Category: Songs

2,000 Languages!

By Simon

Yesterday I added two new language pages to Omniglot Nanggu (an Oceanic language spoken in the Solomon Islands) and Uneapa (an Oceanic language spoken in Papua New Guinea). Why do I mention this? Well, Uneapa happens to be the 2,000th language on Omniglot, and I thought that’s something to celebrate.

2,000 days

When I started Omniglot back in 1998, it was just a little site to promote a web design and translation business I tried to set up. I added information about languages I knew and could work with, and then starting adding details of alphabets and other writing systems, and the languages written with them.

Since then, the site has grown a bit and now has some 7,600 pages, with details of 345 writing sytems, 900+ constructed and adapted scripts, 2,000 languages, useful phrases in 362 languages, numbers in 1,081 languages, and much more.

Here are some significant moments from the past 26 years:

1998 – Omniglot begins

1999 – I started working as a web developer specialising in multilingual websites in Brighton (& Hove). I continued to work on Omniglot in my spare time while I was there.

2000 – Omniglot.com registered as a domain

2003 – Revenue from Omniglot starts to trickle in, mainly from commission on Amazon sales

2004 – visitor numbers to Omniglot reached 100,000 per month

2005 – I went to Donegal in the northwest of Ireland to study Irish language and songs for the first time. I went there for a week or two every summer until 2019.

Omniglot blog

2006 – Omniglot blog launched. My first post, after a welcome one, was about Language and memory. Since then, I have written 3,767 more posts, including this one.

2007 – I launched the Omniglot YouTube channel. My first video was a silly little conversation in French and English about flying monkeys and other strange things. Since then, I’ve posted another 239 videos.

2008 – I was made redundant from my job in Brighton and started working on Omniglot full-time, while doing a bit of freelance work for other websites. I also registered Omniglot as a limited company.

My new house

2008-2009 – I moved to Bangor in north Wales to do an MA in Linguistics at Bangor University. I’ve been here ever since.

2010 – I bought a house in Bangor after renting for a couple of years.

2011 – visitor numbers to Omniglot reached 1 million per month.

2012 – I started writing songs, inspired by a poetry writing workshop I went to in Bangor, and by a singing class I started attending in 2010. Since January 2019, I’ve written at least one new song every month. Here’s the first song I wrote:

2014 – I went to the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin, and to the Polyglot Conference in Novi Sad, Serbia. They were my first large polyglot events I’d attended, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Since then, I’ve been to quite a few others in Europe and North America.

2015 – visitor numbers reached 2 million per month. I also started writing tunes this year. I think this is the first tune I wrote, played by me on the harp:

2016 – peak year so far in terms of visitor numbers and revenue from Omniglot. Thanks to my frugal habits, savings and income from my site, I was able to pay off my mortgage in full this year.

2017 – I started studying languages on Duolingo every day while recovering from a little ice skating accident involving a broken ankle, and have continued to do so ever since. My current streak is at 2,481 days today. So far I’ve studied Russian, Romanian, Czech, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic and Irish. I had some knowledge of most of them before, but Romanian, Danish and Finnish were completely new to me. I wouldn’t claim to speak any of them fluently or flawlessly, but I can at least have conversations in them.

2018 – I started Celtiadur, a blog where I explore connections between Celtic languages. My first post was about words for Big, Large & Great and related things. Since then, I have written 419 more posts, and have been working to improve the earlier posts, which tended to be quite basic.

This blog, under a different name, had previously been about my language learning efforts and travels, but I moved the old posts to my main Omniglot blog, decided to focus on Celtic languages instead.

I also started the Radio Omniglot blog and podcast. Episode 1 was about My Language Learning Adventures. Since then, I have written and recorded 381 more posts and podcasts.

2021 – I added the 1,500th language (Akawaio) to Omniglot.

Studio / Stwdio

2021 / 2022 – I had a home office / studio built in my garden. Since then, it’s been the place where I do most of my work, and make podcasts and other recordings.

My home office / studio

2024 – I added the 2,000th language (Uneapa) to Omniglot.

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Chrimbo

By Simon

Language quiz image

A multilingual Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate it.

Or if you prefer, Happy Holidays, Jolly Yuletide, Seasons Greetings, Happy Friday, 行憲紀念日快樂! (Happy Constitution Day – for readers in Taiwan).

Here’s a version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ I wrote yesterday. I was inspired by a friend who re-wrote of ‘We Three Kings’. It references other songs written by me and my friends.

‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ is a traditional English carol from the south west of England that has been around is various guises at least since the 19th century. More details.

