Month: October 2006

Colour names

By Simon

According to a study by researchers at Ohio State University, colours tend to be divided into eight main categories: red, green, yellow/orange, blue, purple, brown, pink and grue (green/blue) across many languages. The categories are remarkably consistent, though the boundaries between the different colours vary from language to language, and some languages have fewer words for colours, which are often amalgamations of the main categories.

One distinction made in all languages is the one between ‘cool’ colours, like blues and greens, and ‘warm’ colours, like reds, oranges and yellows. Some languages use a single word to desciber the cool colours, and a different word to describe the warm colours.

An example of a language with different colour boundries to English is Welsh. The Welsh word glas represents a blue/green/grey/silver colour, llwyd is brown/grey colour, coch is a redish-brown, scarlet or crimson colour. The other Celtic languages have similar colour boundries.

Disjointed conversations

By Simon

When chatting on instant message programs like MSN Messenger or using the online chat function on Skype, conversations often become quite disjointed. You might respond to what the other person just said, then they respond to something you said earlier. Fortunately you can look back at what’s been said and work out what they’re on about. When more than two people are involved, it can be even more confusing. 而且如果你同时用几门不同的语言聊天，比如说，一边讲汉语，一邊講國語 and talking English to someone else, 就会混淆得不得了！

Instant messaging is probably the form of written language nearest to spoken conversation, but it’s not the same. In spoken conversation there are extralinguistic cues which, among other things, can indicate when it’s your turn to speak – usually our intonation goes down when we’ve finished speaking, something that happens without conscious thought. Such cues are missing in IM chats.

Email ‘conversations’ can be even more disjointed, especially when many people are involved. Sometimes I receive emails after they’ve back and forth between various people many times. To work out what they want me to do, I have to plough back through the whole discussion, and maybe contact some of those involved to clear up some of the details.

Japanese for kids

By Simon

The son of one of my friends has decided that he wants to learn Japanese and his parents have asked me if I can recommend any suitable courses for him. I thought of the Talk Now! series, but they only teach you a limited number of words and phrases, and the lad, who’s 10 years old, wants to learn more than that. I also suggested Pimsleur.

Have you any suggestions?

Transliterations of Omniglot

By Simon

One of my regular correspondents has suggested that I add a page to my main site showing how to write Omniglot in various different writing systems. He’s also sent me a list of transliterations to get me started – you can see the beginnings of the page here.

Could you provide any new transliterations of Omniglot, and corrections to the existing ones, if necessary? Could you also try to come up with translations of the word Omniglot in your language(s)? It means ‘all languages’ in the context of my site.

Learning languages for fun

By Simon

There are many different reasons to learn languages, some practical, some intellectual, and some sentimental. Have you learnt, are you learning, or would you like to learn any languages purely for fun? If so, which languages and why?

I’m learning, or plan to learn, all the Celtic languages mainly for fun. I fell for Irish because of my interest in traditional Irish music. Same story with Scottish Gaelic. In the case of Welsh, I’m also studying it for practical reasons – before securing my current position, one of the jobs I applied for was based in Bangor in the heart of Welsh-speaking Welsh (y Fro Gymraeg) and a knowledge of Welsh was desirable for that job. Welsh is an ancestral language for me as well – my mum’s family are from Wales and spoke Welsh a few generations ago.

Czech is another language I’m learning mainly for fun, and to surprise and impress my Czech friends. I’d also like to visit the Czech Republic at some point, so my studies are partly practical.

Other languages I’d quite like to learn for fun, if I had the time and could find the relevant materials: a Polynesian language such as Hawai’ian or Maori; a Native American language such as Cherokee or Navajo; a ‘click’ language such as Xhosa or Zulu; and maybe Tibetan and Mongolian, mainly because I really like their alphabets. These are all interesting languages unlike any I already know and I’d like to find out more about the people who speak them.

This post was inspired by discussion on the Language Learning Forum at How to learn any language.

