Month: February 2010

Kionnaghey thie

By Simon

Ta mee smooinaghtyn thie y chionnaghey ayns Bangor, as hug mee shilley er thieyn yn çhiaghtyn shoh as yn çhiaghtyn shoh chaie. Foddee verrym çhebb er nane jeu, agh shegin dou loayrt rish turneyr hoshiaght.

Teach a cheannach

Tá mé ag smaoineamh teach a cheannach i mBangor, agus chuaigh mé tithe a feiceáil an seachtain seo agus an seachtain seo caite. B’fhéidir déanfaidh mé tairiscint ar cheann acu, ach tá orm ag labhairt leis aturnae ar dtús.

Prynu tŷ

Dw i’n meddwl am brynu tŷ ym Mangor, ac es i i weld tai yr wythnos hon a’r wythnos ddiwethaf. Efallai mi na i gynnig ar un ohonynt, ond mae rhaid i mi siarad efo cyfreithiwr yn gyntaf.

Word of the day – wintle

By Simon

I came across the word wintle [‘winəl / ‘wintəl] in Louis de Bernières’ novel Notwithstanding, which I just finished reading. From the context – she walks carefully so as not to wintle on the rimy Bargate stones of the path – I guessed that it meant to slip or something similar.

According the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary it’s Scottish and means to stagger, reel or wriggle. It’s possibly comes from the Dutch word windtelen (to reel).

Dictionary.com defines it as 1. (noun) a rolling or staggering motion. 2. (verb) to roll or swing back and forth. 3. (verb) to tumble over; capsize.

Have you heard this word before?

The Audio Archive

By Simon

I came across the Audio Archive yesterday while searching for information about the pronunciation of English dialects.

The archive is part of an newsgroup about English and contains recordings by English speakers from around the world of a number of different texts.

Other collections of English dialect recordings including the British Library’s Sounds Familiar? and Archival Sound Recordings, the BBC Voices project, Sound Comparisons, the American English Dialect Recordings at the Library of Congress, and the International Dialects of English Archive.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

By Simon

Writing tablet from Mesopotamia (c 3100-2900 BC) found in Uruk III.

There’s an very interesting series of programmes on BBC Radio 4 at the moment called “A History of the World in 100 Objects“. The objects come from the British Museum and one of recent programmes discussed an ancient Mesopotamian writing tablet, like the one on the right, from about 3,000 BC.

They talk about the invention of writing, and how it was used almost exclusively for record keeping and accounting at first, and that written literature only developed later.

The tablet in question is a record of workers’ daily beer rations – workers were paid in beer as this was before the invention of money.

By the way I’m planing to add a page or two to Omniglot about the history and development of writing, and maybe a chronology as well.

Surprisingly spacious

By Simon

I’ve been thinking about buying a house for a while and this week I finally got round to looking at a few places. The estate agent’s descriptions and photos of the properties are designed make them sound and look attractive to potential buyers and need some interpreting as they don’t always quite match the reality.

For example, ‘surprisingly spacious’ seems to mean that a house is marginally larger on the inside than it appears from the outside; ‘mature’ might mean in a poor state of repair, as might ‘with great potential’; ‘small’ might mean absolutely tiny; and ‘popular location’ might mean that the area tends to get noisy at night; and/or there’s a lot of traffic.

Have you any other examples or interpretations?

‘Extreme’ language exchanges

By Simon

Language exchange trips have been popular for many years, but usually involve spending only a few weeks in a foreign country. For example, I took part in a language exchange with a French lad while at school which involved me spending three weeks with his family in France, and him spending three weeks in the UK with my family. I also spent two weeks with a family in Germany, and a month with a family in Austria.

According to The Independent, the latest trend is for children between 9 and 13 to spend six months in a foreign country, staying with a family and going to a local school. Even if they don’t know the local language at all at first, they’re usually fluent in it after six months.

The exchanges discussed in the article were arranged by En Famille International, a French company set up in 1978, and are available in Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the UK. One perennial problem they have is a lack of English-speaking families willing to participate in the exchanges.