Here are a few other Christmasy songs I found recently on YouTube that I thought I’d share with you:

The Carol of the Bells has been popping up in my feed quite a bit. It is based on the Ukrainian song Щедрик (Shchedryk):

Here’s a rather different version:

This is not exactly a Christmas song, but does have a Christmasy theme, and is a lot of fun to watch and listen to. It is by Nanowar of Steel, an Italian band, and was inspired by the IKEA catalogue. How many languages can you spot in it?

A couple of other Christmasy songs that I quite like:

Procrastination Chariots

By Simon

Do you tend to leave things to the last minute, and then scramble around frantically trying to get them done in time?

I certainly have been known to do this on occasion. For example, for nearly two years, I’ve been meeting with a few friends once a month to share songs we’re working on. During this time I’ve written a new song every month, and often do so in the few days before we meet. I may have various ideas for songs before then, but don’t usually do much with them until the last minute. In this case, I find that having the monthly deadline of our meetings helps.

Before this group started meeting, I wrote songs when I felt inspired – sometimes I’d write several in a month, and at other times I didn’t write anything for ages.

What I indulge in could be called a charet(te), or “a period of intense work, especially group work undertaken to meet a deadline” [source], a word that comes from the Old French charrete (chariot).

The sense of last-minute work apparently comes from the practice of students at the École de Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris working together furiously at the last minute to finish their termly projects, which would be collected on a charette, a small wheeled chart. They were said to be working en charette (“in the chart”), and the night before the deadline was known as la nuit de charette (“charette night”). Any work not on the charette was not accepted for assessment. The word and concept was borrowed into English in the mid-19th century [source].

Vintage cart illustration

Do you find it helpful to have targets and deadlines, whether set by you or someone else?

I don’t usually set myself deadlines and targets when learning languages, unless I’m preparing for a particular trip, event or occasion.

Meaningful Nonsense

By Simon

A new song came to me the other day. I’d been thinking of writing something in a made up language, and spent some of last week speaking to myself in made up words. The words were all open syllables (consonant plus vowel) and most were two syllables.

I wrote the song down and sent it to my singer-songwriter friends. One of them put it into Google Translate, which identified the language as Chichewa, a Bantu language spoken mainly in Malawi.

These are the original words with their Chichewa meanings (according to Google Translate):

Oba mmta uku kitu (Bow and find something)
Tika kuta dupa fu (Tika walls dupa fu)
Fitu mmdu bapi kati (What is the difference between)
Taku mipa untu li (Taku barrels)

Oba mmba undu fitu (Be very serious)
Tepu pimi mmdu ku (Tape pima mmdu to)
Kata tifu uko kibi (Cut off live)
Bifu bafu taku ni (The bath tub taku is)

Kula tupa muta pitu (Eating discarded)
Katu tiku lafu lu (We are already dead)
Lipa lupa pula puli (Pay the pula plum)
Talo tilu lopa mi (So this is the story of my life)

I then played around with the words until they all meant something in Chichewa, and came up with the following:

Oba mpa katu kitu (Pray for nothing)
Tuka kuta taku du (Exit the walls)
Fitu mbu bapi kati (Where’s the mosquito repellent)
Tala mipa untu li (Color your bodies)

Oba mba undu fitu (Pray now and then)
Tafu pima ndu ku (Find out how to)
Kata tifu uko kibi (Cut off live)
Bifu bafu tata ni (The master bath complex is)

Kula tupa muta pitu (Eating discarded)
Katu tiku lafu lu (We are already dead)
Lapa lupa pula puli (The family is raining)
Talo tilu lopa mi (So this is the story of my life)

So I accidentally managed to write a song in a language I don’t know at all. It may be mostly nonsense, but it’s sort of meaningful nonsense.

Do any of you speak Chichewa? If so, is this a good translation?

Have you ever written some nonsense like this, and found that it meant something in a language you don’t know?

This sounds like something from the brilliant YouTube channel Translator Fails, on which songs, and sometimes other things, are put through Google Translate too many times and become thoroughly mangled. Here’s a recent example:

The Secret Language of Basses

By Simon

I sing bass in several choirs, and quite a few of the bass parts involve us going dm dm dm, or do do do, or something similar. Until recently I thought it was just meaningless sounds we were making, and that maybe the composers / arrangers of the songs just couldn’t be bothered to write words for us basses.

Now I can exclusively reveal here that I have uncovered the Secret Language of Basses. They are not in fact meaningless sounds, but actually hidden messages in Morse Code.

Alternatively they might be in a secret constructed language known only to a few composers.

New Year

By Simon

It seems that a new year, and indeed a new decade has started, so Happy New Year / Decade!

