Month: September 2006

Humour

By Simon

When chatting with some Iranian friends yesterday, the subject of British humour came up. My friends told me that British humour, particularly language-based humour, has much in common with Persian humour, and that the Iranians really appreciate British jokes, unlike many other nationalities.

The things people laugh at seem to vary from country to country. In some places comedy tends to be very physical with lots of slapstick, in others it’s more about playing with language. So something that might be considered funny in more country, might be greeted with indifference in others.

What kind of things do you find funny?

Word of the day – tintinnabulation

By Simon

tintinnabulation = the act or an instance of the ringing or pealing of bells. From Latin tintinnāre to tinkle, from tinnīre to ring.

Related words
tintinnabulte = to ring, to tinkle
tintinnabulary = a bellringer
tintinnabulum = a small high-pitched bell
tinnitus = medical term for a ringing or buzzing in the ears

I came across this word on World Wide Words today and it really appeals to me as a pleasant-sounding word and as a fine example of onomatopoeia. Another onomatopoeic term for the ringing of bells in ding dong, in both English and French. The French for tintinnabulation is tintinnabulement, the Spanish is campanilleo, and the German is Klingeln.

What sounds do bells make in other languages?

Verbal gestures

By Simon

According to an article on ScienceDaily, we unconsciously use ‘verbal gestures’ when we speak. These verbal gestures or ‘analog acoustic expressions’ add extra information to our utterances not provided by the words themselves. For example, when we talk about things, such as the stock market, going up or down, we tend to raise or lower our voices slightly at the ends of sentences. Saying words closetogether can emphasis proximity, while distance can be emphasised by spacing words out more. If we talk about something that’s moving or happening quickly, we tend to talk more quickly, while we tend to slow down to talk about slow moving things.

This is apparently quite a new area of research and sounds very interesting. I’ll certainly listen out for such verbal gestures from now on.

Which languages are spoken in your neighbourhood?

By Simon

A comment on a previous post got me thinking about which languages are spoken in Brighton, my current home. Ziad Fazah, the incredible polyglot, apparently learnt most of his 58 languages using materials available in the public libraries of his hometown in Lebannon, and by talking with foreign residents and visitors, particularly visiting sailors.

Using similar methods, I estimate that I could learn at least 50 languages in Brighton, which is home to and visited by people from all over the world.

According to the local council, the main community languages (other than English) used in Brighton are Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, French, Mandarin, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Other languages spoken by Brighton residents include Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Slovak, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Welsh, and I’m sure there are many more, especially if you include all the languages spoken by people who come to Brighton as tourists, students or business travellers.

My local library has language courses and other language learning materials for 49 languages, and literature in 12 of those languages.

Mixxer

By Simon

Recently I registered with the language exchange site, Mixxer. This is a free service hosted by Dickinson College where you enter some information about yourself, particularly the languages you want to practise, and can then search for native speakers of those languages who want to practise speaking and/or writing your mother tongue. You can then contact them via Skype. Language tutors and teachers can also use the site to find students.

This is a great idea and seems to work well – since I joined the site, I’ve chatted with people from Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Japan, Spain and Taiwan, practised my Chinese, Japanese and Spanish, and have learnt some more Russian and a bit of Bulgarian.

Have you tried this site or any similar sites?

Hippopotami and paninis

By Simon

English contains more foreign loan words than you can shake a stick at. In some cases both their singular and plural forms have been adopted, but sometimes only one of these forms makes it into English. For example, panini is the plural of panino, an Italian-style sandwich, but only the former is normally used in English – the plural paninis is quite common. In Italian the plural of pizza is pizze, but in English we say pizzas.

Some, though not all, of the unusual plural forms are regularised. Examples include, stadium, the plural of which is either stadia, or more commonly, stadiums. Formula, which can be pluralised as either formulae or formulas. Also kibbutz – kibbutzim/kibbutzes; octopus – octopi/octopuses; hippopotamus – hippopotami/hippopotamuses; index – indices/indexes; matrix – matrices/matrixes.

A few years ago I went to Sicily for a holiday. On arrival in Catania I felt a bit peckish so went to get something to eat at an airport café. In some Italian cafés you have to pay first, then you take the receipt to the food counter and pick up your food. I asked the guy behind the cash register for ‘uno panini‘, thinking I was asking for one sandwich. As I used the plural form (I’d forgetten the singular), he thought I was asking for two and charged me accordingly. I was quite surprised when the food counter guy handed me two sandwiches, but didn’t mind too much as I was very hungry by then.

Here’s a plural-related conundrum (plural conundra/conundrums) for you: the plural of child is children, the plural of ox is oxen. Can you think of any other English words with the same type of plural?

The two Koreas

By Simon

According to an article in The Boston Globe, the Korean spoken in North Korea has drifted apart from the Korean spoken in South Korea. This is hardly surpising as there has been very little contact between the two sides for over 60 years. They both jam each other’s radio signals, and it used to be a serious crime in the South to watch television, read literature or to communicate with people from the other side. It still is in the North.

Some words have different meanings on each side of the border. For example, if you ask a North Korean how they are, they’ll probably say ‘ilupsopneda’, which literally means ‘not much’ and is the equivalent of ‘I’m fine, thanks’. In South Korea this phrase means ‘Mind your own business!’, which goes some way to explaining why South Koreans think North Koreans are quite rude.

In order to prevent the language drifting further apart, the authorities in both Koreas are currently working on a unified dictionary.