Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language and where it’s spoken?
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.
Tacsi a Soothsayers
Neithiwr es i’r prifysgol i glywed Tasci, band o Ynys Môn, a’r Soothsayers o Lundain. Mae Tasci yn chwarae cymysgedd o reggae, ffync, soul a blŵs ac yn canu yn ddwyieithog, ac mae’r Soothsayers yn chwarae cymysgedd o Afrobeat, reggae a dub. Roedd y gerddoriaeth yn wych ac yn gyffrous, ac roedd bron pawb yn y lle yn dawnsio.
Hen’s nests and potholes
One French expression that came up last night was nid-de-poule (hen’s nest), which sounds much more interesting than it’s English equivalent, pothole.
The English word pothole can refer to a number of things, including:
– a hole formed in rock by stones in water or glacial erosion;
– underground passages, shafts and chambers formed by water erosion;
– a pond formed by water collecting in a natural hollow (mainly in North American English)
– a shallow hole dug in the ground while prospecting (mainly in Australia)
– a depression or hollow in a road or track
[source]
Another French word for the kind of pothole that occurs in road is fondrière, from fondre (to melt), while the kind of pothole found underground is a caverne, grotte or gouffre. The French equivalent of potholing is spéléologie and a spéléleogue / spéléo (potholer) is said to faire de la spéléologie (to go potholing), an activity known as spelunking or caving in American English. The word speleology is also used to some extent in English and comes, via the French spéléleogue and Latin spēlæum, from the Greek σπήλαιον (spí̱laion – cave) plus λογία (logia). The adjective spelaean means ‘cave-dwelling’.
The word potholing apparently originated in the north of England and refers to the act of exploring potholes, which in this case refers to vertical caves.
Do any of you go caving / potholing / spelunking? If you do, what do you call it?
Are there interesting words for potholes (in roads) in other languages?
上海闲话 (Shanghainese)
According to an article I came across today, the local government in Shanghai is trying to preserve Shanghainese, the variety of Wu spoken in Shanghai. This involves recording people who speak ‘pure’ Shanghainese talking about local legends and traditions, etc. This is the third time such a project has been attempted, and they hope to find more speakers of ‘true’ Shanghainese this time – something they didn’t manage before.
Similar projects are underway in other parts of China, such as Jiangsu and Yunnan, to preserve other regionalects/languages. The plan is to compile a national database of regional languages and dialects.
This initiative marks a reversal of the government policy of the 1990s when there was a campaign to encourage people to speak Mandarin rather than Shanghainese in Shanghai. The use of Shanghainese was banned in schools and the number of Shanghainese programmes on the radio and TV fell dramatically. As a result, relatively few children speak Shanghainese and those who do don’t speak it very well, Mandarin became the main language for many people in Shanghai, and Shanghainese became stigmatised.
Recently the situation has changed somewhat with the publication of a Shanghainese dictionary, a regular and popular newpaper column, and music and stand-up comedy in Shanghainese [source].
Do you speak Shanghainese or are you studying it?
Batter
In the recipe I used today to make some cacen siocled (chocolate cake), the word used to describe the result of mixing all the ingredients together is batter, at least in the English translation of the recipe. This is something I would call mixture – for me batter is a mixture of flour, water and a bit of salt that is used to coat fish before deep frying it. It sounds a bit strange to call cake mixture batter, though I have come across this usage from time to time, often in American recipes.
The word batter was first recorded in the late 14th century and comes from the Old French word batteure (a beating), from the Latin battuere (to beat, strike), and via Gaulish from Proto-Indo-European base *bhau- (to strike), which is also the root of buttock, butter, butt in English, via the Frankish *bōtan, the French word bouter (end, tip, butt, nub), and the Spanish botar (to bounce).
What does batter mean to you?
Language quiz
Shotgun, dibs and bagsy
An expression I noticed recently was “Shotgun!“, as used as an exclamation to claim the front passenger seat of a car. According to the Urban Dictionary, back in the days of the wild west in America when people travelled by stagecoach, the seat next to the driver was usually occupied by a man with a shotgun who was there to protect the travellers and their valuables. He was said to be ‘riding shotgun’, the word shotgun became associated with the seat next to the driver.
