Very short stories

By Simon

Yesterday I came across an idea of writing very short stories in just six words. Here are some examples from Wired Magazine written by sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers:

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back.
– David Brin

Lost, then found. Too bad.
– Graeme Gibson

Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.
– Richard Powers

TIME MACHINE REACHES FUTURE!!! … nobody there …
– Harry Harrison

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
– Ernest Hemmingway

The last one was written by Hemmingway in the 1920s after his colleagues bet him that he couldn’t write a complete story in just six words. They paid up. Hemingway is said to have considered it his best work. So this certainly isn’t a new idea. There are many more on Six Word Stories.

On discovering this, I started wondering whether such stories could be written in languages other than English. I thought it might be easier in some languages than in others. So can you come up with any six word stories in any language or combination of languages? If it’s not possible in six words, maybe ten words would work better.

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon
français English Cymraeg Brezhoneg
le gratte-papier pen(cil)-pusher clercyn louf-torchenn
l’écurie (f) stable (for horses) ystabl kraou (-kezeg)
la fausse couche miscarriage erthyliad (naturiol) kolladenn
l’erreur judiciaire miscarriage of justice aflwyddiant cyfiawnder fazi barnerezh
le mal d’altitude altitude sickness salwch pen mynydd  
le vertige vertigo pendro; pensyfrdandod pennfoll

Peran ha pastiow

By Simon

St Piran's Flag

As today is St Piran’s Day, here are a few Cornish words and phrases (provided by Sam Brown at the Polyglot conversation group), with equivalents in Welsh, Breton and French:

Kernewek English Cymraeg Brezhoneg français
Goel Peran Lowen Happy St Piran’s Day Gwyl Peran Hapus Gouel Peran laouenn Joyeuse fête de Saint Péran
kerdhva parade parêd; rhodfa prosesion défilé
kebywi party parti fest fête
solempnyans celebration dathliad fest fête
solempnya to celebrate dathlu goueliañ célébrer; fêter
pasti (kernowek) (Cornish) pasty pastai/pasten (Gernyweg) pastez (keneveg ?) petit pâté (en croûte) (cornouaillais) / chausson à la viande et aux légumes
keus hag onyonenn cheese and onion caws a nionyn keuz hag ognon fromage et oignons

Goel Peran Lowen!

By Simon

St Piran's Flag

Today is St Piran’s Day and a special day in Cornwall as Piran is regarded as the patron saint of Cornwall (and of tin miners), along with Saint Michael and Saint Petroc. Piran or Perran was an abbot of possibly Irish origin who lived in Cornwall in the early 6th century and later became a saint. His flag (see top right) is a symbol of Cornwall.

Here are a few Cornish phrases related to today (provided by Sam Brown)

– Goel Peran Lowen – Happy Saint Piran’s Day;
Gŵyl Peran Llawen (Welsh); Gouel Peran laouenn (Breton)

– Dydh da ha goel Peran lowen dhis! = Hello and happy Saint Piran’s day!
– A vynnydh ta pasti kernowek? = Would you like a Cornish pasty?
– Gwell yw genev pasti keus hag onyonenn = I’d prefer a cheese and onion pasty.

I haven’t started learning Cornish yet, put have picked up odd bits and pieces of the language and can understand it to a limited extent thanks to my knowledge of Welsh and Breton.

Are any of you learning Cornish?

Potatoes from the same furrow

By Simon

I discovered an interesting Welsh expression today – maen nhw’n datws o’r un rhych (‘they’re potatoes from the same furrow’), which is one equivalent of saying that they are as thick as thieves, i.e. they are close friends. Other Welsh equivalents of this expression include maen nhw’n gryn lawiau (‘they’re pretty (?) hands’); maen nhw’n yng nghegau ei gilydd (‘they’re in mouths together’); and maen nhw’n drwyn wrth drwyn (‘they’re nose to nose’).

In French the equivalent of this phrase is comme larrons en foire (‘like thieves in (a) fair’) – the word larron is a old word for thief – the usual word is voleur.

What about in other languages?

