Bro

By Simon

Last night one of my friends was wondering about the meaning of the Welsh word bro, which appears in some Welsh placenames, such as Bro Morgannwg (the Vale of Glamorgan). So I thought I’d find out.

Bro /bro:/ is a Welsh word meaning “region, country, vale, lowland”. It is used mainly in place names, and appears in the expression bro a bryn (hill and dale), and in papurau bro (local Welsh language newspapers). It is also part of such words as brodir (region, country) and brodor (native), and in Y Fro Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Area) – the parts of Wales where Welsh is the majority language. It is a somewhat similar concept to the Gaeltachtaí in Ireland, though has no official recognition.

The same word exists in Cornish and Breton and has the same meaning. The Breton names for regions of Brittany all begin with Bro, for example Bro-Leon (Léon), Bro-Wened (Vannetais) and Bro-Gernev (Cornouauille), and England is Bro-Saoz (‘Land of the Saxons’), and Scotland is Bro-Skos or Skos in Breton.

How old is language?

By Simon

This morning I listened to the first in a new series of a BBC Radio 4 programme called Fry’s English Delight in which the Stephen Fry discusses the development, design and functions of the mouth. According to an evolutionary biologist interviewed on the programme, the human mouth attained it’s modern form between about 80 and 50 thousand years ago, and this allowed our ancestors to make the full range of sounds used in languages. These dates also fit with some estimates of when first language emerged.

They also mention that art and related activities also start to appear in the archaeological record roughly between those dates. This is not conclusive evidence that language is between 50 and 80 thousand years old – there is some evidence of possibly older artist activity, but is very interesting nonetheless.

Fušování‏

By Simon

Fušování‏ is a Czech word I discovered recently that appealed to me and that means “tinker, dabbling”. The related verb, fušovat means “to potter, to tinker at, to botch, to dabble, to mess about, to tinker”. Other related words include:

– fušer – quack, tinker, blunderer, boggler, botcher, bungler, cobbler, dabbler
– fušerská práce – botch
– fušersky – shoddily
– fušerský – empirical, patch work
– fušersky pracovat – tamper
– fušerství – botch, fudge, bungle
– fušeřina – patch work, tinker, botch
– fuška – elbow-grease
– fuška – job, chore, elbow-grease, hard work (also – dřina)

Sources: slovnik.cz, Wiktionary

These words could be used to describe the way I teach myself languages – I tend to do this is quite a haphazard way without any particular plan, and just follow my interests, and never know quite where I’ll end up. I keep thinking that perhaps I should try to learn things in a more structured way, but somehow rarely put such thoughts into practise. Languages are a hobby and passion for me. I dabble with them for fun.

Do you dabble or tinker with languages? Are you a linguistic botcher / bungler / tinkerer / dabbler? Or do you approach them in a more structured and focused way?

Lannrolláil

By Simon

De Domhnaigh seo caite chuaigh go Conwy chun lannrolláil a dhéanamh. Bhí lá breá ann agus bhí rún agam ag lannrolláil ó gConwy go Llandudno ar an cosán cósta. Bhí dromchla an cosáin go maith ar dtús, ach i ndiaidh tamaillín d’éirigh sé go garbh, agus níorbh fhéidir liom lean ar aghaidh ar mo lannrolláí, agus dá bhrí sin shiúil mé an chuid is mó den bhealach go Llandudno. Bíonn na radhairc go hálainn ar píosa an cósta sin agus bhí a lán daoine ag súgradh ar an tráth. I ndiaidh dul ann i Llandudno, cheannaigh mé greim bia agus an sin chuaigh mé ag lannrolláil ar an promanád. Bhí rún agam ag lannrolláil ar ais go Conwy, ach bheartaigh mé ag dul ar ais go Bangor ar an mbus ó Llandudno.

Last Sunday I went to Conwy to do some inline skating. It was a lovely day and I was planning to skate from Conwy to Llandudno along the coastal path. The surface of the path was good at first, but soon became rough and it wasn’t possible to continue on skates, so I ended up walking most of the way to Llandudno. The views on that piece of coast are beautiful and lots of people had come out to play on the beach. After arriving in Llandudno, I bought a bite to eat then went for a skate along the promenade. I was planning to skate back to Conwy, but decided to take the bus back to Bangor from Llandudno.

Careers with languages

By Simon

The other day I came across an interesting piece in The Guardian about “Career options for foreign language speakers“. The piece is just a short introduction to an online Q&A session that took place last Friday, and it claims that:

The words “graduate with a foreign language” on your CV will have many recruiters going back for another look. That’s because a relatively small pool of Brits have foreign language credentials, so they stand out from the crowd and, consequently, have far healthier career options, according to a recent Independent article.

Many people have commented on this, and the general tone of the comments seems to be that foreign language skills alone are not sufficient to secure a job; that few employers value such skills or understand what it takes to acquire them; and that most jobs which require foreign languages are relatively low paid. Some comments mention that if you speak foreign languages and have qualifications and experience in other areas, such as IT, engineering, medicine, etc, you can probably find a job in foreign parts, though you may end up spending most of your time speaking English. Others say that some British employers prefer to employ native speakers of particular languages with the relevant skills, rather than Brits who have learnt those languages.

There are some positive comments as well from people in language-related professions, but the overall tone is quite negative.

I got my first proper job, with the British Council in Taipei, partly because I speak Mandarin, and I used my Mandarin a lot while working there.

What is your experience? Are you in a language-related profession? Would you like to be? Are foreign language skills valued by employers in your country?

Llygad yr haul

By Simon

I heard the Welsh phrase llygad yr haul (eye of the sun) on the weather forecast on Radio Cymru this morning and thought it was a poetic way of describing sunny weather. I think it appears in a sentence something like Bydd sawl mannau dan llygad yr haul yfory (“Many places will be under the sun’s eye tomorrow”).

In English you might talk about the eye of a storm, but I haven’t heard the expression the eye of the sun or the sun’s eye used in relation to the weather. Are there similar expressions in other languages?