Month: December 2010

Languages in the Czech Republic

By Simon

According to a report I found today in The Prague Post, less than half of Czechs speak foreign languages. A survey by the Social and Economy Analyses Institute (ISEA) found that while 27% of Czechs can communicate in at least one foreign language – the most popular languages are English and German, 54% of Czechs have no foreign language abilities. The survey also found that younger people are more likely to know a foreign language, and that 77% of university graduates speak at least one foreign language.

All my Czech friends speak English, and some of them speak other languages such as Russian, German, French and/or Welsh. They are all graduates, so this isn’t entirely surprising.

The idea that’s common in Anglophone countries that most people in continental Europe speak several languages, including English, doesn’t seem to reflect the reality everywhere.

Knock hardly

By Simon

Today I saw a note on someone’s door in my neighbourhood which reads “Please knock hardly”. This got me wondering whether they meant that people should knock on their door only a little, or whether they want people to knock hard on the door. I suspect they mean the latter, though I haven’t seen hardly used in this way before. Have you?

Lussyn ny cam-ching

By Simon

Lussyn ny cam-ching

Jiu ren mee soiaghey y fraueyn lus ny cam-ching dy chionnee mee meeghyn er-dy-henney. Ren mee soiaghey fraueyn elley (blaaghyn sniaghtee, crocysyn, cliogaghyn, a.r.e.) shiaghtyn ny ghaa er-dy-henney. Ta doghys aym dy ghoaill paart jeu toshiaght cur magh blaaghyn veih Jerrey Geuree yn vlein ry heet.

Cennin Pedr

Heddiw mi blannes i y bylbiau Cennin Pedr y brynes i rhyw fisoedd yn ôl. Mi blannes i fylbiau eraill (eirlysiau, crocysau, gellysg, ayyb) wythnos neu ddwy yn ôl. Gobeithio bydd rai ohonynt yn dechrau blodeuo ym mis Ionawr y blwyddyn nesaf.

Endangered Alphabets Poetry Project

By Simon

Today’s post comes from Tim Brookes

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

My Endangered Alphabets Project is in the process of giving birth to a new phase: the Endangered Alphabets Poetry Project. Let me explain what I’m trying to do.

I’ve written a short, simple poem about the importance of preserving endangered languages in their spoken and written forms. It goes like this:

These are our words, shaped
By our hands, our tools,
Our history. Lose them
And we lose ourselves.

If it makes the translation easier, it could also be written like this:

These are our words, shaped
By our hands, our tools,
Our history. If we lose our words,
We lose ourselves.

I would like to get this poem translated, with your help, into as many endangered languages–in their original scripts–as possible.

I’m hoping that you may be able to translate the poem into any of the world’s minority or endangered writing systems, or, failing that, pass the poem on to someone who can.

I don’t have an urgent deadline. If I could get the first of these translations within a few weeks, I can start working-and if it takes two or three months for them all to trickle in, that’s fine.

Once I have the translations, I’d like to create two pieces of work with them-two different versions of the project.

For one of these versions, I’ll pass the text along to Bob Holman, who has won a substantial grant to have poems projected onto the sides of large buildings in New York. He’s very interested in projecting poems in endangered languages and endangered alphabets.

The other version will be another major carving project. I plan to build a sculpture that consists of four tall pieces of beautiful maple wood, each facing toward a different point of the compass. Each face of the sculpture will display the poem in two, three or four endangered alphabets, depending how many I’m able to collect. This sculpture will then go on permanent exhibition in a major public building in the United States.

I hope very much you’re as interested in this project as I am. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

For more information on the Endangered Alphabets, please visit http://www.endangeredalphabets.com.

With very best wishes,

Tim Brookes
Director, Professional Writing Program,
Champlain College, Burlington, Vermont

Language quiz

By Simon

Today’s language quiz is slightly different from the usual recordings. Instead your challenge is to try to guess what the text below said before it was ‘babelized’.

It will not be shown blind.
Deaf or hearing
Pool of people can not talk about.

I wrote the original text in English, than translated it between 15 different languages and English using Google Translate. The languages were Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Georgian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh and Yiddish.

Frankingle & Inglefrank

By Simon

This is a sort of guest post from François Bouillon

In the novel Peter Ibbetson by Georges Du Maurier, two bilingual children invent “Frankingle”, a language with English grammar and phonetics and a French lexicon, and “Inglefrank”, a language that works on the opposite principle.

