Category: English

Languages in Newcastle

By Simon

Last weekend I went to see a friend in Newcastle, and while we were exploring the place, I was listening out for languages other than English. The only ones I heard were Mandarin and Spanish, and my friend and I spoken mainly in English and Welsh, with a bit of Czech thrown in for variety.

While I was there we saw The Revenant, which includes dialogue in English, French and Arikara, a Caddoan language closely related to Pawnee, and spoken by a handful of people in North Dakota.

I’m sure other languages are spoken in Newcastle, as it’s a relatively large city with a number of universities and plenty of foreign students, but maybe we were in the wrong parts to hear much foreign talk.

I also heard plenty of Geordie, the local dialect, and didn’t get some of the things people said to me first time, so had to ask them to repeat themselves. It differs from standard English in various ways, and if you’re not used to it can sound almost like a different language.

Are there any regional accents / dialects in your country that you have trouble understanding?

AreSpacesBetweenWordsImportant?

By Simon

Did you know that the practice of putting spaces between words was started by Irish monks writing in Latin?

This is what I discovered from an episode of the Allusionist – apparently when Christianity arrived in Ireland in the 6th century and people started writing in Latin, they put spaces between the words to make texts easier to read. Before then writing in Ireland was done in the Ogham alphabet without spaces between words. So when they started using a different alphabet, the Latin or Roman alphabet, and a language that wasn’t their native one, they weren’t so sure where words began and ended and the spaces made this clear.

Ogham continued to be used to some extent until the 9th century and was used to write Latin, however the Latin alphabet eventually replaced it.

The version of the Latin alphabet used in Ireland until the mid-20th century was the Irish Uncial alphabet or An Cló Gaelach, which is still used for decorative purposes.

The practice of putting spaces between words spread to the rest of Europe over subsequent centuries.

Some languages, like Chinese and Thai, don’t bother with spaces, which can make them tricky to read.

A not entirely uninteresting post

By Simon

The title of this post is perhaps an example of litotes [laɪˈtəʊ.tiːz], a figure of speech that uses understatement, particularly double negatives, to make a positive statement [source]. Other examples include:

– I didn’t do too badly in the test
– It’s a bit chilly
– He’s not a bad guitarist

Litotes comes from the Ancient Greek λιτότης ‎(litótēs), from λιτός ‎(litós – simple) via the French litote (litotes, understatement) [source].

The antonym of litotes is hyperbole (overstatement), which comes, via Latin, from the Ancient Greek ὑπερβολή ‎(huperbolḗ – excess, exaggeration), from ὑπέρ ‎(hupér, -above) and βάλλω ‎(bállō – I throw) [source].

I make some use litotes (that’s an example), as do many British people. Is this common in other countries?

This post was inspired by an episode of The Allusionist, a podcast in which Helen Zaltzman discusses language, words and related topics.

When is an MBA a person?

By Simon

An article I added to Omniglot today, The Most Valuable Languages for an MBA to Learn, uses “an MBA” to refer to a person with an MBA. I’ve also seen students referred to in a similar way: for example a student of French might be ‘a French Major’, and someone with a PhD in linguistics might be ‘a linguistics PhD’.

This usage appears to be common in American English, as far as I can tell, but sounds rather strange to my British ears.

Does this sound normal to you?

Are people with particular qualifications referred as ‘a [name of qualificaiton]’ in other languages?

The Power of Procrastination

By Simon

Are you a procrastinator? Do you find yourself doing all sorts of things to avoid doing something you have to do?

For example, when you should be revising for an exam you keep finding other things to do which you convince yourself are essential and have to be done right now, such as cleaning, putting your books/CDs/DVDs into alphabetical order, researching the origins of knitting, or whatever.

I certainly do this – at times I can be a prolific procrastinator. I try to study a bit of at least one language every day, for example, but often find excuses not to, and other things to do that seem more important. The kinds of things I do instead of studying include working on Omniglot, playing music, singing, writing tunes and songs, juggling, reading, shopping, gardening, and cleaning and tidying. I do enjoy discovering and exploring languages, but sometimes find the process of studying them a bit tedious.

Maybe if I set myself another task that I don’t really want to do or find difficult, such as setting up databases, then I would end up studying languages as an alternative displacement activity. That is, I could embrace the power of procrastination.

Awakening forgotten languages

By Simon

Last night at ukulele club there was a new member from Spain, and I talked a bit with her in Spanish. It’s a long time since I’ve studied any Spanish, and I rarely use it these days, so I thought I’d forgotten most of it, but I found that I can still have a basic conversation, even if I make mistakes. I had similar experiences with German in Berlin last year and the year before at the Polyglot Gathering – I could understand quite a bit and found that when I tried to speak it I could at least make myself understood.

