Achoo!

By Simon

When someboday sneezes, do you usually say anything? If so, what?

In the UK it’s common to say ‘Bless you!’ after a sneeze.

In French they say à tes souhaits or à vos souhaits – souhait = wish, so these mean something like ‘to your wishes’.

In German they say “Gesundheit!” (Health). I’ve heard this used by English speakers as well.

The Welsh equivalents of ‘Bless you’ are:

– Rhad arnat ti! = Bless you! (to one person you know)
– Rhad arnoch chi! = Bless you! (to several people or a stranger)
– Bendith y Tad! = Blessing of the Father!

However I’ve never heard these used in Welsh.

How do you represent the sound of a sneeze writing?

Here are a few ways: achoo, atchoo, ahchoo, ah-choo, a-choo, atishoo, atchoum (French).

Here’s an infographic showing how people respond to a sneeze around the world:

How the world responds to sneezing

How the world responds to sneezing, courtesy of Expedia.ca

Hit us up on Twitter

By Simon

On a podcast I listen to – A Way with Words, when asking people to get in touch to ask language-related questions, they often say “Hit us up on Twitter”.

To my ears this sounds strange. I might say something like, “Contact us on Twitter”, or even “Drop us a tweet”.

Does it sound strange to you?

How would you ask people to tweet?

How is Twitter referred to in other languages?

When asking people to phone you, would you say any of the following?

– Drop us a line
– Call us
– Give us a call
– Give us a bell
– Give us a buzz

Or something else?

The Road Runs

By Simon

Today I learnt that one way to say goodbye or farewell in Romanian is drum bun. This came up in a Duolingo lesson, and I translated it as “good road”, which is what it means literally. However that’s not how it’s used.

Drum (road) comes from the Greek δρόμος (drómos – road, track), from the Ancient Greek δρόμος (drómos – roadway, road, street, way; journey), from the Proto-Indo-European *drem- (to run) + -ος (-os).

*Drem- is also the root of the English drome, as in hippodrome, aerodrome, velodrome, anadrome, syndrome and palindrome.

In case you’re wondering, an anadrome is a word which forms a different word when spelled backwards, such as desserts and stressed. They are also known as volvograms, reversgrams, heteropalindromes, backwords, semordnilap or emordnilaps, or semordnilaps [source].

Other anadromes in English include spar / raps, star / rats, bus / sub, nip / pin, and so on.

Can you think of others in English or other languages?

Creating fonts

By Simon

I have tried various apps for creating fonts, such as FontStruct and Fonty with mixed results. Some work better than others. FontStruct works well, though I find it tricky to make letters with lots of curves. Fonty works well, though when I tried to use the fonts on my computer, the letters do not display at all.

Yesterday I found Glyphr Studio, a free, web-based font design tool that works well and produces usable fonts. I worked out how to import graphics, which is easier than making all the letters from scratch, though a little convoluted, as you have to save each letter as a separate image, convert the images to SVG files, then import them and tweak them. Strangely they are inverted when they appear in Glyphr.

Anyway, I make a rough font for Laala, which requires more tweaking, but looks okay.

One language is never enough (Zo alu laala nuuna teete) in Laala

If you make fonts, what software, apps or websites do you use?

Naming names

By Simon

When you talk to someone, do you use their name in the conversation?

Obviously this depends on whether you know their name, but if you do, how often would you use it?

For example, if you bump into a friend or acquaintence in the street, would you greet them with their name, (“Hi [Insert name here]”)?

If you have then have a chat with them, would you continue to drop their name into the conversation every so often?

I rarely use people’s names in conversations, unless there are several people involved and I want to say something particularly to one of them. This is just a habit, and also because I don’t always remember their name – I’m much better at remembering faces.

I’ve noticed that sales and marketing people tend to use your name a lot when they’re talking to you. I find this a bit annoying, especially when they mispronounce it – I know who I am, and there’s no need to keep showing that you do. On the other hand, it does make you feel a bit special, which is probably the point.

In other languages is it normal or necessary to use people’s names in conversation? Or is it just personal preference?

Snow falls

By Simon

As there has been some snow here this week, and it’s snowing at bit as I write this, I thought I’d look at some words for snow.

Snow / Eira
A bit of snow in my garden yesterday morning

In Romanian snow is zăpadă [zəˈpadə], which comes from the Slavic word zapadati (to fall) [source]. To snow is a ninge, and snowfall is ninsoare, which both come from the Latin ningere (to snow), utimately from the Proto-Indo-European *sneygʷʰ- (to snow) [source].

The English word snow comes from Middle English snow/snaw, from the Old English snāw (snow), from the Proto-Germanic *snaiwaz (snow), from the Proto-Indo-European *snóygʷʰos (snow), from the root *sneygʷʰ- (to snow).

Many of the words for snow in other European languages come from the same Proto-Indo-European root. However, words for snow in Welsh (eira), Cornish (ergh) and Breton erc’h, come from the Proto-Celtic *argyos (white), via the Proto-Brythonic *ėrɣ (snow) [source].

Polyglot Pathways

By Simon

Recently I’ve seen questions on various Facebook groups about whether someone can be called a polyglot if they only speak certain languages, e.g. only Romance languages, or only languages from one region, e.g. Europe, or if they only can read and write the languages but cannot speak them.

As far as I’m concerned, a polyglot could be anyone who speaks, understands, reads, writes and/or signs serveral languages. It doesn’t matter how many languages or which languages they are.

There are many different paths to polyglothood, or polyglot pathways, as I like to call them. Each polyglot and potential polyglot has their own reasons for learning languages, and for choosing particular languages.

  • You could specialise in one language and its variant forms – dialects and accents; regional, social and historical versions; creoles based on it (if any); and the other languages that have contributed to it.
  • You could specialise in one language family, or one part of a language family.
  • You might prefer to learn languages from various language families and regions.
  • You might concentrate on languages with the most speakers, or ones spoken in the most countries.
  • Alternatively you might prefer smaller languages, or endangered, revived or ancient languages.

I’m currently concentrating on Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages, and to a lesser extent on Celtic languages.

What polyglot pathways are you exploring?