Nihongo

By Simon

This morning I had a long chat on Skype with a Japanese lass from somewhere near Tokyo. We talked in a mixture of Japanese and English, and I was pleased to discover that I can still speak Japanese, inspite of many years of neglect. There are many words I’ve forgotten, and I tend to get the word order wrong sometimes, but I can still communicate, and it was starting to come back to me slowly as we talked.

今朝は私がスカイプで日本の女性としゃべた。私たちは日本語と英語に話した。彼女はイギリスに二年の間に英語を勉強しただから、英語が上手だ。私は大学を卒業後、日本語を話す機会が少なかったたから、今は日本語が下手になる、然し今でも日本語に通信することが出来ます。

Pimsleur – a review

By Simon

I have now listened to all 10 lessons of my Pimsleur Czech course, most of them several times. I’ve a long way to go before I can speak Czech, but I do know quite a few useful words and phrases now, and I am beginning to acquire a feeling for the structure of the language. I also know how to pronounce words, though some of the consonant clusters are tricky. When I listen to Radio Prague or my Czech friends talking, I can get a basic idea of what they’re on about.

Before I started the course, I’d read many reviews of Pimsleur courses, many positive, some negative, so I had an idea of what I was letting myself in for. I now think that Pimsleur courses can give you a good foundation in a language, which you can build on with other courses. They are particularly good for languages unlike any of the ones you already know.

Next week I’m going to start on Colloquial Czech – I had a quick look at it yesterday and found that I could understand quite a lot of the stuff in the first lesson, which is encouraging.

Semicolonical

By Simon

After the fun we had yesterday with apostrophes, I thought it was time to become a bit semicolonical and to discuss the often over-looked semicolon, which is perhaps the punctuation mark most likely to fall out of use in the not too distant future. In fact many people rarely if ever use it already, except in emoticons ;).

The semicolon was first used by Aldus Manutius the elder (1449-1515) to separate words opposed in meaning and to mark off interdependent statements. It was introduced into English in 1560, and was used throughout Europe by the late 18th century.

There are two main uses of the semicolon in English:

1) It can be used to join independant clauses not linked by a co-ordinating conjunction such as and or but. For example:

regular exercise helps reduce blood pressure; a balanced diet is also important.

2) It can be used in lists containing commas within each point. For example:

Henry’s mother believes three things: that every situation, no matter how grim, will be happily resolved; that no one knows more about human nature than she; and that Henry, who is thirty-five years old, will never be able to do his own laundry.

Source: www.uottawa.ca

In some languages, such as Greek and Church Slavonic, the semicolon is used as a question mark. How are semicolons used in your language?

Apostrophication

By Simon

The thorny subject of apostrophes and their usage came up in the comments on a recent post. There seems to be considerable confusion about when to use the common or garden aspostrophe, which is might be thought of as a comma that’s got above itself.

In English the apostrophe is used to indicate possession, as in the boy’s toys, the girls’ hair and the cat’s pyjamas. It comes after the s if the noun is plural. When a noun ends in an s, the apostrophe can go after that s, or another s can be added, e.g. Mr Jones’ hat or Mr Jones’s hat. Apostrophes show that letters have been omitted, as in don’t, he’ll and they’ve, and can also be used when writing the plurals of individual letters, such as p’s and q’s.

Apostrophical uncertainity arises with the personal pronouns as they don’t follow the behaviour of ordinary nouns. Logically the possessives yours, its, hers, ours and theirs should have apostrophes, but the grammarians who devised the rules for the use of apostrophes, notably Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray, forgot to include them. It’s is a contraction of it is or it has, so the possessive has to be its.

The use of apostrophes to show plurals, as in potato’s and tomato’s is frowned on but understandable – these words are fairly unusual in that they end with vowels. If you’re not sure of the real plurals (potatoes and tomatoes), you might think that adding ‘s would avoid the misleading pronunciations like ‘pot-at-oss’ and ‘tom-at-oss’. Afterall, apostrophes are sometimes used to show the plurals like 1960’s.

One area of apostrophe usage that I’m not sure about is in expressions such as a weeks holiday, or should that be week’s? And a days/day’s wages. As these expressions show possession, I suppose apostrophes should be used, but it feels wrong to me – how can the abstract concept of a week or a day possess anything?