Category: English

French & English Language Exchange

By Simon

I went to the French & English Language Exchange group in Liverpool last night – a friend found it on Meetup, decided to see what it was like, and asked me to come along. They meet twice a month at Thomas Rigby’s, a pub in the centre of Liverpool, and last night there were 30 or 40 people there, including some French people – far more than ever go to the Bangor French conversation group. I talked to various people from England, Brazil, China and New Zealand in English, French, Mandarin and Portuguese. So it was worth going, though it is quite a long way to go – about an hour and a half from Bangor – and I might go back there occasionally.

Do you meet up to find / arrange similar groups?

Does it work well for you?

There are very few groups on meet up in the Bangor area at the moment, but I might set one up.

Language and travel plans

By Simon

I’ve been thinking about my language and travel plans for this year and have decided to spend a few weeks in Russia – probably in July – at a Russian language school. Every year for the past ten years I’ve gone to Ireland to do courses in Irish language, singing and music in July, but this year I fancy a change. I plan to learn as much Russian as I can before going to Russia and to focus mainly on Russian throughout this year, while keeping my other languages ticking over.

Apart from the trip to Russia, I’m going to the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin at the beginning of May, and on a choir trip to Oloron Sainte Marie in the south west of France at the end of May. I also plan to do a course in Scottish Gaelic song in Scotland in August and will probably go to the Polyglot Conference in New York in October.

Can any of you recommend a Russian language school?

When is the best time of year to visit Russia?

What are you language/travel plans for this year?

What makes a word “real”?

By Simon

I came across an interesting TED talk today about how words become real. Are they only real when they start appearing in dictionaries, or are they real if they are widely used, even if they don’t feature in dictionaries? The speaker, Professor Anne Curzan, looks at who makes dictionaries and how they decide which words to include.

She says that words are chosen for inclusion in dictionaries because we use it, and the more we use a word, the more likely it will make it into dictionaries. So words are real because we use them.

Pretending to speak a language

By Simon

In E. F. Benson’s book, Queen Lucia, two of the characters, Lucia and Georgie, speak bits of Italian to each other, which leads their friends to believe that they speak the language fluently, and impresses them, which is the point. When an Italian gentleman visits their village it soon emerges that Lucia and Georgie are unable to engage in conversation in Italian beyond a few phrases.

A similar story appears in the recent TV adaptation on the BBC – in this version Lucia pretends to be ill, and Georgie spends a few days away from the village in order to avoid meeting the visiting Italian speaker, the English wife of an Italian who admits that her knowledge of Italian is also limited, even though she has lived in Italy for 10 years. So Lucia and Georgie’s secret remains undiscovered.

Have you ever pretended to be able to speak a language, or exaggerated your knowledge of a language? Has you subterfuge been revealed?

Happy New Year!

By Simon

Bloavezh mat / 新年快樂 / Blydhen Nowydh Da / Šťastný nový rok / Gelukkig Nieuwjaar / Happy New Year / Bonne année / Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr / Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh / Felice anno nuovo / 新年おめでとうございます / Blein Vie Noa / Feliz Ano Novo / С Новым Годом / Bliadhna mhath ùr / Срећна Нова Година / ¡Feliz Año Nuevo! / Gott nytt år / Blwyddyn newydd dda, and so on!

Language acquisition

By Simon

I spent Christmas with my family at my brother’s house in Devon in the south west of England. His daughter is now 20 months old and it’s fascinating to see how she’s acquiring language.

The last time I saw her was at Easter this year when she was nearly a year old. At that time she was able to say a few words, but now she has a lot more words and little phrases, and understands more as well. Most of her words are in English, but she also uses some Russian ones (her mother is Russian) such as сок (juice), and even some BSL signs, such as thank you, picked up from baby signing classes.

As well as English and Russian, she’s picking up some French from the French nanny who looks after her a few days a week while her mother is working. So she is on the way to becoming a polyglot. Whether she’ll be as enthusiastic about languages as I am remains to be seen, but it will be very interesting to see how her language develops.

Do you have or know children who are being raised bilingually or multilingually? Do you have any tips and stories you’d like to share? Guest posts on this topic are very welcome.

Hedgehogs and Urchins

By Simon

I discovered today that sea urchins (echinoidea) are known as zee-egels (sea hedgehogs) in Dutch, and that they used to be known as sea hedgehogs in English as well. They have similar names in other languages, for example, in German they are Seeigel (sea hedgehogs), in French they are oursins or hérissons de mer (sea hedgehogs) and in Spanish they are erizos de mar (sea hedgehogs).

The word urchin comes from the Middle English word yrichon (hedgehog), from the Old North French word *irechon, from the Old French herichun (hedgehog) – in Modern French hedgehog is hérisson – from the Vulgar Latin *hericionem, from the Latin ericius (hedgehog), from the Proto-Indo-European root *ghers- (to stiffen, bristle, stand out). From the same root we also get such English words as gorse, hirsute, horror and ordure.

The word urchin is apparently still used for hedgehog in some English dialects such as Cumbria, Yorkshire and Shropshire. It came to refer to people who looked or acted like hedgehogs from the early 16th century, and to poor, ragged youths from the mid 16th century, though this usage didn’t really take off until the late 18th century. Sea urchin was first used in the late 16th century.

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary and Indo-European Lexicon

Frost, Ice cream and Father Christmas

By Simon

Дед Мороз и Снегурочка

When I learnt a Russian word for frost – мороз (moróz) – this week I thought that the word for ice cream – мороженое (morózhenoe) – might come from the same root. According to Wikitionary they are related: мороженое comes from морозить (to freeze) from мороз, which comes from the Proto-Slavic *morzъ (frost).

Related words include:

– заморозок (zamorozok) = overnight freeze, cold snap (usually in late spring or early autumn, when days are warm)
– морозилка (morozilka) = freezer
– морозный (moroznyj) = frosty

Дед Мороз (Ded Moróz) is the Slavic equivalent of Father Christmas / Santa Claus. His name means “Old Man Frost” and he traditionally delivers presents to children on New Year’s Eve (31st December), and is accompanied by Снегурочка (Snegúrochka), the Snow Maiden.

Hebrew phrases

By Simon

Yesterday I received an email telling me that there shouldn’t be Hebrew versions of Merry Christmas and Happy Easter among the Hebrew phrases on my site as,

“the Hebrew language is a holy language” and that “if you say Happy Easter, or Merry Christmas in Hebrew you pretty much burn to death in the spot if you’re a Jew.”.

He also states that,

“Most of the people who will be reading your Hebrew section are either Jewish and will be offended, or will think they can say those things to Jewish people, and they will offend the Jewish people they speak to.”

I’m aware that Jews do not celebrate Christmas or Easter, and that the majority of people who speak Hebrew are Jews. However I understand that there are around 350,000 Hebrew-speaking Christians in Israel [source] who probably do celebrate these festivals and use these phrases – I’ve added a note to the Hebrew phrases page along these lines. I’ve had similar comments about the Somali versions of these phrases.

Do you think that my correspondent is right about this?