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.

Pandora’s banjo

By Simon

Banjo

Last night a friend asked me about the origins of the word banjo. I wasn’t sure, so I did some investigating and discovered that banjo comes from the word bandore as pronounced by African slaves – ban’jōre, ban’jō.

A bandore (/bænˈdɔə(r)/ /ˈbændɔə(r)/) is “a musical instrument resembling a guitar or lute, with three, four, or six wire strings, used as a bass to the cittern.” and arrived in English from the Spanish ban’durria / ban’dola or the Portuguese bandurra, which come from the Latin pandūra, from the Greek πανδοῦρα [Source].

A Greek πανδοῦρα (pandoura) was a kind of lute with three strings, and the word was used for other lute-type instruments. It possibly developed from and got it’s name from a type of Sumerian plucked lute known as a pantur (lit. “small bow”). There is also theory that the Greek πανδοῦρα came from or was influenced by Ancient Egyptian instruments.

The πανδοῦρα became popular among the Romans, especially during the first centuries AD and among the common people – members of ‘polite’ society apparently considered it a vulgar instrument suitable only for taverns, frivolity, low merry-making and popular music. [source]

The name Pandora (Πανδώρα) isn’t related to πανδοῦρα, as far as I can discover, and comes from the Greek words πᾶν “all” and δῶρον (gift), and means “all-gifted” or “all-endowed” [source]. I couldn’t resist using it as a punning title though.

Learning a Language with Flashcards

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Andrew Cohen.

Having been a reader of the Omniglot blog for quite some time now, I have seen a lot of discussion about the usefulness of flashcards for help learning a language – particularly as a tool for practicing vocabulary and verb conjugation. Spaced-repetition systems (SRSs) like Anki seem to have gained traction as the preferred vocabulary study method among the language-learning blogosphere.

Yet despite their popularity, SRSs have so far mostly remained limited to vocabulary memorization. I find it surprising that no SRS manager has yet attempted to develop a way for people to actually learn a language from scratch using audio flashcards. It’s as if language theorists are afraid of innovating too much in the flashcard realm, lest they be accused of advocating diminished human interaction.

That’s why I created Brainscape. We’re a web & mobile “smart flashcards” platform that has developed a fully flashcard-based language learning methodology called Intelligent Cumulative Exposure (ICE). (See our 30-page white paper (PDF) about the cognitive science behind ICE.) We basically took the often-overlooked body of research suggesting that adult language learners benefit most from practicing output, and we found a way for the learner to systematically practice output of full sentences.

Intelligent Cumulative Exposure is based on the following tenets:

(1) Use translation to solicit the learner to generate each foreign-language sentence in the form of a flashcard;
(2) Play a natural-sounding native recording of the full sentence on the back of the flashcard
(3) Introduce only one new concept (k + 1) per sentence, beginning at the most basic sentence possible;
(4) Provide grammatical annotation in the learner’s native language where appropriate; and
(5) Repeat previously seen sentence-generation exercises in a spaced repetition pattern driven by the learner’s own confidence levels.

We’ve spent the past two years carefully sequencing a curriculum that applies these principles on both the web and iPhone – and we are finally releasing the product today! Brainscape Spanish starts from the most basic Spanish concepts for novices, toward much more complex words, grammar, and phrases for the advanced user. The app is currently available to use for free on our website (for a limited time) and for $40 on the iTunes App Store. It contains over 6,000 flashcards and will continue to improve based on user feedback over the coming months.

Please check out the app for yourself – and tell us what you think! And thanks again to Simon for letting me share this new innovation here on the Omniglot.

Lightbulb moments

By Simon

Light bulb

Yesterday while we were singing La Bamba at the ukulele club the words started to make sense to me. I’d picked up some of them through repeated listening, but had never bothered to learn them before this week. Now I not only know the words, but also what they mean. Often with songs in languages other than English I might know the meaning of at least some of the words, but I don’t always grasp their exact meaning.

In the case of La Bamba, the lyrics that started to make sense to me last night were:

Para bailar la bamba (in order to dance the bamba)
Para bailar la bamba (in order to dance the bamba)
Se necesita una poca de gracia (you need a little bit of grace)
Una poca de gracia para mi para ti (a little bit of grace for me for you)
Y arriba y arriba – wasn’t sure about this bit – have now discovered that it means “faster, faster” or “higher, higher”
Ay arriba y arriba
Por ti sere, por ti sere, por ti sere (for you I will be, for you I will be)

Yo no soy marinero (I’m not a sailor)
Yo no soy marinero, soy capitan (I’m not a sailor, I’m a captain)
Soy capitan, soy capitan (I’m a captain, I’m a captain)

Source: http://www.lyricsmania.com/la_bamba_lyrics_los_lobos.html

This happens with songs in Welsh and Irish, and occasionally other languages as well, especially with songs I’ve heard many times – the meaning of a word, a line or even a whole verse suddenly becomes blindingly obvious and I wonder why I never realised what it meant before. It doesn’t help that it can be tricky to hear the words of songs clearly and that I don’t always listen to them very attentively, but sometimes when a word I’ve heard and understood in another context pops up in a song, it might help me understand some of the other parts of the song.

I think that the brain works away subconsciously trying to make sense of things, and when it has a solution, the conscience lights up like a light bulb. It’s moments like that that make language learning an exciting and rewarding adventure.

Spots and sleeves

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Andrew of How to learn Spanish

channel tunnel diagram

Hi, my name’s Andrew, I’ve been teaching myself Spanish on my own for about four years now, I run a blog on the subject of how to learn Spanish on your own where I share my own experiences and tips, and today I just thought I’d share a funny story with you concerning a certain Spanish word I learned about a few months ago…

So I was in the process of going through a Notes in Spanish lesson (which I highly recommend, the audio is free, start at the beginner’s level, honestly no, you don’t need the worksheets) when I came across the term “túnel” which I presumed to mean “tunnel”, which it did, and so I added it to Anki along with an example phrase that I see in the dictionary, “Túnel del Canal de la Mancha” which refers to the English Channel tunnel, aka “the chunnel”.