François Bouillon has written Frankingle and Inglefrank versions of two stories by Jean De La Fontaine: La Grenouille qui veut se faire aussi grosse que le Boeuf and Le Laboureur et ses Enfants which he thought you might find interesting and amusing.

His purpose in translating these fables was serious enough. The strict rule he worked by was this: respect the phonology, grammar and spelling habits of one language and adapt the nouns, verbs and qualificative adjectives of the other language to it.

La Frogue Qui Se Veut Faire Aussi Bigue Que L’oxe

Une Frogue scia un Oxe
Qui lui sima de faire saïze.
Elle, qui n’était pas bigue en tout comme un ègue,
Enviouse, s’espraide, et se souelle, et se laboure,
Pour icoualer l’animal en fatenaisse,
Sayant : » Louquez bien, ma sistre ;
Est-ce ineuf ? Tellez-moi ; n’y suis-je point encore ?
– Naie. – M’y voici donc ? – Point du tout. – M’y voilà ?
– Vous n’en guettez point nire. » La piuneuse bumpequine
Se souella si bien qu’elle bursta.

Le vueurlde est foule de piples qui ne sont pas plus houaïzes :
Tout bourgise veut builder comme les bigues lordes,
Tout esmaule prince a des ambassadeurs,
Tout marcuisse veut avoir des pages.

The Labourer and His Infants

Travail, prend pain :
It’s the fonds that manks the least.

A rich Labourer, senting his mort prochain,
Had his Infants vene to him, parled to them without tesmoins.
“Guard yourselves, he ditted to them, from vending the heritage
That our parents laissed to us:
A treasure is cashed inside it.
I do not save the indroit; but a little courage
Will make you troove it: you will vene at the boot of it.
Remow your champ as soon as oust has been faited:
Cruise, fuel, beach; do not laiss any place
Whither the main neither passes, nor repasses.”
Once the peer mort, the Fills return the champ for you,
Hither and thither, everywhere: so well that at the boot of the an
It reported more to them.
Of argent, none was cashed. But the peer was sage
To monster them, ere his mort,
That travail is a treasure.

You can find the original texts of these tales, and English translations at:
http://www.jdlf.com/lesfables/livrei/lagrenouillequiveutsefaireaussigrossequeleboeuf
http://www.jdlf.com/lesfables/livrev/lelaboureuretsesenfants
http://oaks.nvg.org/fonta1.html#frogox
http://oaks.nvg.org/fonta5.html#zeploso

Leste

By Simon

Leste adj. [lɛst(ə)] – nimble, agile, sprightly, light; risqué (joke); offhand (remark).

This is a word I discovered last night while browsing a French dictionary. It is thought to come from an old Germanic word liste. A related adverb is lestement, which means nimbly, agilely, in a sprightly manner, lightly or offhandedly.

It’s related to the Spanish word listo, which has a number of meanings, including “ready, prepared, clever, sharp-witted, able, nimble”. It’s also related to the Portuguese word lesto, which means “quick, deft, nimble, swift, fleet, light footed, rapid, ready, clever, dexterous or skillful”. Other related words include the German listig (cunning, devious, shrewd) and leicht (easily, effortlessly, gently), which is related to the English word light(ly).

Light (not heavy) comes from the Old English leoht, from Proto-Germanic *lingkhtaz, from the Proto-Indo-European *le(n)gwh- (light, easy, agile, nimble), which is the root of leste, and also of lever [Source]

Language and thought

By Simon

An article I came across today on Science Daily discusses a study which found that language can affect attitudes and thoughts. The study found bilingual speakers of Spanish and English in California showed a distinct preference for Spanish names and words when tested in Spanish, but no such preference when tested in English, and that bilingual speakers of Arabic and French in Morocco showed a similar preference for Arabic names and words when tested in Arabic.

These findings suggest that learning other languages perhaps makes you less likely to be prejudiced towards other people, at least when your speaking their languages.

Luftkissenfahrzeuge

By Simon

I made another little film with Xtranormal today, and this one’s in German and English.

If there are any mistakes in the German, please let me know.

I suppose the aim of these films is the demonstrate how to use some basic phrases in various languages. It should be possible to work out what the non-English parts mean from the English parts, though I do provide full transcripts on YouTube. I usually slip in a reference or two to hovercrafts and eels and use other ‘useful’ phrases to make them amusing and memorable.

Xtranormal supports 10 different languages at the moment, plus a number of language varieties like American, British and Australian English, French of France and Quebec, Spanish of Spain and Mexico, etc, and I plan to make films using all of them. The free version of the site only lets you have two characters per film and each one can speak a different language.