Here’s a recording of a news report in a mystery language. Can you identify the language?
Hint – this language is spoken by a relavtively small number of people in a number of European countries.
Category: Language
Unknown language
Can any of you work out what language they’re talking and singing in this clip? This is isn’t exactly a quiz, as I don’t know the answer myself. Someone just sent me this clip and asked me if I knew this language, but unfortunately I don’t, so I was wondering if any of you can help.
Word of the day – výslovnost
Výslovnost is the Czech word for pronunciation, and appears in this week’s Czech lesson. I’m currently working my way quite slowly and thoroughly through Colloquial Czech and am spending a week or two on each lesson. I don’t move on to the next lesson until I’m familiar with all the slovníček (vocabulary), mluvnice / gramatika (grammar) and výslovnost.
Some people advise you to listen to a language a lot before you try to speak it. Listening to the languages you’re learning as much as possible is very useful and beneficial, but I don’t know if you should put off trying to speak the language until you’ve listening to it for several weeks or months.
What are your thoughts on this?
More language exchange
I came across yet another language exchange site today. It looks similar to other ones I’ve joined and I’ll give it a go. The site has a subscription-based ‘Gold’ membership, for $6 per month, which gives you extras not available with free membership, such as being able to contact other members. Regular members can only receive and reply to messages from gold members.
So far, the only language exchange site which has produced results for me is Mixxer. I’ve been contacted by people from all over the world via this site, with the majority of my contacts coming from China. Today I’ve chatting to people from China, Japan, Bulgaria, Norway and Korea.
Making recordings
Yesterday I came up with an alternative way of making recordings for Omniglot. I was talking to a Bulgarian contact on Skype and he was willing to make some recordings of Bulgarian, but wasn’t sure how to do so on his computer. I realised that I could record him at my end – I tried it and it worked well.
If you’re able to help me by making some recordings of useful phrases, article one of the UDHR, the Tower of Babel, country or language names, or the alphabet in your native language, but don’t know how to do so, or don’t have a microphone, then we now have a solution. You can call me on Skype (omniglot), and I will do the recording.
Name the language
Today we have a recording of a news bulletin from an online radio station for you to identify.
Like yesterday’s recording, this one comes from Radio Free Europe.
Mystery language
Here’s a recording of a mystery language. Any ideas what it is?
This language is written with both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, though not at the same time.
Singing in tonal languages
When people sing in Mandarin, they usually don’t stick to the tones, but in Cantonese I understand that singers try to incorporate the tones into the tune. According to an interesting blog I came across today, the tones are discarded in Thai when singing.
Does anybody know what happens to tones in other languages when they’re sung?
If any of you are able to sing in a tonal language, don’t be shy! It would interesting to hear a recording.
Learning by reading
Today I came across another interesting language learning method on Language learning tips, which was used by the 19th-century German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890), who excavated Troy. In order to learn Greek he read a Greek translation of one of his favourite books, and compared the translation word by word and line by line with the original text. This enabled him to learn a lot of vocabulary and grammar in context without having to refer to dictionaries or grammar books all the time. Here’s some more information about Schliemann’s language learning methods, which enabled him to acquire eighteen languages quite quickly and successfully.
The reading method would be even better if you had an audiobook version of the translation and/or a native speaker to help you with pronunciation. Moreover, if you choose a book that includes a lot of colloquial dialogues, you can learn everyday conversational words and phrases as well.
Grammar books and vocabulary lists are useful, but I find that if I discover a grammatical pattern or the meaning of a word on my own, I’m more likely to remember it.
Newyddion o Gymru / News from Wales
Fe ffeindiais i dwy straeon diddorol o Gymru heddiw:
Pwyleg yn Wrecsam
Mae plismon o Wrecsam yn dysgu Pwyleg oherwydd fod tuag 10,000 o fewnfudwyr o’r Wlad Pwyl yn byw yno, a fe wnaeth e ddod yn ail yng Ngwobrau Blynyddol i Swyddogion Cymunedol.
Selsig ddraig
Oherwydd does dim cig draig yn y selsig gydag enw ‘selsig y Ddraig Gymreig’ (a wneir gyda chig moch, cennin a chilli), mae rhaid i gwmni o Grug Hywel newid yr enw, yn ôl Gwasanaeth Safonau Masnach.
Two news stories from Wales caught my eye today:
Polish in Wrexham
A policeman from Wrexham is learning Polish in order to communicate with the numerous Polish immigrants who live there, and he came second in the Jane’s Police Review Community Police Officer of the Year Award.
Dragon sausages
A Welsh company may face legal action because of the potentially misleading name of one of its products: Welsh Dragon Sausages. After analysing the sausages, the fine people at from Trading Standards determined that not one trace of dragon meat was to be found in them, so are advising the company to change the name. The sausages actually contain pork, leek and chilli.