My language studies

By Simon

I’ve decided to try a slightly different approach to my language studies. Up till now I’ve been listening to Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh language radio for several hours each almost every day. In the evenings I read novels in either Welsh or Irish, and also learn a bit more Czech. I’ve also been learning songs in the Celtic languages, particularly Irish.

This week I’ll be concentrating on one language for two days at a time. So today and tomorrow I’m focusing on Welsh – listening to Radio Cymru during the day and going through a lesson in Cadw Sŵn in the evening. On Wednesday and Thursday I’ll be listening to Radió na Gaeltachta during the day and studying from Turas Teanga or another of my Irish courses in the evening. Then on Friday and Saturday I’ll listen to Radio nan Gaidhael and study from one of my Scottish Gaelic courses in the evening.

I’ll continue to study some Czech every day, to read Irish, Welsh and maybe even Scottish Gaelic novels, and to learn songs. By the way, can any of you recommend any good novels in Celtic languages, or in French, German, Spanish or Chinese?

Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic are the languages I most want to become fluent in at the moment. My other languages are less of a prioity, though I do get to practise Mandarin, Japanese and Spanish quite often on Skype and MSN.

Snakes and pyramids

By Simon

Pyramid and hieroglyphic snake

Some time between about 3000 and 2500 BC, Canaanite people working in Egypt adapted Egyptian Hieroglyphs to write their Semitic language, which was the ancestor of Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite and Hebrew. They used a small number of hieroglyphs to represent the consonant sounds of their language and created what was probably the first alphabetic script. Many of the alphabets we used today are descendants of that first abjad.

According to ScienceDaily, a text written partly in this ancient script has finally been deciphered after confounding scholars for over a century since it was discover on the wall of the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara in Egypt. One reason why it was so difficult to decipher was that everyone had assumed that the text was in Ancient Egyptian. However in 2002, Robert Ritner, professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, realised that part of the text was in another language, and this enabled Prof. Richard Steiner, professor of Semitic languages and literature at Yeshiva University in New York, to figure out that the text contained both Ancient Egyptian and an ancient Semitic language, and to decipher it.

The text is thought to be a spell to protect royal mummies against poisonous snakes and reads “Utterance of rir-rir mother snake, mother snake.” The words “rir-rir” refer to the drivel, the venom of the snake.

Websites that speak

By Simon

The Welsh Language Board / Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg recently added a text-to-speech facility to their website which reads out the text in either Welsh or English. They are using a system called ReadSpeaker, which can make your website talk in various languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, English (US and UK), French, German, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese and Welsh. The ReadSpeaker website itself has been translated into quite a few languages and has the text-to-speech facility for most of them.

Text-to-speech technology for English and other major European languages, and for a few Asian ones, has been around for years and works quite well. However I think Welsh version is quite new and could do with more work to improve the voice quality and intonation.

Here is an example of it reading the following text:

Iaith Geltaidd yw’r Gymraeg, sy’n perthyn yn agos at y Gernyweg a’r Llydaweg. Mae’r Gymraeg sy’n cael ei siarad heddiw yn ddatblygiad uniongyrchol i iaith y chweched ganrif.

Ychydig iawn o enghreifftiau ysgrifenedig o Gymraeg Cynnar sy’n bodoli heddiw, gyda’r cynharaf yn dyddio o ganol y nawfed ganrif. Gwelir nodweddion Hen Gymraeg yng ngwaith y Cynfeirdd, sy’n dyddio o ddiwedd y chweched ganrif, er fod y llawysgrifau’n llawer mwy diweddar.

Gwrandewch y fersiwn Gymraeg

Welsh is a Celtic language, closely related to Cornish and Breton. The Welsh we speak today is directly descended from the language of the sixth century.

Very few examples of Early Welsh exist today, with the earliest dating back to the middle of the ninth century. Elements of Old Welsh are seen in the work of the Cynfeirdd, originally dating back to the sixth century, although all manuscripts are much later than this date.

Listen to the English version

Source: http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk

Terracotta bureaucrats

By Simon

According to a report I heard on the radio this morning, the British Museum is going to stage a major exhibition of the terracotta warriors who guard the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇), who unified China and was its first emperor from 221-210 BC. The exhibition will include not just some of the warriors, but also terracotta bureaucrats, acrobats and musicians. Apparently the emperor is attend in death by his army plus quite a few other members of his court.

The term ‘terracotta bureaucrat’ is not one you hear everyday and caught my ear.

The word bureaucracy combines bureau, meaning desk or office, with the Greek suffix -kratia, which denotes ‘power of’, and was coined by the French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-59). The word bureaucrat first appeared in writing in 1842. A bureau was originally a type of cloth used for covering desks and tables. It comes from the Latin Latin burra, wool, shaggy garment; via the Old French burel, coarse woolen cloth.

Terracotta comes from Italian and means ‘baked earth’.

Welsh and Gaelic education

By Simon

According to an article on Eurolang, education through the medium of Welsh is becoming so popular in Wales that there aren’t sufficient places in Welsh medium schools for all those who would like to attend them. As a result, the growth of Welsh medium education is being held up.

Increasing numbers of parents are wanting to send their children to Welsh medium schools, even in mainly English-speaking areas, such as Newport, where 31% of parents surveyed said they would probably send their kids to Welsh medium schools if such schools where available nearby.

At the same time enrolment in English medium schools has been dropping and many schools have empty places.

In other news, a brand new Gaelic medium school opened in Glasgow recently. It has 320 places and provides nursery, primary and secondary for children between the ages of 3 and 18.

Education through Welsh or Gaelic seems to be a very effective way for kids to acquire fluency in those languages, and the popularity of such education is encouraging.

Chinese and Arabic to be taught in UK schools?

By Simon

According to British Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, UK schools should have more flexibility in the choice of languages they teach. He believes “it is right to vary the curriculum to add languages which might be economically useful or help community cohesion.” The languages he’s talking about include Arabic, Mandarin and Urdu.

I wonder where they will find enough teachers and how they will fit the extra languages into an already over-stuffed curriculum. Since the foreign languages were made optional in UK schools after the age of 14, the numbers of pupils studying them has fallen dramatically. The government worries about this and keeps on coming up with ways to try to encourage more kids to continue learning languages.

I’ve met numerous people who tell me they studied French, German, Spanish or whatever language at school, but who have since forgotten it completely, or only remember bits and pieces. This seems to suggest that language teaching in schools is not entirely effective.

Learning any language is a good thing, even if it isn’t ‘economically useful’. Learning a language spoken in the area where you live is perhaps better in some ways than learning a language perceived as ‘economically useful’ because you will be able to use it regularly. You will probably also learn something about the culture of those who speak the language and come to understand and appreciate it more, which is what Mr Johnson means by ‘community cohesion’.

Sources: 24dash.com and The Guardian

Quote of the day: “Happiness comes from wanting what you get, rather than getting what you want.” from the Carpetblogger.

Language quiz

By Simon

In which country might you find the following dishes on the menu, and which of them is the odd one out?

Zupa ogórkowa
Śledź w śmietanie
Kurczak de volaille
Sztuka mięsa w sosie chrzanowym
Kasza gryczana z kwaśnym mlekiem
Księgarnia
Placki kartoflane
Makowiec

Bonus points if you can translate them into English as well.