Category: Language

Sgwrs / Comhrá

By Simon

Ddoe ces i dau sgwrs ar MSN yn Gymraeg, ac oedd hynny y tro cyntaf ydw i wedi sgwrsio fel ny. Wel oedd un sgwrs yn Gymraeg yn bennaf gyda ychydig o Saesneg o bryd i’w gilydd. Dechreuodd y llall yn Gymraeg, yn wedyn parhaodd yn Almaeneg. Dwi’n dechrau teimlo yn mwy hyderus am sgrifennu y Gymraeg, ac y Wyddeleg hefyd, i raddau.

Inné rinne mé comhrá ar MSN as Breatnais, agus bhí sé an chéad uair a rinne mé comhrá mar sin. Bhuel bhí comhrá amhain as Breatnais den chuid is mó le beagan Béarla ó am go ham. Thosaigh an comhrá eile as Breatnais, agus ansin lean ar aghaidh as Gearmáinis. Tosaím ag mothaigh níos féinmhuiníneach agus Breatnais a scríobh, agus Gaeilge chomh math, ar bhonn is lú.

I had chatted to a couple of people in Welsh on MSN yesterday, and it was the time I’ve done that. Well one of the chats one mainly in Welsh, with a bit of English now and then, while the other chat started in Welsh, then continued in German. I beginning to feel more confident about writing in Welsh, and also in Irish, to a lesser extent.

Finger names

By Simon

Finger names

When chatting with some Japanese friends today, the subject of finger names came up for some reason – specifically what the different fingers are called in Japanese and English. It took quite a while to establish which finger corresponded to which name – to make this clear, I found a picture of a hand, added labels and uploaded it to my site.

This is what the fingers are called in those languages:

拇指 (boshi) / 親指 (oyayubi) lit. “thumb/parent finger” = thumb
人差し指 (hitosashiyubi) = lit. “person offering finger” = first finger / index finger
中指 (nakayubi) = middle finger
薬指 (kusuriyubi) = lit. “medicine finger” = third finger /ring finger
小指 (koyubi) = lit. “little finger” = fourth finger / little finger / pinky

In Latin the fingers are named thus:

Thumb = Polex
First finger = Demonstratus (pointer)
Second finger = Impudicus (gesticulates)
Third finger = Annularis (ring)
Fourth finger = Auricularis (removing wax from ear)

Their names in Welsh are as follows:

Thumb = bawd
First finger = bys troed (foot finger)
Second finger = bys canol (middle finger)
Third finger = bys y fodrwy (ring finger)
Fourth finger = bys bach (little finger)

and Irish they’re:

Thumb = ordóg
First finger = corrmhéar (odd finger)
Second finger = méar fhada (long finger)
Third finger = méar fáinne (ring finger)
Fourth finger = lúidín

What about in your language?

Reviving Sanskrit

By Simon

Recently the number of people studying Sanskrit, the best known of India’s classical languages, has been increasing, according to an article I found today. The piece mentions that there’s a lot of interest in Sanskrit both in India, and among India ex-pats in the USA and other countries.

Reasons for this include the booming Indian economy, which has lead more people to take an interest in India’s history, and also the efforts of a group called Samskrita Bharati, whose mission is to “bring the pan-Indian language back to the mainstream and lay the groundwork for a cultural renaissance”. There are more details of their work here.

In one village called Ganoda in Rajasthan, many of the people are apparently able to speak Sanskrit and use it to some extent in their everyday lives.

Do you speak Sanskrit or have you studied it? Are there any other places where Sanskrit is used as a community language?

Blog newydd / nua

By Simon

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was thinking of starting a new blog to practice my the languages. Well I’ve finally made up my mind and have created one – Rywsut-rywfodd. I plan to write everything in Welsh and Irish for now, and might write in other languages from time to time.

The title means “somehow or other”, as in “somehow or other I will become fluent in Welsh and Irish, and as many other languages as possible”. The subtitle – meddyliau hap yn y Gymraeg / smaointe fánacha as Gaeilge – means “random thoughts in Welsh / random thoughts in Irish”. I hope to write frequently – this probably won’t be every day though. I might even have a go at audioblogging as well.

