Bál Mór Buí

By Simon

Fadó, fadó bhí bál mór buí ann, ach ní raibh aon cairde aige…

When I went to Ireland in June, I found quite an unusual way to use my Irish. On the last day of courses at Oideas Gael there is usually a kind of talent show, which typically involves classes and individuals singing, playing instruments, dancing, reciting poetry, telling stories or performing in some other fashion. Performances that involve speaking or singing are often in Irish, which gives students a chance to show what they’ve learnt during the week.

This year, as well as joining in with the singing, I also did some juggling. To make my performance a bit more interesting, I made up a story about the Bál Mór Buí (Big Yellow Ball) and its search for other balls to play with. The Bál mór buí was my large contact* ball, which I used to do some contact moves in one hand, while juggling beanbags with the other hand. The story went down very well and was one of the most unusual uses I’ve found for my languages so far.

What unusual uses have you found for your languages?

*Contact juggling involves rolling balls or other objects around the hands, arms and other parts of the body.

Lingua mortua sola lingua bona est?

By Simon

There seem to be many arguments for and against learning classical languages, such as Latin and Ancient Greek, and other dead languages. Some people claim that learning these languages gives you a better understanding modern languages. Others claim that learning Latin gives you a good understanding of grammar and can make you more disciplined in your studies.

To date I’ve only dipped my toe into the ocean of Latin scholarship. All the languages I’ve studied are modern ones spoken by people on a daily basis. This is not the case for Latin or other dead languages. Courses in dead languages tend to focus on grammar and translation. This approach puts many people off, myself included.

A major reason for learning classical languages is to read the wealth of literature written in them. This is especially true for Latin. If you want to be able to read Latin though, is it really necessary to learn how to conjugate verbs, inflect nouns and how to translate from your language into Latin? The ability to recognise what the inflections signify when you encounter them would seem to be more useful.

There are even people who view Latin as a living language. For example, there’s an organisation in Germany that organises Septimanae Latinae Europaeae (European Latin Weeks) at which Latin students and scholars can get together and speak to each other in Latin. Roman food is also available at these gatherings.

Have you studied any dead languages? What are your thoughts on the utility or otherwise of such study?

Poetry in many languages

By Simon

I came across an very interesting website today, lyrikline, which features poetry in many different languages from Albanian to Welsh. It also has recordings of the poets reading their their poetry aloud, biographical information about the poets, details of their publications, plus translations of the poems into German, and, in some cases, English. The site itself is in German, English, French, Slovenian and Arabic.

This looks like an excellent resource for poetry lovers and language learners, and I’ll certainly be spending some time exploring it.

Czech

By Simon

I’ve decided to put Russian on hold for now and have started learning Czech instead. My Czech friends have taught a few words and phrases, and I hope to acquire a much more knowledge of the language.

I’m beginning my studies with the Pimsleur Czech course, which consists of 10 half-hour lessons. The small amount of material covered by the course seems to be covered thoroughly. As I listen to the tapes, I’m converting them to mp3 format so that I can copy them to my mp3 player and listen to again whenever I want.

At the same time, I’m also digitizing some of my other language courses, which is enabling me to brush my Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Cantonese and Taiwanese. It will take quite a while to convert all my tapes to mp3s, but I’m in no particular hurry.

Learning a language with films

By Simon

I’ve had a request from Justin K, who would like to ask if you have any recommendations for films (movies) that are good for learning languages. Justin is currently studying Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin), Arabic and Hindi. I’d also be interested in your suggestions.

When I watch a film in a foreign language with subtitles, I can’t help myself reading the subtitles. If there are no subtitles, I concentrate more on the spoken dialogue and find I can understand more of it because my attention isn’t divided. If the subtitles are in the same language as the dialogue, as is the case with TV and films in Taiwan, I find I can understand even more.

Name the writing system

By Simon

Do you know what writing system this is and where you might see it?

Unknown writing system

A few clues: this writing system does not currently appear on Omniglot (I’ll add it when I’ve found enough information about it). It was invented during the 1950s and is logo-syllabic, i.e. each symbol represents a syllable in the spoken language, and also means something.

Humour

By Simon

When chatting with some Iranian friends yesterday, the subject of British humour came up. My friends told me that British humour, particularly language-based humour, has much in common with Persian humour, and that the Iranians really appreciate British jokes, unlike many other nationalities.

The things people laugh at seem to vary from country to country. In some places comedy tends to be very physical with lots of slapstick, in others it’s more about playing with language. So something that might be considered funny in more country, might be greeted with indifference in others.

What kind of things do you find funny?

Word of the day – tintinnabulation

By Simon

tintinnabulation = the act or an instance of the ringing or pealing of bells. From Latin tintinnāre to tinkle, from tinnīre to ring.

Related words
tintinnabulte = to ring, to tinkle
tintinnabulary = a bellringer
tintinnabulum = a small high-pitched bell
tinnitus = medical term for a ringing or buzzing in the ears

I came across this word on World Wide Words today and it really appeals to me as a pleasant-sounding word and as a fine example of onomatopoeia. Another onomatopoeic term for the ringing of bells in ding dong, in both English and French. The French for tintinnabulation is tintinnabulement, the Spanish is campanilleo, and the German is Klingeln.

What sounds do bells make in other languages?

Verbal gestures

By Simon

According to an article on ScienceDaily, we unconsciously use ‘verbal gestures’ when we speak. These verbal gestures or ‘analog acoustic expressions’ add extra information to our utterances not provided by the words themselves. For example, when we talk about things, such as the stock market, going up or down, we tend to raise or lower our voices slightly at the ends of sentences. Saying words closetogether can emphasis proximity, while distance can be emphasised by spacing words out more. If we talk about something that’s moving or happening quickly, we tend to talk more quickly, while we tend to slow down to talk about slow moving things.

This is apparently quite a new area of research and sounds very interesting. I’ll certainly listen out for such verbal gestures from now on.

Which languages are spoken in your neighbourhood?

By Simon

A comment on a previous post got me thinking about which languages are spoken in Brighton, my current home. Ziad Fazah, the incredible polyglot, apparently learnt most of his 58 languages using materials available in the public libraries of his hometown in Lebannon, and by talking with foreign residents and visitors, particularly visiting sailors.

Using similar methods, I estimate that I could learn at least 50 languages in Brighton, which is home to and visited by people from all over the world.

According to the local council, the main community languages (other than English) used in Brighton are Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, French, Mandarin, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Other languages spoken by Brighton residents include Afrikaans, Bulgarian, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Slovak, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Welsh, and I’m sure there are many more, especially if you include all the languages spoken by people who come to Brighton as tourists, students or business travellers.

My local library has language courses and other language learning materials for 49 languages, and literature in 12 of those languages.