Month: January 2008

Word of the day – transliteration

By Simon

Transliteration, from the Latin trans, across, and littera, letter, is the practice of transferring a text from one writing system to another. Transliteration can be used to give people who can’t read other alphabets an idea how to pronounce words and names, though without some knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of pronunciation of the original languages, their pronunciation will probably sound only vaguely like the original.

In phrase books you often find transliterations designed to show how to pronounce things based on the mother tongues of the readers. Such guides tend to be confusing as the ‘phonetics’ might not make much sense to you. A few phrase books and language course provide IPA pronunciation guides, which are great, if you’re familiar with the IPA.

In the phrases section on Omniglot, I try to provide transliterations for all languages written with non-Latin writing systems. Many languages have several different transliteration systems and I usually choose the most widely-used. The transliterations may not make sense to everyone, but there are recordings of quite a few of the phrases, so you can at least hear how to pronounce them. Ideally there would be sound files for all the phrases, plus maybe IPA transcriptions, and with your help, maybe that will be the case one day.

I chose this word today because someone suggested that some of the transliterations on my phrases pages are confusing, especially to Americans. The trouble is, if I made the transliterations American-friendly, people from other countries might not find them useful.

Musicians’ brains are different

By Simon

Brain scans have found that the corpus callosum, the contection but the two halves of musicians’ brains tends to be significant enlarged in comparison the corpus callosum found in the brains of the non-musicans. A number of other differences between the brains of musicians and non-musicians have been found, including enlargements to the cortex, auditory and motor parts of the brain. Another finding was that music tends to be processed in the left hemisphere of musician’s brains in the same areas as language, whereas the right hemisphere tends to be responsible for this task in the brains of non-musicians.

Oliver Sacks’ book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain discusses these findings, and other music and language-related cases, including one of a man who after being struck by lightening, developed an overwhelming urge to play the piano and to compose music, and felt that he was actually tuning in to the music of heaven.

Corau

By Simon

Yr wythnos hon, ymunais â’r Côr Meibion Cymraeg Brighton. Maen nhw’n ymarfer bob Nos Lun yn Eglwys Sant Leonard yn Hove, taith weddol fyr ar y bws o fan hyn, ac maen nhw’n perfformio mewn cyngherddau bob ail mis ar gyfer elusen. Torf o hogiau diddorol ydyn nhw, a mwynhaf canu gyda nhw, dw i’n meddwl. Darganfodais llais bas sy ‘da fi ac felly mae rhaid i mi ailddysgu y clef bas nawr.

O’n i’n bwriadu ymuno â côr cymunedol lleol hefyd, ond maen nhw’n chwilio am arweinydd newydd ar hyn o bryd a dydyn nhw ddim yn ymarfer. Gobeithio bydden nhw’n ailddechrau cyn bo hir. Beth bynnag, chwiliais am gorau lleol eraill y gallwn ymuno amdanynt, a dw i wedi synnu bod cymaint o gorau yn yr ardal hon – corau proffesiynol, corau cymunedol, corau siambr a hyd yn oed côr Iddeweg.

Coir

An seachtain seo, chuaigh mé i gCór Breatnach Brighton. Bíonn siad ag cleachtadh achan Oíche Luan in Eaglais Niamh Leonard i Hove, turas measartha gearr ar an mbus ó anseo, agus bíonn siad ag seinn i gceolchoirm achan dara mí ar mhaithe le carthanacht. Grúpa fir suimiúla atá siad, agus sílim go bhainfidh mé sult as a bheith ag canadh leo. Aníos tá fhios agam go bhfuil dordghuth agam, agus dá bhrí sin, tá orm an dord-eochair a fhoghlaim arís.

Bhí rún agam téigh i gcór pobail áitiúla freisin, ach tá siad ag lorg stiúrthóir nua ar faoi láthair agus ní bhíonn siad ag cleachtadh. Tá súil agam go mbeidh siad ag tosú arís go luath. Ar aon nós, bhí mé ag lorg cóir áitiúla eile go bhíodh mé in ann téigh iontu, agus tá iontais orm go bhfuil an oiread sin cóir san áit seo – cóir gairmiúil, cóir pobail, cóir seomra agus fiú cór Giúdais.

Choirs

This week I joined the Brighton Welsh Male Voice Choir. They practise every Monday evening in St Leonard’s Church in Hove, a shortish bus ride from here, and give concerts for charity every other month. They seem like an interesting bunch of blokes and I’m sure I’m going to enjoy singing with them. I discovered that I’m a bass, as I suspected, so I have to relearn the bass clef, something I haven’t needed to read for a long time.

I was planning to join a local community choir as well, but they are currently looking for a new conductor and are not practising. I hope they’ll start again soon. Anyway, I’ve been looking for other local choirs I could join and have been surprised how many there are – professional choirs, community choirs, chamber choirs and even a Yiddish choir.

Nòs Ùr

By Simon

Nòs Ùr (New Style), the first West European Minority Languages Song Competition will be held in Inverness in June of this year, according to this article. It is one of four regional finals which will be held in different parts of Europe, the winners from each will compete in the Pan-European Minority Languages Song Competition, Liet Lavlut, which will take place in Luleå in Sweden in October.

The competition aims to bring music in minority languages to a larger audience, to promote cultural and musical diversity, and to encourage and inspire a new generation of minority language singers and song writers. It will probably feature songs in such languages as Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Ulster Scots, Irish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton.

Language beauty contest

By Simon

According to Eurolang, Estonia’s Education Minister is planning to hold a language beauty contest to mark the 90th birthday of the Republic of Estonia. The minister would like school children around the world to make recordings of up to seven words in their languages. The article doesn’t mention who will be judging the entrants or how they’ll go about it.

Have you heard of anything like this before?

Criticism and shoes

By Simon

There’s a saying in English that goes something like this: “don’t criticise someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes”. A corollary that’s sometimes added is: “If they don’t like your criticism, you’ll be a mile away and you’ll have their shoes”.

Aislinn Thomas, whose blog, In Your shoes, describes how she puts this saying into practice by actually wearing other people’s shoes for a day, is looking for equivalents of this phrase in other languages. Can you help?

Word of the day – ariandy

By Simon

I came across today’s word, ariandy, while looking for something else in one of my Welsh dictionaries, Y Geiriadur Mawr. It combines arian, silver / money, with dy, a mutated form of tŷ, house, and is an archaic word for bank, as in a place where money is kept. The normal word for bank is the loanword banc.

Another example of a word made up of native roots being replaced by a foreign loanword is cornmwg, chimney, from corn, horn and mwg smoke – the usual word for chimney is simnai.