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.

Mysterious calendar

By Simon

A reader of this blog would like to know if anybody knows which language this is:

Kiländer (Ray Ráán)

Rááninfel: Sunday
Serinfáál: Monday
Yóŕuwow: Tuesday
Yéélúwan: Wesnesday
Yófowan: Thursday
Yalimow: Friday
Yommol: Saturday

I discovered that the word ráán means day in Trukese/Chuukese, but this Trukese dictionary gives different, though seemingly related, words for the days of the week.

Any ideas?

Lexiophiles top language blogs competition

By Simon

This blog has been nominated for the language learning category of the Lexiophiles top language blogs competition for this year. Voting is currently underway, so if you’d like to vote for this blog, please click the button below.

Vote the Top 100 Language Learning Blogs 2012

Thank you / Merci / Danke / Diolch / Go raibh maith agat / 謝謝 / ありがとうございます.

The list of nominations in each category: Language Learning Blogs, Language Professionals Blogs, Language Facebook Pages and Language Twitterers is also a good place to find all kinds of language-related bloggage, twittery, etc.

Language of icons

By Simon

Example of Xu Bing's Language of Icons

Any ideas what these symbols/icons might mean?

According to an article I came across today, this text means:

Chinese artist Xu Bing has ideas about how people communicate. Different people in different countries should speak one language. Xu Bing wrote a new language. It uses pictures not words. It looks like Egyptian script meets Madison Avenue.

This text was produced by software developed by a Chinese artist called Xu Bing, who has also produced a storybook written entirely with this script. He was inspired by the icons that appear on the safety cards you find in aeroplanes and by icons and symbols found on various products, which aim to get their message across graphically without using any particular language. He believes that, “Regardless of cultural background, one should be able understand the text as long as one is thoroughly entangled in modern life.” Would you agree?

Yesterday I tried to work out which of the symbols on my washing machine means ‘spin’, and managed to do so, though the meanings of the other symbols are not immediately obvious. I eventually tracked down a copy of the instruction manual online, so now know what they all mean.

There are been various attempts to create universal symbolic writing systems comprehensible to anybody regardless of which language(s) they speak, especially during the 19th century. The only one that is currently used, that I’m aware of, is Blissymbolics. They tend to accumulate huge numbers of symbols and have trouble representing abstract concepts, and they are often inspired by the Chinese script, based on the mistaken idea that written Chinese respresents ideas rather than sounds and is comprehensible to all literate Chinese people, no matter which variety of Chinese they speak.