Category: Czech (čeština)

Polyglot Gathering 2016

By Simon

I’m currently at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin. I arrived here on Wednesday evening and have been speaking and hearing lots of different languages. So far I’ve had conversations in English, French, Welsh, German, Irish and Mandarin, and spoken bits and pieces of Spanish, Italian, Russian, Czech, Portuguese, Toki Pona and Esperanto. I’ve also heard some Finnish, Punjabi, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Slovak, Sardinian, Dutch, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish and other languages that I didn’t recognise.

Yesterday I went to talks on Portuguese Creole languages, Greek, language learning and linguistics, how to achieve advanced language competence, and on connections between cartoons and language learning. This morning I’ve been to talks on teaching multiple languages simultaneously, and languages and dialects of Sardinia. All the talks I’ve been to so far have been in English, apart from the Sardinian one, which was in Italian.

I’ve met lots of people I know from previous polyglot events, and lots of new people too. I might try to explore a bit more of Berlin at some point as well.

Šup!

By Simon

Last week I learnt a useful Czech word – Šup! – which can mean Whoosh!, Go!, Move!, Hurry up! and similar, and Šup šup! means Chop-chop!

A more polite way to say the same thing is pojďme, which literally means “Let’s (do something)”. Here are some examples of usage:

– Pojďme na procházku = Let’s go for a walk
– Pojďme pěšky = Let’s walk
– Pojďme na to / Pojďme to udělat = Let’s do this
– Pojďme se na to podívat = Let’s take a look at it
– Pojďme spolupracovat = Let’s work together
– Pojďme přemýšlet = Let’s think

Sources: bab.la Dictionary and Slovnik.cz

Are there similar expressions in other languages?

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?

Hajej, můj zlatoušku

By Simon

One of my harps

Dnes jsem se naučil Česká píseň: “Hajej, můj zlatoušku”. To je záznam melodii hrál na harfu:

To je záznam mě zpívat tuto píseň:

Today I started learning the Czech song, “Hajej, můj zlatoušku”, which I think is a lullaby, as the title means something like “Sleep now my little golden one”.

I recorded the tune on the harp, and also recorded myself singing it unaccompanied.

Here’s another recording I made of this song:

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/241783557″ params=”color=ff5500&inverse=false&auto_play=false&show_user=true” width=”100%” height=”20″ iframe=”true” /]

This song comes from the book Třetí Výběr Českých a Moravských Písní (The Third Choice of Czech and Moravian Songs) by Helena Hasilová and Jiří Hasil, which a Czech friend gave me a few years ago.

The words are:

Hajej, můj zlatoušku hajej a spi,
zamhouři maličky očičky svý;
hajej, dadej, nynej, malej!
zamhouři maličký očičky svý.

Hajej, můj andílku, hajej a spi,
matička kolíbá děťátko svý;
hajej, dadej, nynej, malej!
matička kolíbá děťátko svý.

Another recording of this song:

Here’s a translation:

Sleep, my little golden one, sleep.
Close your little eyes and sleep.

Sleep, my little angel, sleep.
Mummy is rocking her little child to sleep.

Thanks to Kája Beránková for help with the translation. Díky!

New languages to learn?

By Simon

Recently I have acquired quite a few new language courses: as a sponsor of the Polyglot Conference in New York I received 10 new Colloquial language courses in Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish and Russian. I also bought a Glossika Russian course with the special offer given to conference participants, and bought a Basque course from Assimil with affiliate commission from Amazon France.

My new language courses

I learnt a little Hungarian many years ago, and am currently working on Czech and Russian, but haven’t studied any of the other languages before. I’d love to know at least the basics of all of them, though have no particular need or desire to learn them at the moment. Also, I already have courses in a number of languages that I have only glanced at so far – Arabic, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots and Cornish.

Do you sometimes get carried away with acquiring language courses and other materials?

Do you think you will get round to learn all those languages one day?

Language learning lethargy

By Simon

Cat on dictionaries - an illustration of language learning lethargy

Are there times when you don’t feel like learning languages and can’t summon up much enthusiasm about them? When language learning lethargy strikes, in fact.

For me most of August this year was like that – I did use my languages when I had the chance, and spoke quite a bit of French and Welsh, and odd bits of Italian and Irish. I also listened to plenty of foreign language radio, as I often do. I didn’t go out of my way to find opportunities to practise my languages though, and didn’t study at all for almost the whole month. This is unusual for me.

Sometimes I think to myself, “You already speak five languages more or less fluently, and know quite a few others to varying degrees. Isn’t that enough?”, and my usual answer is “No, I want to learn more!”. Recently however, my motivation to learn more has been low and my answer was “Yes, that’s enough for now.”

This month I am re-starting my studies with Czech, and am planning to start dabbling with other languages as well. Yesterday my Teach Yourself Swedish course finally arrived – the one I got for free after attending the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in May. So I will be learning more Swedish before long.

If you come down with language learning lethargy from time to time, how do you deal with it?

