t understand what the Bretons were saying, they associated these words with gibberish or an incomprehensible language.