One of my regular correspondents has suggested that I add a page to my main site showing how to write Omniglot in various different writing systems. He’s also sent me a list of transliterations to get me started – you can see the beginnings of the page here.
Could you provide any new transliterations of Omniglot, and corrections to the existing ones, if necessary? Could you also try to come up with translations of the word Omniglot in your language(s)? It means ‘all languages’ in the context of my site.
Translated to Finnish it’s “Kaikki kielet”.
Farsi.
āmniglāt
آمنیگلات
Yeah, IE: أنكليزيه (ankleezeea, English)
I don’t see a purpose of writing it in Japanese hiragana…I mean, I guess you could, but there’s no conceivable scenario in which you’d do that. You might as well write it 御無荷具呂戸 because “technically” that spells “omuniguroto.”
I’m not quite sure what you mean there by “no conceivable scenario”. Just take a look at the number of transliterations present in everyday Japanese. In Japanese you would write it in Katakana as writing that load of Kanji would be unintelligible to the Japanese too!
ｵﾑﾆｸﾞﾛｯﾄ
言語天才 (hopefully translating as language genius) could come close to the meaning…no idea how you’d truly translate that word though.
I’m only a Mandarin beginner, so I offer this tentatively:
全文网 “Quanwenwang” (tones 2, 2, 3) or “all writing net” for the semantic translation, and 喒名旯 “Omingla” (4, 2, 2) for the phonetic translation.
Hangul could be 옴니글랒트 “Omnigeullatt’eu” (most exact transliteration) or 옴닝랒 “Omninglat” (best short approximation).
What about constructed scripts? You could try that, too.
Here is my TRANSLATION of “All languages” in Armenian:
Ամենալեզուով
Amenalezvov
(with / by means of) All tongues
I used the instrumental case and the singular because that just SOUNDED right. “Tongue” and “language” are the same word in Armenian.
As usual, anyone wanting to correct, or improve, this, is welcome, especially with regard to spelling.
Here’s my lame attempt at German. It’s really just a suggestion:
Allsprache
It’s nice and short and has a nice enough flow. I know there are real German speakers on this blog. So, I expect that this will not make the final cut. 😉
I’d say “Allesprachen” for german, but I’m not sure.
For Latin, Omnaelinguae
Transliterations (not translations):
Ge’ez alphabet (Amharic/Tigrinya)
አምኒግሎት
Syriac
ܐܡܢܝܓܠܘܬ
Adding to the Arabic transliteration, beside the Kaf and Jim (K, J) that are used in some texts to transliterate the sound of “G,” sometimes people also use the letter Ghayn (غ) which is originally like a french R.
The word “English” is mainly not written with this letter but either with Kaf or Jim.
Yet, in some other texts you would see the Ghayn used for the “G” sound. Thus, Omniglot would be something like: أمنيغلوت.
The stories of the “J” and “K” I think are related with the expansion of early empires and the works of scholars in translating the greek books during the time of the Abbasids empire (and maybe earlier).
In Farsi, the “G” is written with “K” but with a bar on top. Maybe this explains how the depiction of “K” came into Arabic speakers for spelling out the “G” sound.
As for the “J,” it is well-known I guess that Arabs mainly transliterated the “G” as “J” because in their tongues it was closer. Thus, you would see lot of greek books are re-named by removing the “G” and putting “J” instead.
There are other transliterating methods that were used for some letters or sounds, even though these sounds are by default found in the Arabic language, like:
1. T into hard-T (in hebrew naming that is renaming Tav into Tet).
2. K into Q (in hebrew naming also that is from Kaf to Qof)
Maybe this transliterating was used just to make a note that this name is not Arabic in origin but mainly taken from Greek (or persian).
The first example of transliteration can still be found among christian Arabs when they name their children by western names, like “Tony” would be “TTony” or “Tom” into “TToom” (but some of them still use the Syriac name of S. Thomas, that is Tooma).
Mind you, I’m not a native speaker, but one possible translations for “omniglot” in Thai is : ทุกภาษา (took-pha-sa) [high tone on the 1st syllable, middle tone on the 2nd, and rising on the 3rd].
A possible Japanese translation of “Omniglot” could be 全語, read “zengo”. The kanji literally translate “all languages”, so it fits, though I’m fairly certain it’s not an official Japanese word.
In German (I’m a native speaker) you could use “Allsprachig”, which is in fact an adjective – “omnilingual” – and thus coherent with “monoglot” and “polyglot” (“ein-/vielsprachig” in German).