I’ve noticed that some people are looking back at what they’ve done / achieved, etc over the past decade, so I thought I’d do something similar.

Back in 2009 I was studying for an MA in Linguistics at Bangor University, while working on Omniglot in my spare time, and writing for a couple of other websites. I finished my course in September of that year, though didn’t officially graduate until the following year, and have been working full-time on Omniglot since then.

Over the past decade Omniglot has grown quite a bit – I add something new, or make improvements, almost every day. The site now contains:

… and much more.

Since 2009 Omniglot has been visited by 176 million people, who have made 234 milion visits and viewed 407 million pages. There have been visitors every single country and territory, even Antarctica and North Korea. The top ten countries vistors come from are USA, India, UK, Canada, Philippines, Australia, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa. The most spoken languages of visitors are: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Polish.

Over the past decade I’ve studied and dabbled with a few languages, including: Breton, BSL, Cornish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Icelandic, Irish, Latin, Manx, Romanian, Russian, Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish and Toki Pona. I also started creating my own language: Laala, and made some con-scripts such as Crymeddau and Curvetic.

I joined a French conversation group back in 2009, and have been going almost every week since then. This has really helped to improve my French and I feel a lot more confident about using it now. When I can, I also go to a Welsh conversation group, and for a while I tried to run a polyglot conversation group.

Every summer I’ve been to Ireland to do courses in Irish language, traditional Irish songs, harp and/or bodhrán playing. I’ve also been to Scotland quite a few times to do courses in Scottish Gaelic songs.

In 2012 I started writing songs and tunes, and have written quite a few since then, especially in 2019, when I wrote a new song almost every month and several new tunes. I also started to write out the music for my tunes and songs, and to make new arrangements of them.

The first song I wrote was The Elephant Song, which came to me after going to a poetry writing workshop.

I haven’t made a good recording of my most recent song, but here’s one I wrote in November / December 2019:

Since 2014 I’ve been to a number of polyglot events, including the Polyglot Gathering and the Polyglot Conference. At most of these I’ve given talks or run workshops.

Polyglottery

In 2018 I started the Radio Omniglot Podcast, and have made 27 episodes so far. I try to make two episodes per month, but don’t always manage it.

In 2018 I also launched the Celtiadur, a collection of Celtic cognates, where I explore links between modern and ancient Celtic languages. This is an extension of the Celtic Cognates section on Omniglot.

Wow! Putting it together like this makes me realise that I haven’t been entirely idle.

Gaelic Song / Òrain Gàidhlig

By Simon

My course at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig finished today, and I’ll be leaving tomorrow. I’ll stay at my Mum’s for a few days on the way home, and should be back in Bangor next Monday.

The course has been a lot of fun, and Joy Dunlop is a really good teacher. She’s strict about getting the pronunciation right, which is important, and uses interesting ways to describe the particular sounds of Scottish Gaelic. If we all knew phonetics and the IPA, it would be much easier.

We learnt 16 songs altogether in 5 days, which is plenty – in previous years here we’ve learnt over 30 songs in a week, which was maybe slightly too many. I like all the songs we did this time, and plan to continue singing at least some of them.

There were 16 of us in the class, although not everyone was there every day. I already knew some of the people from other courses I’ve done here, and it was nice to see them again, and to meet new people. Most were from Scotland, and other parts of the UK, plus two from Ireland, one from France and one from the Netherlands. We got on well together, and I think singing together is a great way to bond.

The class was taught mainly in English, with some bits of Scottish Gaelic now and then, and only a few of us speak much Gaelic. Outside the class I got to speak quite a bit of Gaelic with people who were studying and working here. I also spoke some French, Irish and Dutch.

Here are a few photos and videos from this year and previous years at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig:

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

By Simon

This coming week I will be at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye, doing a course in Argyll Gaelic Song / Òrain Earra-Ghàidheal with Joy Dunlop. I think this is the eighth time I’ve been to the college, and I’m looking forward to it very much.

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig

Tonight I’m staying in Glasgow, and tomorrow I’ll get the train along the West Highland Line to Mallaig, a very scenic journey, the ferry to Armadale, and then hopefully there’ll be a bus to the college.

Glasgow / Glaschu

On the train from Glasgow to Crookston, the suburb of Glasgow where I’m staying, I heard some Italian tourists talking to the guard. They didn’t seem to speak much English, and they had the wrong tickets, or they’d got on the wrong train. They asked the guard in Italian if he spoke Italian, and fortunately for them he did. It sounded to me like his Italian was very fluent, and everything was quickly sorted out. You never know when language skills might come in handy.

I haven’t heard any Scottish Gaelic yet, though I have seen it on some signs.