Category: Language

Word of the day – moli

By Simon

Today’s word, moli, is the Welsh for ‘to praise’ and appears in a song we’re learning at the Welsh learners’ choir. I don’t think it’s commonly-used in modern Welsh, but does appear in some songs and maybe in poems. The more common word for to praise is canmol, which appears to come from the same root.

Related words include moliannus, praiseworthy; molianrwydd / moliant / molud, praise.

The words for ‘to praise’ and ‘praise’ in Irish and Scottish Gaelic are simliar to the Welsh: moladh, and mol, in Manx they’re moylley and moyll, and in Breton they are meuliñ and meuleudi.

Another meaning of moli is ‘to gather scurf in the eyes’. Scurf, or môl, is a word I haven’t come across before and means the stuff that appears in the corners of your eyes during sleep. There’s probably another name for it – does anybody know?

Translator specs

By Simon

A Japanese company has come up with a gizmo called a Tele Scouter / テレスカウター which can translate what people say to you in foreign languages and display the results via a retinal display attached to your glasses.

The Tele Scouter is a small gadget that fixes onto glasses which incorporates a retinal display, a camera and a microphone. The microphone picks up the language and transmits it to a small computer worn around the waist, which sends it to a server for translation. The translation is then displayed on the retina. The device cannot currently keep up with language spoken at normal speed, and is a bit bulky, but it’s an interesting development.

If the size can be reduced and the speed and reliability increase, this device could be really useful. If it could also translate and/or transliterate written language, if would be even more useful, especially in for languages written with different writing systems.

A totally stoatin bevvy

By Simon

A UK supermarket has started putting descriptions of wines in Georgie, Scouse and other regional varieties of English, according to this article. They believe that the normal descriptions are too confusing and complicated and don’t use everyday language.

In Scouse (spoken in Liverpool) it’s, “A totally boss bottle of Merlot which smells o’ blackberry, choccie, a brew and toffees. Juicy and complex like, this bevey is top wi most scran ‘specially me ma’s scouse. Tellin ye, this is deffo a bevey that will leave youz and youz mates made up over yez Sayers pastie.”

In Somerset it’s “Alright my luvver, eers one helluva Merlot. Be stinkin hummin a sivvies thar be bleddy ansome wi yaw croust or oggy. Purfect ta share wi yaw pardy as i’ aiin ta eavy. Mygar be a purdy wine! Churs!”

The title of this post is from a Scots version of the description, and in Geordie (spoken in Newcastle) a Merlot is described as “A canny Merlot ableeze wi succulent blackcurrants an blueberries. This Merlot has legs leik a thoroughbred, strong an forward, tha sucks the leif oot of yer palate. Its stowed bouquet is a delight fer yer nose an will leave yee clamming fer moor. This ain ne blash”

A spokeswoman for the supermarket said, “Local shopkeepers and suppliers came up with the dialect – it’s not come from central office or from a computer,” she insists. “We know that people don’t really talk like this – we just wanted to make wine buying accessible and fun.”

The Lion and the Mouse

By Simon

El león y el ratón

Emilio Gonzalez, who works as an intercultural mediator with immigrant children in Tenerife, emailed me to see if I could help to translate a short story into as many languages as possible.

Here’s the original Spanish version, and the English version:

El león y el ratón

Érase una vez un ratón que salió de su madriguera y se encontró un enorme león.

El león quería comérselo.
– Por favor, león no me comas. Puede que un día me necesites.
El león le respondió:
-¿Cómo quieres que te necesite, con lo pequeño que eres?

El león se apiadó al ver cuán pequeño era le ratón y lo soltó.
Un día, el ratón escuchó unos rugidos terribles.
Era el señor león.

Cuando llegó al lugar, encontró al león atrapado en una red.
– íYo te salvaré! – dijo el ratón.
¿Tú? Eres demasiado pequeño para tanto esfuerzo.

El ratón empezó a roer la cuerda de la red y el león pudo salvarse.

Desde aquella noche, los dos fueron amigos para siempre.

The Lion and the Mouse

Once upon a time there was a little mouse who, coming out of his hole, met an enormous lion.

The lion wanted to eat him up.
“Please, Mr. Lion, don’t eat me. One day you might need me.”
The lion answered, “Why should I need someone as small as you?”

Seeing how tiny the mouse was, the lion took pity on him and set him free.
One day, the mouse heard an almight roar.
It was the lion.

When he got to the place, he found the lion trapped in a net.
“I’ll save you!” said the mouse.
“You?” You are too small for such a hard task.”

The mouse started to nibble at the rope of the net and the lion was saved.

From that day on they were friends forever.

The story has already been translated into Catalan, Basque, France, Portuguese, German, Arabic and Chinese, as well as English. Here’s a pdf with those translations.

Could you translate it into any other languages?

If you can help, please email Emilio at: animaccion[at]gmail[dot]com

Word of the day – gliniadur

By Simon

Gliniadur / laptop computer

Gliniadur is a Welsh word for laptop computer. It combines (pen-)glin, knee, with iadur from cyfrifiadur, computer, and could be translated as “kneeputer”. It is similar to the Irish for laptop, ríomhaire glúine (knee computer).

Other Welsh words for laptop include cyfrifiadur côl (lap computer), sgrin-ar-lin (screen on the knees) and cyfrifiadur cludadwy (portable computer).

The suffix adur denotes a tool or thing and also appears in geiriadur (dictionary, “word tool”), gwniadur (thimble, “sewing tool”), teipiadur (typewriter, “type tool”), and termiadur (a dictionary of terminology).

This word came up last night at the French conversation group when we were discussing how to say laptop in French (ordinateur portable) – are there any other words for laptop in French?

Do any other languages have interesting words for laptop?

Word of the day – purfle

By Simon

Purfle is a very handy word that means “to decorate the surface of a violin”.

I came across it today in an article about the completion and publication after 45 years of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary – the first historical thesaurus in the world in any language. The Thesaurus sorts words by date and meaning into more than 236,000 categories and subcategories, and the oldest words date back to about 700 AD.

Interesting discoveries include 265 ways to say ‘immediately’, multiple Anglo-Saxon words for diseases of the feet, as well as all sorts of words for stupid people, including medwis, modigleas, samwis, ungerad and stuntlic from the time of King Alfred (849-899); dumpish, dorbellical and grout-headed from Shakespeare’s time; and numskulled, born-muzzy, ram-headed and chuckleheaded from the late 18th / early 19th century.

Sounds familiar

By Simon

When I listen to languages I don’t know sometimes I like their sounds, other times I’m not so keen. I suspect that languages which sound at least vaguely familiar are more likely to appeal to my ears than those that sound completely alien, and that if I learnt any of those languages, my appreciation of them would increase.

As I get to know languages their sounds tend to grow on me, and the more I learn, the more I like them. In some cases, such as Irish and Scottish Gaelic, I liked the sounds of languages long before I could understand or speak them, in others, such as Taiwanese and Cantonese, I wasn’t overly keen on what they sounded like at first, but came to like their sounds. If I listen to other varieties of Chinese that I don’t know, then to one I do, it feels like ‘coming home’.