Queen’s English Society throws in the towel

By Simon

According to an article I found in The Guardian today, the Queen’s English Society (QES) has decided to close after 40 years of championing good English due to lack of interest.

The QES website states that:

The Society campaigns to encourage high standards of written and spoken English, which have been found to be lamentably low among school-leavers and even university graduates. One of its principal campaigns is for better and explicit English language education and regular constructive correction of errors in English language in schools. The Society arranges meetings, lectures and courses, promotes research, publishes members’ work and provides media comment.

One achievement of the QES was to help shape the spelling, punctuation and grammar elements of English in the national curriculum.

Are there similar organisations in other countries? I know that are language academies in some places, such as L’Académie française in French, but about in other countries?

Do any aspects of language usage bother you?

Little quiz on lesser-spoken languages

By Simon

Just thought I’d share this with you here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18258902 – see how good your knowledge of endangered and lesser-spoken languages is.

In other news, Arabic has become the language of choice for Facebook in the Middle East and North Africa, according to this report. It’s overtaken English in popularity and left French behind.

What language do you use for Facebook?

I usually have it in Welsh.

Aramaic revival with help from Sweden

By Simon

I found an interesting article today about efforts to revive the Aramaic language in Israel. The Syriac variety of Aramaic is used in the Maronite Christian and Syrian Orthodox churches, where prayers are chanted in the language, though few understand them. Only the elderly members of the community still speak the language, which is the case for many other endangered languages. It seems that transmission of the language within families has broken down and in an effort to make up for this, children are taught the language in two schools for a few hours a week on a voluntary basis. This is unlikely to produce many fluent speakings – using the language as a medium of instruction would be a more effective way of doing that – but it’s better than nothing.

There are also Aramaic speaking communities in Sweden, who produce various publications, including a newspaper and children’s books, and also run a television station in Aramaic. The TV station gives the Maronite and Syrian Orthodox communities in Israel opportunities to hear Aramaic being used in non-religious contexts, which encourages them to use the language more.

Video ùr

By Simon

Rinn mi video ùr anns a’ Ghàidhlig an t-seachdain seo chaidh. Còmhradh eadar Seumas agus Eilidh a th’ann – tha Seumas ‘nan shealgair thaigeisean agus ‘nan thuathanach eòin strutha às na Hearadh. Tha Eilidh às an t-Sìn, tha i a’ fuireach ann an Glaschu, agus ‘s e eadar-theangaiche a th’ ann. Tha fo-thiotalan ann ann am Beurla, anns a’ Ghàidhlig, ‘sa Ghàidhlig na h-Eireann, anns a’ Mhanannais agus anns a’ Chuimris.

I made a new video in Scottish Gaelic last week. It features a conversation between Hamish and Helen (Seumas & Eilidh) – Hamish is a haggis hunter and ostrich farmer from Harris. Helen is from Beijing, lives in Glasgow and is a translator. Subtitles are available in English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx and Welsh.

Hand writing and writing implements

By Simon

There was some interesting dicussion on the radio the other day about which writing implements people use if and when they write by hand. This got me thinking about how little I write by hand these days – I do most of my writing on my computer. When I do write by hand I tend to use a pencil or a biro. When I was at secondary school though, I usually wrote with a fountain pen that had a ink reservoir which could be filled from an ink bottle with a level-type device. It’s a long time since I’ve seen or used a pen link that. At primary school I remember once being told off by a teacher for drawing a picture with a biro, which was totally unsuited for the task – a pencil was what I should have used, apparently.

These days the main things I write by hand, usually with a pencil, are shopping lists and notes in my diary or on my calendar (both of which are old fashioned paper ones). I also doddle on any scraps of paper that come my way, and occasionally write postcards, Christmas and birthday cards and even letters.

A sample of my handwriting (This is what my normal writing looks like.)

One writing-related skill I’d like to learn at some point is calligraphy – I’ve dabbled with it before but have yet to really get to grips with it.

If you write things by hand, what implements do you usually use? Can you and others read your handwriting?

Hunting haggis

By Simon

I’ve just finished a new video using Xtranormal – it’s in Scottish Gaelic and features Hamish and Helen (Seumas & Eilidh). Hamish is from Harris in the Hebrides and hunts haggis as a hobby with his haggis hound Hector (who doesn’t appear in the video), and also farms ostriches. Helen is a translator from Beijing who lives in Glasgow and translates between Scottish Gaelic and Chinese. Subtitles are available in English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx and Welsh.

I wrote the dialogue in Scottish Gaelic using basic phrases, plus a few more complex constructions, and translated into the other languages as I went along. While there’s no mention of hovercrafts, or even eels, there is some discussion of whether the haggis is a real creature or not. I also recorded the dialogue as Xtranormal doesn’t support text-to-speech in Scottish Gaelic.

I plan to make similar videos in the other Celtic languages I know, changing some of the details but keeping the same basic structure.

One question that puzzled me somewhat while making this video was what is the plural of haggis? Is it haggis, haggises or even haggii?

Wikitionary gives the plural haggises.

The Haggis Hunt states that the plural is “haggii, although under certain grammatical circumstances it can be haggises or even ‘wee yins’.”

This blog gives the plural as haggis.

Collins English Dictionary gives haggises as the plural.

So it seems that there is no general agreement on the plural – I know not all these sources are equally reliable, but the less than reliable ones are interesting.

Another question is the etymology of the word haggis. The OED states that the origins of the word are unknown. In Scottish Gaelic the word for haggis is taigeis /tagʲɪʃ/, which becomes thaigeis /hagʲɪʃ/ in some contexts. This comes from the Scots word haggis, according to MacBain’s Etymological dictionary – I thought that the Scots word might come from Gaelic, but it seems not.