Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in?
Category: Language
Mysterious inscription
Eeee ee
The title of this post is not a typo, but is in fact the third person singular feminine form of the future tense of the verb to eat (ee [i:]) in Manx, or in other words means “She will eat”. I came across it while reading about the Manx language the other day and as well as grabbing my attention, it also made me wonder whether there are many other words or phrases with so many vowels in sequence in Manx or other languages.
Here are few other Manx phrases I put together containing many e’s:
- Eeee ee eeym – She will eat butter
- T’ee gee eeym bwee – She’s eating yellow butter
- Eeee ee nhee erbee – she’ll eat anything
- O Yee! Eeee ee eeym bwee eeagh lhee – Oh God! She’ll eat edible yellow butter with her
- Dee mee eeym bwee – I ate yellow butter
- Eeym eeym bwee – I’ll eat yellow butter
- Bee’m gee ee bwee lhee – I’ll be eating yellow butter with her
As double letters are quite common in Manx, I’m sure other sentences containing lots of o’s or a’s could be constructed, for example: Soo coo doo lhoo (The black dog sucked a pole).
Can you think of any similarly vowel-rich sentences in other languages?
Mysterious inscription
Name the language
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
Polishing off your Polish
There’s apparently been a significant increase in the numbers of people learning Polish in recent years, especially since 2004, according to this article, and many of them come from the UK or Ireland.
Many language schools that used to teach mainly English and German to Poles are now offering courses in Polish as a foreign language. Such courses are popular with people from the UK and Germany who have been going to teach in Poland since the 1990s, and also with people with Polish partners, and people of Polish origin wanting to get in touch with their roots. Translators and interpreters are studying Polish as there is a great demand for Polish speakers in EU institutions.
Polish is described as a notoriously difficult language that starts out fiendishly difficult and then gets harder, and it’s apparently quite common for students to quit after a few lessons. Some do continue studying later after getting their courage back though. Not surprisingly speakers of other Slavic language find Polish least difficult to learn, Germans find the grammar relatively easy as it has much in common with German grammar, and speakers of Romance languages don’t find the grammar too hard. It’s English speakers who usually find Polish hardest, and Australians are apparently dreaded by Polish teachers.
Are any of you learning Polish?
Cree language challenge
The inhabitants of the Norway House Cree Nation (Kinosao Sipi), a small community in northern Manitoba in Canada, have been challenged by their chief, Marcel Balfour, to become proficient in Cree (kinose’wi si’pi’hk) by the year 2020, according to an article I found the other day.
The band’s council have decided to make Cree the official language of the community, and will encourage residents to speak it as often as possible. At the moment about three quarters of the people there can understand Cree, some 50% or 60% can speak it, at least to some extent, and its mainly the elder generation who are most comfortable with the language. Balfour himself is not fluent but is determined to become so.
The article doesn’t mention how much community support the initiative has – without such support, it is unlikely to succeed.
Language quiz
Here’s a recording of part of a story in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
Language maps
Today I found an interesting website called MuturZikin which has many different maps showing where languages and dialects are spoken. The site and the maps are mainly in French and English, with some parts in Basque, Spanish and quite a few other languages. The maps include the native names of the languages, which are given in many other languages as well, and also show language families.
Here are some other language maps:
MLA language map (USA)
World Atlas of language structures
World Language Phyla/Family Mapping
The Language Families of the World
Zompist Language family maps
Romansh
The other day I came across an interesting article on efforts to keep the Romansh language alive. Romansh or Romansch, which you can hear in last week’s language quiz, is a Romance language spoken mainly in the Swiss Canton of Graubuenden (Grischun/Grigione/Grissons) by about 60,000 people.
There appears to be mixed views on the language – some people are very enthusiastic about the language and do everything they can to encourage its use, others see the language as a handicap.
One significant problem is that Romansh speakers can’t agree which of the five varieties of Romansh should be taught in schools. Lia Rumantscha, the organisation that promotes the language, would like to see Rumantsch Grischun, a standard written form of the language, used in all schools by next year. Other people would prefer to continue using their local varieties of Romansh in schools.
According to a book I was reading yesterday, Sustaining linguistic diversity: endangered and minority languages and language varieties, there have been similar problems in Ireland with the government wanting a standard form of Irish taught in schools, while people in Irish-speaking areas (gealtachtaí) would prefer to use their local varieties of the language.