Dictionaries

By Simon

When learning a language, many people use bilingual dictionaries. These are very useful, but once you get passed the basics, it’s a good idea to invest in a monolingual dictionary in your target language. When you look up words in bilingual dictionaries, you rely on your native language to understand what they mean. In a monolingual dictionary you have to rely entirely on the language you’re learning. This helps you to pick a lot of new vocabulary.

The only problem with monolingual dictionaries is finding places to buy them. There are monolingual dictionaries online, for example I just found a good Spanish dictionary here, but finding printed ones is not quite so easy. Any suggestions where to look?

Inca writing?

By Simon

Photo of khipu

I found an interesting article about the ongoing attempts to unravel the mysteries of the Inca Khipu on Wired News yesterday, thanks to Luigi of the Silverhorde. The Inca are thought to have used bundles of knotted strings known as Khipu or quipu for record keeping, though nobody knows for sure how to ‘read’ them.

In 1923, an anthropologist called Leland Locke realised that some of the khipu were like files – each knot represented a different number, arranged in a decimal system, and each bundle probably held census data or listed the contents of storehouses. However, some of the khipu followed different patterns and Locke thought these might have a ceremonial or other function.

In 1990, Gary Urton, an anthropologist at Harvard and one of the world’s leading Inca scholars, spotted several details that convinced him the khipu contained much more than tallies of llama sales. He set up a database of khipu and assembled a team of anthropologists, mathematicians and cryptographers to work on deciphering the knots. They have already spotted quite a few repeated patterns and hope to have some results from their efforts later this year.

If the Khipu turn out to be a method of recording language, which seems quite possible, what will it be called? It isn’t really writing as such. Any suggestions?

Coals to Newcastle and missed boats

By Simon

Taking or carrying coals to Newcastle is an idiomatic expression that means doing something that is completely unnnecessary, pointless or superfluous. The German equivalent of this is Eulen nach Athen bringen/tragen – to take/bring owls to Athens. Are there similar expressions in other languages?

Newcastle-upon-Tyne used to be a major coal mining area and the UK’s first coal exporting port, and was first associated with pointless activities in Thomas Fuller’s 1661 The history of the worthies of England: in which he wrote, “To carry Coals to Newcastle, that is to do what was done before; or to busy one’s self in a needless imployment.”

An idiomatic way of saying that you’ve missed something such as an opportunity or an event, is ‘I’ve missed the boat’ or ‘that ship has sailed’. In German, the equivalent is der Zug ist abgefahren – the train has departed. A similar expression is used in Swedish – tåget har gått – the train has left. What about in other languages?

By the way, a good place to find information about English idioms is: www.phrases.org.uk

Useful websites

By Simon

Here are a couple of useful language-related websites I came across today:

BePolyglot
Provides a systematic way to learn four Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. It contains a detailed comparison of the grammars of these languages, highlights similarities and differences in vocabularly and shows how to convert words between languages.

It’s intended for those who want to improve their knowledge of one or more Romance languages, as well as for anyone interested in comparative linguistics and Romance languages. To access the full content of the site, you have to subscribe, which costs $4.95 per month or $19.90 per year.

Does anyone know of similar sites for other language families?

Kanji Converter
This site converts Japanese kanji into hiragana, katakana and/or romaji. It also gives information about the words in English.

I usually know or can guess what Japanese kanji mean and know how to pronounce them in Mandarin, but don’t always know how to pronounce them in Japanese, so this site is very useful for me.

Linguistic adventures in Cuba

By Simon

My linguistic adventures started on the flight out to Cuba, during which I was sitting next to an electrician from Germany. I tried speaking a bit of German with him, but he seemed to prefer using English, which he spoke very well. I also tried out my Spanish on the cabin staff and did my best to understand the announcements in Spanish.

