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?
Category: Language
Research projects
Chinese Englishes
One of my classmates at university is doing a research project on mutual intelligibility between varieties of English spoken in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and the UK.
It involves listening to recordings of these varieties of English and answering simple questions. The recordings are divided into five sections, each lasting less than 15 minutes, which you can listen to at any time. There’s also a questionnaire to complete.
If you come from one of these places and are willing to help, please go to one of the following pages:
Listening task for native speakers of English
Listening task for native speakers of other languages
Quantifier Intuitions
Here’s another project you could maybe help with: a researcher from the University of Massachusetts Amherst but temporarily based at Bangor University is doing a study exploring the different meanings the words like, all, each, and every have in everyday life, and exploring their effect on the mathematics performance of children with different language and dialect backgrounds.
This involves completing this online questionnaire (43 questions).
buusuu.com
buusuu.com, a website that describes itself as an “online community for learning languages”, provides online lessons in English, Spanish, French and German, as well as opportunities for language learners to learn from one another.
They are currently celebrating their first anniversary and are offering a 10% discount on premium memberships.
They have also added video language lessons recently, and they have an interesting feature about Silbo Gomero, the whistled language of La Gomera in the Canary Islands.
Languages and jobs in Spain
According to an article I found the other day, a knowledge of languages is required for 27% of jobs in Spain, and the language most in demand is English. So if you speak English and Spanish and would like to work in Spain, there should be plenty of jobs you could apply for.
The article, which is based on information from Infoempleo, a site where you kind find jobs in Spain, also shows that French, German, Italian and Portuguese are in demand in Spain, although to a much lesser extent than English.
The article also mentions that 28% of jobs in the Basque country require a knowledge of Basque, that 13% of jobs in Catalonia require Catalan (this seems quite a low figure given the strength of the language), and that 10% of jobs in Galicia and Valencia require knowledge of the local languages.
I don’t have stats for how many jobs in Wales require a knowledge of Welsh, but I do know that Welsh is needed for many jobs in the public sector.
Language quiz
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?
New Welsh news website
I discovered an interesting new Welsh language news website today – Golwg 360 – which lets you choose what type of news you want to read, and the way it’s displayed. You can also choose to see news from different areas of Wales.
Other Welsh language news sites include the BBC, which includes local, national and international news and Radio Acen. There are also local news sites such as Newyddion Gwent, Menter Iaith Blaenau Gwent, Menter Patagonia, Menter Caerdydd and Menter Iaith y Gogledd.
Mentrau Iaith (Language Initiatives) are local groups that help communities to increase and expand their use of Welsh.
Studies
I handed in my last essay today, so that’s pretty much the end of the taught part of my course and I can now concentrate on my dissertation. It’s a great relief to get all the assignments out of the way after spending what seems like ages on them. Fortunately I don’t have any exams this semester. The course seems to have gone really quickly and I’ve learned a lot of interesting and useful things. The areas I’ve found most interesting have been phonetics, bilingualism and speech and language disorders.
I plan to spend the last two weeks of June on the Isle of Man gathering information for my dissertation, learning some more Manx, and having a bit of a holiday. The last time I was on the island was about 30 years ago when I went there on a day trip from primary school, and I’m looking forward to going back. I’ve started making contact with a number of Manx speakers and hope to meet as many of them as possible when I’m on the island.
Are there any Manx speakers or learners who read this blog?
Vel Gaelgeyryn erbee lhaih yn blog shoh?
Language quiz
In which language might greet people in the morning by saying “ṣbah lkhīr” or in the afternoon or evening with “mselkhīr“?
In this language common ways of saying goodbye include “lla yhennīk“, “lla y’uwn” and “thella fārṣek“.
Another useful phrase in this language is: “bghiṭ nteferrezh walakīm mabghītsh ndekhul feha” (I’d like to watch but I don’t want to join in).
New Klingon dictionary
I heard today that a new Klingon dictionary is available for the iPhone and iPod, and will soon be available for Windows and Mac. It is an electronic version of the Klingon Dictionary and Conversational Klingon. There is also a phrase book for use by “Terrans” (Earthlings) planning a visit to the fictional world of Kronos, where Klingons live and vice versa.
Are any of you learning Klingon, or would like to learn?
Accents
I went down to Cornwall for my sister’s wedding a few days ago and heard some interesting English accents on the way. While waiting on Bristol station, for example, I heard some people talking in unfamiliar accents that might have been Bristolian. At first I wasn’t sure what language they were speaking – it certainly didn’t sound like English. After listening to it a bit more I realised that it was English after all, but I had to listen for carefully to make out what they were saying. It sounded very fast with a lot of elision.
Have you ever heard someone talking in what sounds like a foreign language only to realise later that it’s actually a language you know?
The announcements on railway stations in the UK are usually in RP English which has been pre-recorded and is then spliced together as necessary. So the way the Cornish place names were pronounced by the station announcements sounded quite different to the way they were pronounced by the Cornish conductor on the train. I really like Cornish accents and acquired bits of one myself while I was there, even though I only stayed for a long weekend.
BBC Voices has examples of Cornish and Bristol accents, though none of the recordings sound like the accents I heard on Bristol station, so maybe the people were from somewhere else.
Yesterday I went the dentist, and while I was chatting to the dental hygienist she detected a Welsh accent in my English and switched to Welsh. So we continued talking in Welsh and she was surprised when I told her that I’m not a native speaker as she’d assumed. Apparently I have a mid-Wales accent in Welsh.