According to The Straight Dope, the term ‘riding shotgun’ was first used in stories about the wild west rather than in the wild west itself – the term ‘shotgun guard’ was used though. The earliest usage of the expression in relation to stage coaches appears in an issue of the Washington Post’s “Magazine of Fiction” from 27th March 27 1921 in a story called “The Fighting Fool” by Dane Coolidge, and it was first used to refer to the front passenger seat in cars in the 1950s.
Shotgun is used mainly in American English, as far as I’m aware. If I wanted to lay claim in a similar way I might say “bagsy the front seat”. Bagsy (/ˈbagzi/) can also be used to unofficially reserve many other things for oneself, e.g. “Bagsy the sofa/chair/remote control/etc.” Variations on bagsy include bags, bagsie, begsie, bugsy and dibs, and I’m sure you’ll tell me about others. You might also say things like, “I’ll bag the best seats”.
The origins of bagsy and dibs are uncertain, but a number of theories are discussed on Wikipedia.
Humboldt’s parrot
There’s a story that in 1799 the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was exploring the Orinoco and Amazon rivers and documenting the languages and cultures of the tribes he encountered there. While spending time with one tribe of Carib people, he asked them about their neighbours and rivals, the Maypure, who he was keen to visit. He was told that the Maypure had all been killed recently by the Carib tribe he was visiting, however they did have a couple of the Maypure’s pet parrots who spoke some of their language. Von Humboldt took the parrots back to Europe and transcribed their words – the only record we have of the Maypure language, which is also written Maypure, Maipure, Maypore or Maypore’. There seems to be some doubt whether this story is true: there is no mention of the parrots in von Humboldt’s meticulous journals, but there are phonetic transcriptions of the Maypure words he heard on his travels.
In 1997 an American artist called Rachel Berwick made an art installation entitled May-por-e’ consisting of a large cage containing Amazonian plants and parrots who had been taught to speak the remnants of the Maypure language.
These two anecdotes were related by David Crystal at a fascinating talk about language death he gave yesterday at Bangor University. He used the first one to illustrate how languages can disappear completed if they are unwritten and undocumented. We only know something about Maypure because of the parrots, but in many cases once the last speaker of a language dies it is as if that language never existed.
The second story shows how the message of language death can be powerfully portrayed through the arts. Professor Crystal believes that this is the best way to make ordinary people aware of the issue. Linguists can document languages, and advise on revival and revitalisation efforts, but these are intellectual pursuits that do not engage the emotions, while art, music, drama and other artistic works appeal to the heart rather than the head. He finished his talk by performing part of a play he wrote entitled “Last Speaker”, which tackles language death, and he suggested that we tell any artistic types we know about this phenomenon and that we encourage them to create pieces related to it.
Yesterday evening I mentioned the talk to a friend and talked about it a bit. She thought that endangered languages are confined mainly to remote parts of Africa and was surprised to learn that there are endangered languages on every inhabited continent.
Language teaching in schools
According to an article I found today, the majority of business managers in the Czech Republic who were surveyed by Czech Position think that at least two foreign languages (English plus one or more others) should be compulsory in Czech schools.
This came in reaction to a proposal from the National Economic Council (NERV) that the only compulsory language in schools should be English, as Czechs who speak English can manage without other languages and would do better to concentrate on such subjects as as law, finance or IT. Currently English plus German, Spanish or French are compulsory in schools and the Education Minister supports the NERV proposal. Many managers in large companies do not agree however, and think that knowledge of a foreign language or two in addition to English is necessary, especially as more than half of the Czech Republic’s foreign trade is with German-speaking countries.
Not all of those surveyed were in favour of the study of more than one foreign language (English) in schools. One comment, for example, was that “for butchers, joiners or chimney sweeps, I consider teaching foreign languages on top of the rudiments of English to be a waste of money”, and another comment was that “not every child is talented enough to manage two or more languages as part of compulsory education.”
This makes interesting reading from the UK, where the study of one foreign language is compulsory only up to the age of 14, and it’s relatively few pupils continue their language studies after that.