“Allsprache” sounds like “pan-language”, or, worse, “space-language” (SF!) to me.
“Allesprachen” is “all-languages”, but the composition seems a bit forced.
Maybe “Allsprach” as an alternative to “Allsprachig” – but it’s your call in the end, Simon.
Cheers! Keep it up! (This means all of my co-respondents)
In Hebrew: אמני- גלוט
Translated to Hebrew: מדבר/ת-כל-לשונים
Transliterated from Hebrew: Medabber/et-col-Leshoniym
Literally: speaker of all languages.
If you leave off the Medabber/et, then you get the literal meaning of Omniglot: All Languages
Also for Arabic you should try writing it for the Gulf Arabic dialect. they make the g sound with qaf.
Who did the devanagari? devanagari has adapted letters for the english sounds of the o’s in Omniglot. the retroflex ta is used for english transliteration. So instead use: ऑम्निग्लॉट्
Bengali doesn’t have separate letters for the o’s in Omniglot, but the inherent vowel makes that sound anyway. in bengali it would be: অম্নিগ্লট্
Teangaí go leor in Irish.
I forgot the Na. It is Na teangaí go leor.
I forgot to say gujarati has letters for the o’s too. make sure that the ta’s in gujarati, punjabi, and tamil are retroflex.
gujarati ઑમ્નિગ્લૉટ્
punjabi ਓਮ੍ਨਿਗ੍ਲੋਟ੍
tamil ஒம்நிக்லொட்
malayalam ഒമ്നിഗ്ലൊട്
telugu ఒమ్నిగ్లొట్
kannada ಒಮ್ನಿಗ್ಲೊಟ್
Aaron, a more concise Hebrew translation might be בלשן (balshan), which means “linguist”; it derives from a contraction of בולל לשון (mixing languages). It also suggests the root בלש, meaning to investigate.
(In fact, there’s an interesting blog – I comment there often – that discusses questions of Hebrew word origins, etc.; it’s called Balashon (balashon.blogspot.com) for the same reason.)
>> ISPKN
actually the dialects in the gulf change in varieties. For example the word for “time” is (in standard arabic) called “Waqt”
lot of people in the gulf say “wagt” … in my family we say “Wakt” and in fact lot of people laugh and say what r u saying!!
some people say it “Waqit” (lik in iraq).
But if we want to talk about saying the word “Omniglot” … everyone can say it in general but the difference is in the writing and the letters used in general. As for people that change the K or Q with G and so, I think for such word taken from English, nothing would be changed!
If you’d also like translations, not just transliterations, I’d say the German version would just be the one Ronald was talking of: Allsprach, allsprachig… depending how you want to use the word. A person could/would be an “Allsprachiger” as an adjectiv/adverb: “allsprachig” and so on…
As for the transliteration: In German letters it would be “Omniglot” 😉
For French both Omniglotte [based on polyglotte] or Omnilangues would be accepted.
For Egyptian it would be translated and transliterated as “md.wt nb.wt”, literally “all speech”.
I do not have hieroglyph processing software, so I cannot type in hieroglyphs here.
Anyway, thanks for linking to my blog!
A translation into Ge’ez (you will see the Semitic roots of Ge’ez when you compare the transliteration to the Hebrew) would be:
ኵሎ፡ልሳን
kwello lessan
Syriac, another Semitic language, the translation would be:
ܟܠ ܠܫܢܥܢ
kol leshonin
oops . . .
I haven’t used the Syriac keyboard for awhile. I put an ayin accidentally in place of a yod. The correct Syriac kol leshonin is
ܟܠ ܠܫܢܝܢ
(The mistake was in the second to last letter (right to left). The Ayin is a little taller than a yod)
In Portuguese, you could use “Omniglot” pure and simple, or adapt it to “Omniglota”, an adjective (also noun) parallel to “poliglota”.
Jesus, other Finns read this blog too. Never knew!
Anyhow, since it’s already translated in Finnish, I’ll take a stab at doing it in Swedish. “Alla språk”
መናገርሁሉ or ሁሉመናገር Amharic.
Parlatutti = Italian.
Todos hablan= Spanish
NO IDEA ABOUT LATIN.
Bob stole my only other alphabet i can be bothered to learn.
NZ Coffee Drinker – could you provide a transliteration and translation of the Amharic words? Thanks
ሁሉመናገር=hulumeunageur=everybody to speak.