When in Cuba I used my Spanish as much as possible. Some of the people I encountered didn’t speak English, so I had to speak to them in Spanish and was able to communicate fairly well. Other people spoke English and some preferred to practise their English with me rather than to speak Spanish. One feature of Cuban Spanish I noticed was a tendency to drop esses, particularly at the ends of words. For example, they say buena dia rather than buenas dias, and ecuela rather than escuela.

I met some Germans and Austrians and was able to converse with them in German, though I kept on having to use English words when I couldn’t remember the German ones. Not bad considering I haven’t used my German much since leaving school many years ago.

One member of the group was Chinese and I spoke some Mandarin with her. Another member of the group was an Irish speaker and I spoke some Irish with her, though she found it a little difficult to understand me as I speak Donegal Irish, while she speaks Munster Irish. The differences between these dialects are not huge, but they take some getting used to.

I’m back

By Simon

I returned from Cuba late last night after a long, long journey. Fortunately my luggage didn’t get lost on the way back to London, as it did on the way to Havana. The airline (Iberia) somehow managed to forget to load several baggage containers onto the plane, so when we arrived in Havana, our bags were still in Madrid. Some members of the group got their bags the next day, but I had to wait four days for mine, and one of group didn’t get her bag until we went back to Havana airport to return home.

View of Havana's Malecon (seafront)
A view of Havana from Castillo de los Tres Reyes Magos del Morro

The group consisted of 15 Brits, two people from Ireland and one from Australia, and ranged in age from 30something to 70something. We had a Spanish-speaking tour leader from England, and various local guides. We all got on well and had a great time. Only a few of the group spoke Spanish, but this wasn’t too much of a problem as our local guides and most of the other people we met spoke English, at least to some extent.

The group
The group (plus two random kids)

We travelled all around the island from Havana to Santiago de Cuba, via the Bay of Pigs, Trinidad and Camaguey, and then back via Santa Clara, Soroa and Viñales. Everywhere we went, we were told a lot about the Cuban revolution. We also visited La Comandancia de la Plata in the Sierra Maestra mountains near Santo Domingo where Fidel, Ché and others took refuge after the unsuccessful uprising of 1956; Ché’s memorial in Santa Clara, and the Museum of the Revolution, including the original Granma yacht, in Havana. There were only a few mentions of Cuba’s pre-revolutionary history.

A view of Trinidad
Trinidad

For me, the highlights of the trip were Trinidad, walking in the Sierra Escambray and Sierra Maestra mountains, and a very memorable evening of music and dancing in Viñales, which ended with six of us squeezing into a Lada and being driven at high speed back to our hotel. That was one occasion when my Spanish came in very handy – there were no taxis but we eventually managed to find someone with a car willing to take us all to the hotel. The negotiations were conducted mainly in Spanish.

A view of the Sierra Maestra mountains
Sierra Maestra

As well as practising my Spanish, I also had opportunities to use my German, Irish and Mandarin. I tried to teach some of the other members of the group a bit of Spanish and some juggling as well.

Cuba

By Simon

Tomorrow I’m off to Cuba for a two-week holiday, so there probably won’t be any more posts on this blog until I get back next year. I’m going on a tour with a small group and will be travelling all over the island and visiting such places as Havana, Trinidad, Camaguey and Santiago de Cuba, where I’ll be on Christmas Day.

¡Hasta luego!

Maintaining multiple languages

By Simon

A recent post on The Linguist discusses an interesting idea for maintaining one’s abilities in various languages. The idea is that you load up your mp3 player with audio files for the languages you want to maintain and/or improve, then you set it to randomly repeat them. The files could be language lessons, podcasts, audiobooks or anything else you have to hand. This method ensures that you don’t get tired of listening to one particular language, and should help you to switch between languages.

I think I’ll give this a try. I already have quite a few language courses loaded onto my mp3 player and will set up a playlist for the ones I’m working on at the moment. I’ll add more lessons and chapters from my audiobooks to the playlist once I’ve read through them. This will enable me to revise material I’ve already covered. I might add some podcasts in languages such as French, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.