Category: Language

Word of the day – morglawdd

By Simon

In Welsh morglawdd is the word for a tidal barrage (lit. “sea bank, dyke, earthwork or hedgerow”). I heard this word during a discussion on Radio Cymru of plans to build such a barrage across the Severn Estuary and I just liked the sound of it.

The plans are opposed by many environmental groups who prefer an alternative proposal to build an artificial reef or greigres artiffisial, which would cost less, produce more power, and would have less environmental impact.

There are more details of the project on the BBC website in English and Welsh.

Word of the day – iff

By Simon

I came across today’s word, iff, in the syntax textbook I’m reading at the moment (Introduction to Government and Binding Theory). When I spotted it I thought at first that it was a typo, but have since discovered that it is used in logic to mean “if and only if”.

Iff can also be represented by the following symbols: ↔, ⇔ or ≡

Quite a few other symbols are used in logic, and to some extent in linguistics textbooks on semantics and syntax. They include:

⇒ / → / ⊃ = if … then
¬ / ˜ = not
⊕ / ⊻ = xor (exclusive or)
∀ = for all/any/each
∃ = there exists
⊢ = infers or is derived from

I vaguely remember learning some of these in maths classes many moons ago and still haven’t quite recovered! I tend to skip parts of books and articles that use them.

Source: Wikipedia

Up to your ears?

By Simon

When you’re very busy, you can say that you’re up to your ears with work, as I was last week with reports, presentations, an essay and lots of reading to do.

In English you can also say that you’re up to your eyes, eyeballs, elbows or neck, snowed under, drowning, swamped, rushed/run off your feet with/in work.

Are there equivalent phrases in other languages?

Mimetic bootstrapping

By Simon

Yesterday I went to an interesting talk on Japanese mimetic words, which are onomatopoeia (擬声語 giseigo / 擬音語 giongo) or words connected to actions, emotions or states (擬態語 gitaigo). For example, くすくす (kusu kusu) – to giggle,ぐずぐず[する] (guzu guzu [suru]) – to procrastinate or dawdle.

Researchers in Japan have found that Japanese mothers use a much higher proportion of mimetic words with young children (60%) than with adults (10%), and their experiments found that children find mimetic verbs (those that use sound symbolism) easier to learn than non-mimetic verbs. They call this process mimetic bootstrapping. They also tested English-speaking children and adults using Japanese mimetic verbs and found that they were able to guess their meanings above the level of chance.

They also mentioned that mimetic words are not just found in Japanese – they are in fact found in the form similar to gitaigo in many of the worlds languages, though are rare in Indo-European languages.

Hebrew question

By Simon

This is a question I received recently to which I don’t know the answer. Can you help?

Can you please tell me something about Hebrew. I want to know if the Hebrew we get in Biblica Hebraica, which I think is based on the masoretic text, used gender specific pronouns. Are references made to he and she with a different term for each as in English or is only one term used as in Thai?

I particularly need to know if I am correct in thinking that God is referred to with “He” “him” and “his” as the translators of the New Amer. Std. seem to think. Of course, in English, they have no choice. We don’t have a gender neutral term for a human being. So I just need to know what the original Hebrew is like. I hope you know. Thanks.

Gensis 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Chinese etymology

By Simon

Yesterday I found a useful looking website about Chinese Etymology which shows variant forms of characters including Oracle Bone characters (甲骨文 jiăgŭwén), Bronze characters (金文 jīnwén) and Grass script characters (草書 căoshū). Some characters have many forms in the older versions of the Chinese script – up to 50 or so in some cases.

It also has information about the etymology and history of characters and written Chinese.

Another useful website I came across recently is a Chinese text annotation tool, which adds pop-up annotations containing pinyin transcriptions and English translations when you move your cursor over the characters in a Chinese text. The annotations can be applied to web pages or to Chinese texts pasted in the box on that site.

At the end of the day it’s not rocket science

By Simon

At the end of the day I personally think it’s not rocket science, and at this moment in time and with all due respect, it absolutely shouldn’t of been a 24/7 nightmare that’s fairly unique.

What on earth am I on about? Well the above sentence contains the top ten most overused phrases in English, according to this blog post. The phrases are listed below in descending order of usage.

  1. At the end of the day
  2. Fairly unique
  3. I personally
  4. At this moment in time
  5. With all due respect
  6. Absolutely
  7. It’s a nightmare
  8. Shouldn’t of (for shouldn’t have)
  9. 24/7
  10. It’s not rocket science

These phrases all come from the Oxford English Corpus and the list was compiled by scholars at Oxford University.

Do you use/avoid these phrases? Are there other phrases that you think are overused?

Learning Hebrew

By Simon

A visitor to Omniglot has contacted me on behalf of a relative who recently moved to Israel. The relative is finding Hebrew a very challenging language to learn and is looking for an alternative to Ulpan, the total immersion courses for immigrants to Israel. Any suggestions?

An article I found in The Jerusalem Post reports that 60% of immigrants to Israel who are over 30 finish their initial Ulpan courses consisting of 500 hours of instruction without fully mastering Hebrew. Many such immigrants are unable to find work, or have difficulties doing so. The article dates from 2006, and I haven’t been able to find any more recent ones on this problem.

Have any of you been through the Ulpan system, or something similar in other countries?