Les mot de la semaine

By Simon

– impressionnable; dégoûté = squeamish = dicra = santidig
– facilement dégoûté par = to be squeamish = bod yn ddicra = dic’hoantaat
– l’enterrement (m); les obsèques (fpl) = funeral = angladd = interamant; obidoù
– le piano droit = upright piano = piano unionsyth = piano eeun
– le piano à queue = grand piano = piano grand = piano lostek
– la gamme = (musical) scale = graddfa = skeulenn
– l’école maternelle (f); le jardin d’enfants = nursery school; kindergarten = meithrinfa = skol-vamm
– qui se ressemble s’assemble = it takes one to know one; birds of a feather flock together = tebyg at ei debyg
– le larron = thief (obsolete) = lleidr = laer
– l’occasion fait le larron = opportunity makes the thief
– (s’entendre) comme larrons en foire = (to be) thick as thieves = (bod yn) gryn lawiau = en em glevet d’ober droug

Język polski w Anglii i Walii (Polish language in England and Wales)

By Simon

The 2011 UK census found that Polish is the third most-spoken language in England and and Wales, after English and Welsh, and the second most-spoken language in England after English. According to a report in The Guardian, there are 546,000 speakers Polish in England and Wales, which is compared with the 562,000 people who report that they speak Welsh in Wales.

Statisticians who analysed data from the census found that in response to the question “what is your main language?” 104 different languages were listed, and 49 of them have 15,000 or more speakers. In England and Wales 8% of the population, or 4.2 million people, speak a language other than English as the main language. The most spoken languages after English, Welsh and Polish are Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali and Gujarati. There are also significant numbers of Arabic, French, Chinese and Portuguese speakers. Of the Chinese speakers, most list Hakka, Hunanese or other Sinitic languages as their main language, and fewer list Mandarin or Cantonese. There were found to be particularly concentrations of Gujarati speakers in Leicester, Cantonese and Mandarin speakers in Manchester, Lithuanian speakers in Boston in Lincolnshire, Punjabi speakers in Slough, and Somali speakers in Brent in northwest London.

So if you’re in the UK and considering learning a foreign language, Polish might be a good choice, or maybe another language that is widely spoken in the area where you live. In London you have a choice of over 100 languages in most boroughs.

Another article I found in The Guardian today talks about a primary school in Peterborough where 20 different languages are spoken among the pupils, but none of them speaks English as a mother tongue. The headmistress, who has worked in Pakistan and speaks Urdu, doesn’t see this as a problem but rather celebrates the diversity of the school and does everything possible to ensure that children do well. Many of the teaching assistants in the school are bilingual; new pupils are paired with older pupils who speak their language in a buddy system, and there are arrangements with other local schools where the pupils can learn alongside others who speak English as a native language.

Reviving neglected languages

By Simon

I often meet people who say that they studied a language or two in school, but have since forgotten most of what they knew as they’ve had little need and few opportunities to speak the language(s). To some extent I’m in a similar position – since finishing school I have rarely spoken French or German, though I did spend three months working in France during my year off before going to university, and my ability in them atrophied. However, since I started going to a French conversation group a few years ago, I have regained my fluency in French – it came back quite quickly, and the polyglot conversation group I started this month gives me opportunities to use my German, which is starting to come back, after nearly 25 years of neglect.

Last week I was wondering why many people seem to find it hard to recover neglected languages they’re learnt in the past, even after only a few years. A friend suggested that my ability to do this might be because I’ve been actively learning languages more or less ever since I was 11 years old, and that by keeping the bits of my brain involved with learning and using foreign languages helps to keep all the languages in there at least partly active. I think there is something in this, as I remember reading about experiments in which bilingual individuals were put in brain scanners, which found that when the bilinguals were focused on one language – hearing it, reading it or speaking it – their other language was also active.

Another factor is how thoroughly you learnt a language in the first place – if you learnt it to a high level, then reviving it later is likely to be easier than if you only acquired a basic knowledge of it. For example I spent only a few months learning Italian and Portuguese on my own, quite a few years ago, and though I can still sort of read and understand them, I can only speak them to a very limited extent. I would need to start again with them really as my knowledge of them is shallow, so there’s not much to revive.

Have you studied languages in the past, neglected them for some time, then managed to revive them?