At the moment I have no real need to awaken my Spanish or German, but if I do need them, I’ll try to find ways to bring them back.

How do you brush up, bring back, awaken or revive languages you have forgotten or not used for a long time?

Totes amazesh!

By Simon

According to an article I found the other day, some people on Twitter are playing with language in interesting ways and creating new abbreviations and words like tradge (tragic), bluebs (blueberries), emosh (emotional) and hilars (hilarious) and atrosh (atrocious).

This phenomenon has been dubbed totesing by the linguists Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, who have collected and analyzed many examples of totesing and discovered that such abbreviations are not random. Instead they follow a definite pattern which involves removing the parts of words after their stressed syllables, but retaining a consonant or two after it. For example, subconsciously becomes subconsh and aphrodisiac becomes aphrodeez – the spelling is also altered some times.

The favorite intensifier is totes, from totally.

Some such abbreviations have been around for quite a while, others are new.

Here are a few I found on Twitter:

– You people are so totes adorbs when you’re watching a game.
– Hey guys it’s #nationalhugday! So we’re asking, ever received a totes awks hug?
– You got me. I’m totes jelz of guys too dumb to know supporting Trump should be a point of shame instead of pride.
– totes inapprops
– it’s gonna be a totes perf weekend

Do you use these kinds of words? Have you come across any interesting ones?

Are similar things being done to other languages?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
le rouge à lèvres lipstick minlliw, lliwydd
le rouge, le rouge à joues rouge powdwr coch, rouge, gruddliw
la suie soot huddygl, parddu
être sur le cas to be on the case
dire qch sur un ton pince-sans-rire to say sth tongue in cheek dwueud rhwybeth â’ch tafod yn eich boch
dwueud rhwybeth â’ch tafod am eich dant
rappeler qch à qn to remind sb of sth atgoffa rhywun o rywbeth
dwyn rhywbeth i gof rhywun
l’Hôtel Matignon residence and offices of French Prime Minister
l’orchestre (m) stalls (in a theatre) seddau blaen
la fosse orchestra pit pwll cerddorfa
le balcon (dress) circle (in a theare) seddau’r cylch
cylch y boneddigion
y cylch cyntaf
la loge box (in a theatre) bocs, côr seddau
le lavabo, la cuvette de lavabo wash basin basn ymolchi
la prunelle sloe eirinen dagu
le gin à la prunelle sloe gin jin eirin
racler les fonds de tiroir to scrape the barrel crafu’r gasgen
le chevalier knight marchog
le cavalier knight (in chess) marchog
le plan d’urgence contingency plan cynllun at raid
cynllun wrth gefn

Stalls, stinkards and parterres

By Simon

In theatres in the UK the seats at ground level in front of the stage are usually known as stalls or orchestra stalls. If there are balconies above that level, the first balcony might be known as the dress circle, grand circle or balcony, the second as the upper circle, grand circle, first circle or circle, the third as the upper circle or gallery, and the fourth as the gallery. There may also be private boxes along the sides of the theatre. The exact terms vary from theatre to theatre.

In French the stalls are known as l’orchestre, les fauteuils d’orchestre or le parterre, the first level balcony might be le balcon, the second level balcony might be la galerie, and the third level might be le paradis (paradise) – ‘the gods’ is sometimes used for the highest level of balconies in English. Boxes are les loges.

A parterre in English is a “a formal garden constructed on a level surface, consisting of planting beds, typically in symmetrical patterns, separated and connected by gravel pathways.” [source]. Parterre can also refer to the ground level part of a theatre (stalls) and the audiences who congregate there. The word pit is also used [source]. The denizens of the pit or yard in Shakespeare’s Globe theatre were known as a groundlings, stinkards or penny-stinkers [source].

The French word parterre has also been borrowed into Russian as партер and is used to refer to the stalls in a theatre.

What terms are used in theatres you go to?

Dystopias and Utopias

By Simon

Why is it that so many films and novels set in the future are dystopian?

I thought about this after watching The Hunger Games last night, and tried to think of any stories of utopian futures. The only films I could think featuring non-dystopian futures of were Back to the Future II and Bicentennial Man. Can you think of any others?

The word dystopia combines the Ancient Greek δυσ (dus – bad), and τόπος ‎(tópos – place, region) with the Latin/Ancient Greek suffix ia/ία ‎(-ía). It was derived from the word utopia, which was coined by Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia. The u part of utopia comes from the Greek ou (οὐ – not) and by the 17th century was used to refer to a place or society that was considered perfect or ideal. The prefix ou possibly got confused with εὖ ‎(eû, – well, good). Dystopia was first used by J. S. Mill in a parliamentary speech in 1868 [source].