The Audio Archive

By Simon

I came across the Audio Archive yesterday while searching for information about the pronunciation of English dialects.

The archive is part of an newsgroup about English and contains recordings by English speakers from around the world of a number of different texts.

Other collections of English dialect recordings including the British Library’s Sounds Familiar? and Archival Sound Recordings, the BBC Voices project, Sound Comparisons, the American English Dialect Recordings at the Library of Congress, and the International Dialects of English Archive.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

By Simon

Writing tablet from Mesopotamia (c 3100-2900 BC) found in Uruk III.

There’s an very interesting series of programmes on BBC Radio 4 at the moment called “A History of the World in 100 Objects“. The objects come from the British Museum and one of recent programmes discussed an ancient Mesopotamian writing tablet, like the one on the right, from about 3,000 BC.

They talk about the invention of writing, and how it was used almost exclusively for record keeping and accounting at first, and that written literature only developed later.

The tablet in question is a record of workers’ daily beer rations – workers were paid in beer as this was before the invention of money.

By the way I’m planing to add a page or two to Omniglot about the history and development of writing, and maybe a chronology as well.

Surprisingly spacious

By Simon

I’ve been thinking about buying a house for a while and this week I finally got round to looking at a few places. The estate agent’s descriptions and photos of the properties are designed make them sound and look attractive to potential buyers and need some interpreting as they don’t always quite match the reality.

For example, ‘surprisingly spacious’ seems to mean that a house is marginally larger on the inside than it appears from the outside; ‘mature’ might mean in a poor state of repair, as might ‘with great potential’; ‘small’ might mean absolutely tiny; and ‘popular location’ might mean that the area tends to get noisy at night; and/or there’s a lot of traffic.

Have you any other examples or interpretations?

‘Extreme’ language exchanges

By Simon

Language exchange trips have been popular for many years, but usually involve spending only a few weeks in a foreign country. For example, I took part in a language exchange with a French lad while at school which involved me spending three weeks with his family in France, and him spending three weeks in the UK with my family. I also spent two weeks with a family in Germany, and a month with a family in Austria.

According to The Independent, the latest trend is for children between 9 and 13 to spend six months in a foreign country, staying with a family and going to a local school. Even if they don’t know the local language at all at first, they’re usually fluent in it after six months.

The exchanges discussed in the article were arranged by En Famille International, a French company set up in 1978, and are available in Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the UK. One perennial problem they have is a lack of English-speaking families willing to participate in the exchanges.

Win a Trip to Learn Spanish in Argentina

By Simon

The makers of Bueno, entonces…, a new Spanish language learning software, are trying to build their Facebook cred by reaching 10,000 Fans by March. If they get there, one lucky fan and a friend will win a trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for 10 days of intensive Spanish lessons, a chance to meet the cast and crew, and of course, have way too much fun.

From now until March 12th, Bueno, entonces… is offering a series of contests on the Facebook Page, which offers free daily Spanish phrases, words and grammar lessons. 100 participants will be chosen as Finalists from the series of contests and will be entered to win the Grand Prize Trip. The complete contest details are posted on the Bueno, entonces…Fan Page.

example photo for the competition

Starting today (January 28) there is an easy-to-do photo contest. To enter, just snap a picture of yourself holding a sign saying “I want to win a trip to Argentina” and post it to their Facebook wall. Then get your friends to ‘like’ and comment on it. The TEN finalists with the most ‘likes’ will be selected next Friday (February 5). So polish up your tango shoes and hurry and go check it out.

About the program:
Bueno, entonces… is like Rosetta Stone meets The Simpsons – the program is comprehensive, but at the same time hilarious and really engaging. Just released last year, it has been already featured in the iTunes App Store and on the Daily Candy website. To see more, check out their Learn Spanish website.

This post is brought to you by Bueno, entonces…

Word of the day – ortzikara

By Simon

Today’s word, ortzikara, is Basque and means “time when a storm is brewing” or in Spanish “tiempo amenazado por la tormenta”. Do any other language have a single word to express this meaning?

This word comes from a book I’m reading at the moment – Mother Tongues – Travels through Tribal Europe, by Helena Drysdale, in which the author and her family travel through Europe visiting people who speak minority languages such as Basque, Occitan, Sami and Corsican.

Related words include ihortziri (thunder), tximista (lightning), truxu (light rain), euri (heavy rain), bisuts (torrential rain), zara-zara (heavy rain), ortzadar (rainbow), haize (wind), elur (snow) and bisutsa (light snow). In fact there seems to be quite a lot words in Basque for different kinds of weather.