Month: November 2015

Multilingual musicians

By Simon

A Sardinian friend of mine, Elena Piras, knows six languages (Sardinian, Italian, English, Scottish Gaelic, French and Spanish) and sings in most of them, plus a few others, including Scots, Bulgarian and Georgian.

Here’s a recording of a performance from earlier this year in which she sings in Sardinian, Scots, English, Scottish Gaelic and Bulgarian.

Elena aims to sing each language in as close to a native accent as possible, and I think she does this very well.

Another multilingual singer is Jean-Marc Leclercq or JoMo, who holds the world record for singing in the most languages in one performance: 22. I heard him doing this at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in May this year. His pronunciation in the languages I know didn’t sound entirely native-like, and it sounded like he had a strong French accent in the other languages.

Do you know other singers who sing in multiple languages?

How well do they pronounce them?

I myself sing in various languages, and try to pronounce as well as I can, but know I could do better.

Here’s a recording of a song I wrote earlier this year in the five languages I know best (English, French, Welsh, Mandarin and Irish):

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Squibs and squabs

By Simon

When an event is not very successful, you could say that it went off like a damp squib, or even a damp squid, as a friend mistakenly said last night.

A squib is obviously something that does not work properly when it’s wet, and I had an idea that it was some kind of explosive.

According to Reverso, a squib is:

1. a firework
2. a firework that does not explode because of a fault; dud
3. a short witty attack; lampoon
4. an electric device for firing a rocket engine
5. an insignificant person (obsolete)
6. a coward (Aus/NZ slang)

And a damp squib is “something intended but failing to impress”.

Etymology: probably imitative of a quick light explosion.

An unrelated, but similar-sounding word is squab, which is:

1. a young unfledged bird, esp. a pigeon
2. a short fat person
3. a well-stuffed bolster or cushion; a sofa
4. (of birds) recently hatched and still unfledged
5. short and fat

Etymology: probably of Germanic origin; compare Swedish dialect sqvabb (flabby skin), sqvabba (fat woman), German Quabbe (soft mass), Norwegian kvabb (mud)

Source: http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/squab

Squib, squab and squid are all good words for Scrabble.

Are there equivalents of damp squibs in other languages?

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg
la fiche flash card cerdyn fflach
le dispositif d’écoute; le micro caché bug (listening device)
le bogue bug (computer) nam; diffyg
le virus; le microbe bug (germ) byg; clust
l’insecte (m); la bestiole bug (insect) pryf
mangeable edible (palatable) bwytadwy
comestible edible (safe to eat) da i’w fwyta
tremper to dunk gwlychu; trochi
trempé soaked gwlyb
trempé jusqu’aux os soaked to the skin gwlyb diferol; gwlyb diferol; gwlyb at y croen
un pétard mouillé damp squib matsien wleb
le pigeonneau squab (baby pigeon) cyw colomen
le fruit de l’imagination figment of the imagination dychmygu pethau; ffrwyth eich dychymyg

eesti keel

By Simon

Last night I had an interesting chat with an Estonian student who is studying in Bangor about Estonia and the Estonian language. I knew a little about the language already, but realised that I didn’t know any words or phrases in Estonian, apart from its native name – eesti keel – and I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce that: [eːsti.keːl].

When I meet someone who speaks a language I haven’t studied, yet, quite often I know at least how to say hello or other phrases in their language, which usually impresses them, but I haven’t met any Estonians before, as far as I remember, and on this occasion I couldn’t think of a single word. I had an idea that hello was something like terve, but wasn’t sure – this is actually hello in Finnish. In Estonian it’s tere. So now I do know a few words in Estonian.

One thing we talked about was the number of Russian speakers in Estonia – they make up about 20% of the population – and the fact that Estonia is quite a good place to learn Russian. I have considered this, and if I were to do a Russian language course there, I would try to learn some Estonian as well.

Do you try to use whatever you know of a language when you meet someone who speaks it, even if you only know a word or two?