Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
Month: November 2017
Ladders and Schools
How are ladders and schools connected?
Well, in Welsh there is one word that means both ladder and school: ysgol [ˈəsgɔl].
The word ysgol, meaning ladder, comes from the Middle Welsh yscawl [ˈәsgaul] (ladder), from Latin scāla (ladder, stairs), from scandō (I climb, ascend, mount), from the the Proto-Indo-European *skend- (to jump).
Related words include:
– ysgol do/grib = roof-ladder
– ysgol raff = rope ladder
– ysgol ffenestr = window ladder
– ysgol bysgod = fish-ladder
The word ysgol, meaning school, comes from the Middle Welsh yscol (school), from the Latin schola (leisure time given to learning; schooltime; a school; a student body; an art gallery), from the Ancient Greek σχολή (skholḗ – leisure, free time, rest; lecture, disputation, discussion; philosophy; school, lecture hall).
Related words include:
– ysgol fabanod = nursery school
– ysgol feithrin = infant school
– ysgol gynradd/elfennol/fach = primary/elementary school
– ysgol uwchradd = secondary school
– ysgol gyfun = comprehensive school
– ysgol breswyl = boarding school
– ysgol hwyrol = night school
– ysgol Sul = Sunday school
– ysgol farddol = bardic school
– ysgol brofiad/profiad = school of life
– prifysgol = university, college, academy, seminary
A similar-sounding, though unrelated word is (y)sgôl [ˈəsgoːl] (squall; disaster, damage; disturbance, commotion, quarrel).
Sources: Wiktionary, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, Old and Middle Welsh
Diolch i Diana i awgrymu’r pwnc ‘ma.
Troupers and Troopers
One of the songs we sang last night in the ukulele group was Abba’s Super Trouper. One member of the group wondered whether trouper was spelled correctly, thinking that it should be trooper.
We discovered that they are in fact two different words:
Trouper = a member of a theatrical company (a troupe); a veteran performer; a reliable, hard-working and unselfish performer [Source].
Trooper = a soldier of private rank; a cavalry horse; charger; one who endures adversity or hardship with an attitude of stoicism and persistence [Source].
Both words come from the French word troupe (troop), from the Old French trope (band, company, troop), from the Frankish *thorp (assembly, gathering), from Proto-Germanic *þurpą (village, land, estate), from the Proto-Germanic *treb- (dwelling, settlement) [source].
However, the word trouper in the song has nothing to do with the above words – “Super Trouper” actually refers to spotlights used in stadium concerts [source]. So now the first line, “Super Trouper beams are gonna blind me”, makes sense.
This is a version of Super Trouper in Swedish:
To write like a crow
If your handwriting is difficult to read, you apparently write like a crow, at least you do in Swedish – skriva som en kråka.
That’s one of things I discovered today when putting together a new page of Swedish idioms.
If your spelling is poor, you spell like a crow – stava som en kråka.
Why is this? Are crows known for their poor writing and spelling in Sweden?
I found “to have (hand)writing like chicken scratch” in English [source], though haven’t come across it before.
Are there equivalent idioms in other langauges?
The image is an example of my handwriting. I can write more neatly than this, though rarely write by hand these days anyway.
Language quiz
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
A River of Words
When Iceland was permanently settled from 874 AD, the settlers from Norway brought with them wives and thralls (þrælar – slaves/serfs) from Ireland. The Norwegians spoke a form of Old Norse, which developed into modern Icelandic, and borrowed a few words from the Irish.
Here are some examples:
- á = river – from the Old Irish aub (river). The Old Norse word for river was fljót.
- áin = (act of) driving – from Old Irish áin = (act of driving (animals etc))
- bagall = crozier, from the Old Irish bachall (staff, crook, crozier). The Old Norse word for crozier / staff was stafr.
- brekán = blanket, quilt, from the Old Irish breccán (speckled thing, striped or chequered stuff, plaid)
- bjannak = blessing, from the Old Irish bennacht (blessing)
- tarfur = bull, from the Old Irish tarb (bull). The Old Norse word for bull was þjórr.
Icelandic has also absorbed words from Latin, Greek, Middle Low German and Danish. Some of these words are no longer used, but new loanwords, mainly from Danish and English, are streaming into the language, especially in the fields of IT and medicine. One example I heard about was móment being used instead of augnablik (‘eye-blink’) for moment.
Sources: Wiktionary, Germanic.eu, eDil
Heim aftur / Home again
The Polyglot Conference is over now for another year, and I arrived back to Bangor yesterday. Although the conference only lasted two days, a lot was packed into that time.
On the Friday I went on a Golden Circle tour with two coach loads of other polyglots. Unfortunately it was a wet, cloudy and cold day, so the views were not great, but the landscape we could see was rather fine.
The first stop was Þingvellir (Thingvellir), a World Heritage Site where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet. It is also where the Iceland parliament (Alþingi) met from AD 930 until 1798.
Next we went to Geysir, and area of volcanic activity with a number of sprouting hot springs, including the famous Great Geysir, which is currently inactive, and Stokkur, which erupts every few minutes (see photo below). We also had lunch here – there are a number of eating places and souvenir shops in the complex near the hot springs. I was expecting the whole place to stink of sulphur, but it didn’t really.
Our final stop was Gullfoss (“Golden Falls”), waterfalls in the canyon of Ölfusá river. They were spectacular, and well worth seeing.
In the evening, after we arrived back in Reykajvik, I went for dinner at an Indian restaurant with a few other polyglots.
The conference started on Saturday morning with interesting speeches by Dr Sebastian Drude, the director of the Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Intercultural Understanding, and Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the former President of Iceland and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for languages.
Then there were talks on a variety of topics, with themes including Icelandic language and culture, bilingualism and autism, and maintaining ‘small’ languages. Some of the speakers were lecturers or researchers in universities, others were language enthusiasts. The talks I found most interesting were the one by Daniel Tammet and Sigriður Kristinsdóttir about how he learnt Icelandic in a week with her help; one about bilingualism and autism, one about the cognitive effects of language learning, and one about Mongolian.
There was plenty of time between the talks and at lunch to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and practise languages. During my time in Iceland, I had conversations in English, Welsh, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese and Irish, and spoke bits of Czech, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Manx, Swedish and Icelandic.
Lunch was provided – small sandwiches and wraps, though didn’t appeal to me, so I bought something else in a supermarket.
There weren’t any organised activities in the evenings, as there are at the Polyglot Gatherings. Instead babbles of polyglots went off to do their own thing. I went for dinner with some polyglot friends and had very interesting discussions about all sorts of things, not all of which were related to languages – we do have other interests.
The next Polyglot Conference will be in Ljubljana in Slovenia from 5-7 October 2018 (as you might have guessed from this photo). So next year I will learn some Slovenian before the conference in Ljubljana, and some Slovak before the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava in Slovakia.
On Monday I did some work on Omniglot in the morning, explored Reykjavik a bit, had lunch in a restaurant in the old harbour area of Reykjavik, did some more work, then explored a bit more with the two Russian teachers who were staying in the same place as me.
Iceland is a very expensive place, which I expected. Meals in restaurants cost at least twice as much as in the UK, as do most other things. It wasn’t as cold as I expected – about 7-10°C during the day and 2-5°C at night. All the locals I met speak very good English, but if you speak Icelandic, they’re happy to speak it with you. There are apparently quite a few people who have moved to Iceland recently for work, most don’t speak Icelandic. On a clear, dry day, the scenery is spectacular. Even on grey, wet days, it’s still impressive and dramatic.
There are some more photos on Flickr:
