You lucky sausage!

2 December 2014 By Simon

According to a friend who lives in Manchester, a common expression there is “You lucky sausage!”, which is used when someone has some (unexpected) good luck. For example, if you won a prize in a competition, your friends might say, “You lucky sausage you!”.

I hadn’t heard this expression before and neither has anybody else my friend asked from outside Manchester, so maybe it’s only used there. It doesn’t seem to be very common online as it only gets 666 results in Google. Does anyone from Manchester, or elsewhere, use this phrase?

A related phrase I am familiar with is “You silly sausage!” – a light-hearted and affectionate insult used when someone, especially a child, has done or said something foolish or silly.

Do you use this phrase, or have you heard it used?

If not, would you say something else in such circumstances?

Merched Nadolig

1 December 2014 By Simon

Last Saturday I was chatting with a Czech friend in Welsh and describing a recent trip to London. One of the things I mentioned was visiting the Christmas market in Hyde Park, although instead of saying marchnad Nadolig (Christmas market) I said merched Nadolig (Christmas girls/women), much to my friend’s amusement. I realised my mistake almost immediately, but we spent the rest of the day joking about merched Nadolig. There might possibly have been some interference from the Spanish word for market, mercado, in my head, though I haven’t been using much Spanish recently.

Do you sometimes get similar-sounding words mixed up like this?

Language quiz

30 November 2014 By Simon

Here’s a recording in a mystery language.

Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?

Snickerdoodles

28 November 2014 By Simon

Snickerdoodles

I came across an interesting word in one of the books I read recently – snickerdoodles. From the context I guessed that they are something you eat, but wasn’t sure what. I now know that a snickerdoodle is a type of cookie made with butter or oil, sugar, and flour rolled in cinnamon sugar that is characterized by a cracked surface. They are possibly German in origin and their name may come from the wonderful German word Schneckennudel (“snail noodles”), a kind of pastry. Alternatively snickerdoodle might be a nonsense word from the New England tradition of giving cookies whimsical names [source].

Do you know of any other whimsical names for cookies or other food?

Noogies

26 November 2014 By Simon

A interesting word that comes up sometimes in American books I read is noogie [ˈnʊɡi], which is used in the context of one person giving someone else a noogie. The people involved are usually kids, and it sounds like a somewhat unpleasant experience, though until I looked it up, I didn’t know exactly what the word meant. It isn’t used in the UK, as far as I know.

According to Merriam-Webster, a noogie is “the act of rubbing your knuckles on a person’s head to cause annoyance or slight pain”. The origins of the word are unknown, and it first appeared in print in 1972.

Are noogies used outside the USA? Are there other words for this practice in other countries?

Language quiz

23 November 2014 By Simon

Here’s a recording in a mystery language.

Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?

Interview from Novi Sad

21 November 2014 By Simon

Here’s an interview I did at the Polyglot Conference in Novi Sad last month with Lindsay Dow of Lindsay Does Languages. I talk about how Omniglot came into being, and about learning languages, particularly Welsh.

Mutual intelligibility

21 November 2014 By Simon

This week I heard an interesting conversation about the mutual intelligibility between Czech and Slovak friends. They were talking in English, but said that when they can talk to each other in their own languages they’re able to understand everything. The Slovak lass said that she finds it strange for Czechs to speak Slovak to her as if they speak Czech she understand them without difficulty, though if people from other countries speak Slovak, that’s fine. I use what little Slovak I know with her, for example. The Czech lass said more or less the same thing about Slovaks – she doesn’t expect them to speak Czech, though if they do, that’s fine by her.

If you are a native speaker of Czech or Slovak, what’s your take on this?

What about other languages that as mutually intelligible as Czech and Slovak?

I understand that Swedes and Norwegians can talk to one another in their own languages, for example. Would it be strange for a Norwegian to speak Swedish or vice versa?

New Omniglot designs

18 November 2014 By Simon

You might have noticed recently that various different designs are being tested on Omniglot. The idea is to improve user experience on the site, and to increase my revenue from the site. While the latter certainly is true – my income from Google ads has been up 200-300% since the changes were started a few months ago, which means that my overall income has almost doubled – I’m not convinced of the former.

When you visit the site in different browsers and on different devices you’re likely to see different designs. You may even see different designs each time you visit in the same browser/device. I can see the old site in Chrome and Firefox on my laptop, but in IE, and on my Samsung tablet, I see new designs. You can see the old site by clicking on this link.

I have put a poll on the Omniglot Facebook group asking whether you prefer the new designs or the original site. Please let me know what you think, if you haven’t done so already.

If the majority are for the old site I will switch back to it.

Here are some examples of the new designs:

Homepage
An example of a new homepage design