Month: September 2006

False friends

By Simon

When learning a foreign language, you sometimes encounter false friends: words that sound like words in your native language, but which don’t mean the same thing. For example, the French word sensible means sensitive, not sensible. The French for sensible is prudent or sage. A Rathaus is not a home for German rats but a town hall. The Irish word for food, bia, sounds like beer – but beer is beoir or leann. The word pan means bread in Spanish and Japanese, and sir or mister in Polish and Ukrainian. And remember not to try to borrow books from a French or Portuguese librairie, a Spanish librería or an Italian libreria – these words all mean book shop. A library is a biblioteca in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, and a bibliothèque in French.

Some foreign words sound like rude words in your language. For example, the German words Fahrt (ride, journey) and Fach (panel, case, subject) cause much amusement among English-speaking students of German. As do the Irish words faic (nothing), as in faic na fride (not one jot), and feic (to see/see!).

Fortunately quite a few words are international and are used in many different languages, often with some adjustments for the spelling, writing and pronunciation conventions of each language. International words include telephone, television, taxi, hotel, restaurant, airport, etc.

You can find a longer list of false friends here.

Word of the day – etepetete

By Simon

Here’s a nice German word I came across today: etepetete, which means fussy, finicky, pernickety. According to Wikipedia, this word is used mainly in northern Germany, particularly in Berlin. The equivalents in High German are eingebildet and geziert.

This word comes from the French être, peut-être, meaning ‘to be, perhaps’.

Example of usage
Du bist so etepetete = You are so prim

Name the language

By Simon

Where might you see the following sign, and what does it mean?

Quiz question 160906

Clues: the sign needs to be rotated to see the writing the right way up (this is how it was sent to me). This alphabet is used to write quite a few of the languages spoken in South Asia

In case you’re wondering why I’m posting this week’s quiz question today rather than yesterday, it’s because I was unable to access this blog yesterday for unknown technical reasons.

Once upon a time

By Simon

Stories in English, particulary those for children, often start with ‘Once upon a time’ or something similar, such as ‘A long time ago in a land far away’. They usually end with ‘…and they lived happily ever after.’ or something similar.

In Irish stories typically start with Fadó, fadó’ (a long, long time ago), Welsh stories start with ‘un tro’ (one time), while Japanese stories often begin with ‘昔々’ (mukashi mukashi), or ‘a long, long time ago’.

What about in other languages?

Bál Mór Buí

By Simon

Fadó, fadó bhí bál mór buí ann, ach ní raibh aon cairde aige…

When I went to Ireland in June, I found quite an unusual way to use my Irish. On the last day of courses at Oideas Gael there is usually a kind of talent show, which typically involves classes and individuals singing, playing instruments, dancing, reciting poetry, telling stories or performing in some other fashion. Performances that involve speaking or singing are often in Irish, which gives students a chance to show what they’ve learnt during the week.

This year, as well as joining in with the singing, I also did some juggling. To make my performance a bit more interesting, I made up a story about the Bál Mór Buí (Big Yellow Ball) and its search for other balls to play with. The Bál mór buí was my large contact* ball, which I used to do some contact moves in one hand, while juggling beanbags with the other hand. The story went down very well and was one of the most unusual uses I’ve found for my languages so far.

What unusual uses have you found for your languages?

*Contact juggling involves rolling balls or other objects around the hands, arms and other parts of the body.

Lingua mortua sola lingua bona est?

By Simon

There seem to be many arguments for and against learning classical languages, such as Latin and Ancient Greek, and other dead languages. Some people claim that learning these languages gives you a better understanding modern languages. Others claim that learning Latin gives you a good understanding of grammar and can make you more disciplined in your studies.

To date I’ve only dipped my toe into the ocean of Latin scholarship. All the languages I’ve studied are modern ones spoken by people on a daily basis. This is not the case for Latin or other dead languages. Courses in dead languages tend to focus on grammar and translation. This approach puts many people off, myself included.

A major reason for learning classical languages is to read the wealth of literature written in them. This is especially true for Latin. If you want to be able to read Latin though, is it really necessary to learn how to conjugate verbs, inflect nouns and how to translate from your language into Latin? The ability to recognise what the inflections signify when you encounter them would seem to be more useful.

There are even people who view Latin as a living language. For example, there’s an organisation in Germany that organises Septimanae Latinae Europaeae (European Latin Weeks) at which Latin students and scholars can get together and speak to each other in Latin. Roman food is also available at these gatherings.

Have you studied any dead languages? What are your thoughts on the utility or otherwise of such study?

Poetry in many languages

By Simon

I came across an very interesting website today, lyrikline, which features poetry in many different languages from Albanian to Welsh. It also has recordings of the poets reading their their poetry aloud, biographical information about the poets, details of their publications, plus translations of the poems into German, and, in some cases, English. The site itself is in German, English, French, Slovenian and Arabic.

This looks like an excellent resource for poetry lovers and language learners, and I’ll certainly be spending some time exploring it.

Czech

By Simon

I’ve decided to put Russian on hold for now and have started learning Czech instead. My Czech friends have taught a few words and phrases, and I hope to acquire a much more knowledge of the language.

I’m beginning my studies with the Pimsleur Czech course, which consists of 10 half-hour lessons. The small amount of material covered by the course seems to be covered thoroughly. As I listen to the tapes, I’m converting them to mp3 format so that I can copy them to my mp3 player and listen to again whenever I want.

At the same time, I’m also digitizing some of my other language courses, which is enabling me to brush my Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Cantonese and Taiwanese. It will take quite a while to convert all my tapes to mp3s, but I’m in no particular hurry.

Learning a language with films

By Simon

I’ve had a request from Justin K, who would like to ask if you have any recommendations for films (movies) that are good for learning languages. Justin is currently studying Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Arabic and Hindi. I’d also be interested in your suggestions.

When I watch a film in a foreign language with subtitles, I can’t help myself reading the subtitles. If there are no subtitles, I concentrate more on the spoken dialogue and find I can understand more of it because my attention isn’t divided. If the subtitles are in the same language as the dialogue, as is the case with TV and films in Taiwan, I find I can understand even more.

Name the writing system

By Simon

Do you know what writing system this is and where you might see it?

Unknown writing system

A few clues: this writing system does not currently appear on Omniglot (I’ll add it when I’ve found enough information about it). It was invented during the 1950s and is logo-syllabic, i.e. each symbol represents a syllable in the spoken language, and also means something.