Gleann Cholm Cille

By Simon

This week and next week I am in Gleann Cholm Cille (Glencolmcille) in Donegal in the north west of Ireland. I’m doing courses at Oideas Gael, an Irish language and cultural centre: a harp playing course this week, and an Irish language and culture course next week.

This is my 11th visit to Gleann Cholm Cille, and the second year I’ve done the harp course. On the harp course page of the Oideas Gael site there are pictures of the harp group from last year – I’m third from the right in the first one, and in the middle at the back in the second one (see also below).

2014 Oideas Gael Harp class
2014 Oideas Gael Harp class

This year we have a different teacher – a music student called Elsa Kelly, who also plays the flute. We’re learning some O’Carolan tunes and some other traditional Irish tunes, and it’s great fun.

I’ve been speaking plenty of Irish with people here – locals and students – and have also spoken bits of German, French, Scottish Gaelic, Dutch, Russian and Czech. People come here from all over the world to study Irish language, music and related subjects, so there are plenty of opportunities to practise languages.

So far the weather has been very mixed – cloudy and windy one minute, warm and sunny the next, then the rain starts, and it can go on all day and all night sometimes and be rather heavy. This is fairly typical for this part of Ireland, but local people are complaining that they haven’t had much of a summer this year yet.

Hmyz and Hums

By Simon

Hymz

I came across an interesting Czech word today – hmyz, which means “insect, ant, bug, creepy-crawly”.

It appears in my Czech phrasebook in the sentence, “V našem pokoji je hmyz” (There are insects in our room).

It sounds like the sounds insects make, but there are other words for hum in Czech – bzučet, vrčet, hučet (verbs); bzukot, šum, hukot (nouns).

Related words include:

– hmyzožravec = insectivore
– hmyzožravý = insectivorous
– repelent proti hmyzu = insect repellent

Sources: Wordbook.cz, Slovnik.cz, Slovniky.lingea.cz

Polyglot Gathering Berlin 2015

By Simon

I got back from the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin about an hour ago. I took the train all the way from Berlin to Bangor, via Cologne, Brussels, London, Crewe and Chester, leaving Berlin just before 7am this morning, and arriving in Bangor just after 9pm this evening. On the way there I also travelled by train, though I had to stay in Brussels for one night, and continued the next day. It cost slightly more than flying (only about £20 more) and took a bit longer (about 2 hours – more on the way there), but I saw so much more, and went through parts of France and Germany I hadn’t been before, and visited Belgium for the first time. The engineers on German railways started a 5-day strike today, and I was worried that my trains might not be running. Fortunately they did run, and were more or less on time.

The gathering was bigger than last year with about 350 participants from many countries. There were many people there I knew from last year’s gathering, and from the Polyglot Conference in Novi Sad, and I met lots of new people. I had conversations in all the languages I know well, and most of the ones I know less well. There was a Breton speaker there, though I didn’t get to talk to him, as well as speakers of Welsh, Irish, Cornish and Scottish Gaelic. Like last year, there were plenty of Esperanto speakers, and I had quite a few conversations in Esperanto, which I brushed up a bit beforehand. There were a number of people who had studied sign languages there, including BSL, ASL, Dutch Sign Language (Nederlandse Gebarentaal / NGT) and Slovak Sign Language (Slovenský posunkový jazyk / SPJ), and the Slovak signer demonstrated how she interprets songs in SPJ, which was fascinating to watch.

The talks and lectures were really interesting, and I went to quite a few introductions to languages, including Northern Sami, Navajo, Arabic, Hebrew, Milanese, Gottlandic, Finnish, Greek and Basque. I don’t intend to learn any of these languages just yet, but it was fascinating to find out more about them. My own presentation, on the History of Writing, was well received, and I got lots of positive comments.

Some of the polyglots at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in May 2015
Some of the polyglots at the Polyglot Gathering – from right to left: Richard Simcott, Alex Rawlings, Christopher Huff, Jimmy Melo, and me – between us we speak at least 20 or 30 languages, to varying degrees.

The evening activities included a polyglot games evening, an international culinary festival – I took some Welsh cakes and bara brith, which were popular – a book fair, a polyglot game show, a concert with the multilingual French singer JoMo, who sang in 25 different languages, and an international cultural evening, at which I sang a Scottish Gaelic waulking song (Ceud soiridh soiridh bhuam) and one of my own songs – A Hen in My Hat (in 5 languages). After the cultural evening there was a little Irish and Scottish music session – I had a couple of tin whistles with me, and a few other people had instruments.

So now I’m back in Bangor and will start to catch up with the work I couldn’t do while away due to time constraints and internet connection issues.

Closing out

By Simon

In the Czech lessons I’ve been working my way through I’ve noticed that the Czech host says (in English) at the end of each lesson “To close out this lesson, we would like to practise what you have just learnt.”. I would say finish rather than close out, and thought close out was a non-native usage. However recently I heard American friends using the same expression, so it seems that it is used in American English.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, to close out is defined as:

– exclude; preclude

So it does exist as an expression, but the meaning doesn’t quite fit with finishing a lesson.

Do you use or have you heard this expression?