Anytime I see a new word I don’t know, I have to look it up and add it to Anki, I’m a bit OCD and looking up a single word in the dictionary can cause a chain reaction that leads to me looking up and adding 10 more words. I do not know this word, “mancha”, what is this? I look it up. It means…”spot, blotch, stain, blemish, or liver spot”. This makes no sense: “Canal de la Mancha” = “Canal of the Spot”? “Canal of the stain”? “Canal of the liver spot”?!

Right, we’re going to sort this out, something funny’s going on here…

I initially think that maybe it refers to “spot” in the sense of a location, which actually is like the 8th definition down for the word “mancha” in my dictionary, so it’s possible, but…further googling turns up the Spanish wikipedia page for the English Channel, and within the very first paragraph I see:

El nombre no es más que una mala traducción del francés, ya que La Manche significa realmente ‘La Manga’, puesto que es la misma palabra que se emplea para designar a la parte de la camisa dentro de la cual se mete el brazo.

Which means:

The name is no more than a bad translation of the French, as La Manche actually means ‘The Sleeve’, since it’s the same word that’s used to designate which part of the shirt you put your arm into.

Ahhhh hahaha! I look up “manche” in the French dictionary, it means “sleeve”, I look up “manga” in the Spanish dictionary, it means “sleeve”. Ohhh boy. Ok, that explains it.

So what has happened here is that the Spanish heard the word “la manche” from the French when they were referring to the English Channel and then sort of simultaneously borrowed and mangled the French word for it instead of actually translating it (if they knew that it meant “the sleeve” they would’ve ended up with “la manga” in Spanish, but they didn’t know this), thereby ending up with “la mancha” as an adulteration of “la manche”. In other words, in the phrase “Canal de la Mancha”, the word mancha does not mean “spot, stain etc.”, in fact, it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a name–sort of like if you’ve got a dog called “Spot”, in that particular context the word “spot” doesn’t mean “spot”, it doesn’t ‘mean’ anything, it’s just the name of the damned dog 😀

Yes, I was amused by this, thank you, I realize you may not be. If you did perhaps find it amusing or you’re simply interested in the Spanish language you might like to come on over and see what else I’ve got (a lot of people like the Shakira-series I’ve done where I teach you Spanish using her music videos), I’d be glad to have you!

Cheers,

Andrew

Judeo-Arabic

By Simon

This sentence in Judeo-Arabic was sent in by a visitor to Omniglot who would like to know what it means.

האדא כלאמהום. אלדי יגאוובון עלא האדה מסלכהום. ומא ענדנא גוואב נגרח להאדא גוואבהום

Can you help?

I put it into Google translate and got this transliteration: Hada Achlamhum. Baldi Igaauubon Ala Shahada Msllachhum. Ma Endana Agovab Ngerah Lhada Agovabhum.

Vamps, riffs and ostinanti

By Simon

At the community choir last night our conductor referred to part of a song we were practising as a vamp. I have heard this term before in the context of songs, but wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, so decided to find out.

According to the OED, vamp (/væmp/) has a number of meanings, including:

1. That part of hose or stockings which covers the foot and ankle; also, a short stocking, a sock.
2. The part of a boot or shoe covering the front of the foot; U.S., that part between the sole and the top in front of the ankle-seams.
3. Anything vamped, patched up, or refurbished; a patchwork; a book of this nature.
4. A vamped or improvised accompaniment.

Etymology: from the Anglo-Norman *vampé / *vanpé, from the Old French avanpié, which later became avantpied – a combination of avan(t) (before) and pié foot.

None of these definitions entirely fit what we were singing last night – a short repeated phrase at the end of a song.

According to Wikipedia, a vamp is “a repeating musical figure, section or accompaniment” that’s used mainly in jazz, gospel, soul, and musical theatre, and also in other types of music. Vamp can also mean “to improvise simple accompaniment or variation of a tune”.

The equivalent of vamp in classical music is ostinato, the Italian word for ‘stubborn’. A related term is riff, which is perhaps an abbreviation of refrain and refers to a repeated chord progression, pattern, refrain or melodic figure, and is used mainly in rock, funk, jazz and Latin music.

A kitten’s growl

By Simon

A kitten’s growl would not come near the plights of your spoken voice.
You are a banana moon subverting the sun.
Your ear-splitting sequels have a mind of their own.
Demonize your sofa. It will lend forth more peanuts between the cushions.
The tiny sounds of ancient bees resound forth from the forrested coercions between your toes.

The above sentences were generated by the The Surrealist Compliment Generator. They look a bit like things that emerged from a game some friends and I devised involving going around the group saying one word each and trying to connect the words into sentences.

The SCG also throws up surrealist compliments in other languages occasionally. For example:

– Mano a mano, le tue ossiflexe, si starnubbano nel brondio.
– Votre regard est plus penetrant qu’une stalagmite sertie dans son antre d’albatre
– Heizenmizstenwerner ut mal die westernmoviefurter und glipzenglagenheimer zieden un der witzelwaltzerfloggen…

Coming up with surrealist sentences like this in languages you’re learning could be a fun way to practise using them.

The OED defines surrealism as:

“A movement in art and literature seeking to express the subconscious mind by any of a number of different techniques, including the irrational juxtaposition of realistic images, the creation of mysterious symbols, and automatism; art or literature produced by or reminiscent of this movement.”

The word surrealism comes from the French surréalisme, which was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917.