When writing a recent post, it struck me how few words Welsh and Irish have in common. The only one that stands out in that particular post is blasus/blasta (tasty). Most of the others are borrowings from English.

I believe this is the world’s first bilingual Welsh/Irish blog. I might be mistaken of course – if there are others out there, I’m sure you’ll let me know. What’s the most unusual combination of languages you’ve come across on a blog or website?

Do women really talk more than men?

By Simon

According to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, the commonly-held believe that women talk a lot more than men is a myth. An article I came across today gives details of the research, which discovered that both men and women use around 16,000 words per day on average.

Between 1998 and 2004, the researchers analysed the daily interactions of 400 university students from the USA and Mexico using unobtrusive digital recorders. The subjects were not aware when they were being recorded – the recorders were set to automatically record for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes – and had no control over the recorders.

The exact averages were 16,215 words for women and 15,669 for men, so women do talk more, on average, than men, but the difference isn’t huge. The researchers also noticed significant individual variations with differences of up to 45,000 words a day between the most and least talkative people.

How many word do you think you use per day?

I wonder if any studies have been done to discover how many distinct words we use each day and how often we repeat ourselves.

How old is English?

By Simon

The other day I came across an interesting site about the history of the English language. It argues that English has been spoken in Britain for a lot longer than is conventionally assumed, and that there wasn’t sufficient time for the native population to adopt English after the Anglo-Saxons starting settling in the 5th century. The site cites examples for various parts of the world of how long it takes for one language to completely replace another, and concludes that it’s unlikely that the relatively small numbers of Anglo-Saxons could have imposed their language in a few centuries.

The conventional story is that before the Roman invasion the Britons all spoke Celtic languages, and that the Anglo-Saxons brought the languages that would develop into English to Britain during the 5th century when they started settling in the eastern parts of the country. They eventually took over most of what is now England and parts of southern Scotland and the existing population adopted Anglo-Saxon customs and language, abandoning their Celtic languages. At the same time, part of the population fled westward to Wales, Cornwall, Strathclyde and Cumbria, where they continued to speak their Celtic languages.

An alternative history proposed by this site is that Germanic languages of some form or another have been spoken in eastern parts of Britain for around 10,000 years, and that Celtic languages have been spoken in western parts of Britain for a similar length of time. Evidence from place names in eastern Britain suggests, according to the site, that most places have had Germanic names for a long time, and that the conventional Celtic-based etymologies are mistaken.

I find speculations like this that challenge conventional wisdom interesting. I don’t know whether to take them seriously though. What do you think?

Alphabets and email

By Simon

One of the things I do in my job is to prepare html emails in many different languages, which are sent out by our web marketing bods. We’ve discovered that the text of emails in non-Latin writing systems often gets mangled in transmission, so to make sure the recipients can read the text, we send the emails in English with links to web pages containing text in the relevant languages.

Maybe one day you’ll be able to send emails in any language/writing system and be sure the text will display correctly at the other end. This doesn’t seem to be the case just yet.

I’ve also noticed that Latin transliterations are used by quite a few people who speak languages written with non-Latin writing systems in instant messages and other online chat and discussions. This may be because the systems don’t support of writing systems, or because they don’t always have the necessary input software and/or hardware to hand. Then again, some people might just find it easier to type quickly in the Latin alphabet.

Idiom of the day

By Simon

In English when you give up on something or admit that you’re defeated, you might say that you’re throwing in the towel or the sponge, a phrase that comes from boxing. In Welsh you put the fiddle on the roof: rhoi’r ffidil ar y tô. I like the image this conjures up.

Other Welsh idioms I like include siarad fel melin bupur = to talk like a pepper mill, i.e. to talk non-stop, mae hi’n bwrw cyllyll a ffyrc = it’s raining knives and forks, i.e. it’s raining heavily, and mae’r olwyn wedi troi = the wheel has turned, i.e. times have changed.