Fun languages

By Simon

Many years ago while travelling in China, I heard Norwegian being spoken for the first time when I met some Norwegians in Guangzhou. To me their language sounded sort of familiar and quite funny – a bit like German being spoken by very drunk people. Danish and Swedish sound similar to me and I think it’s the intonation that makes them sound like fun languages and puts a smile on my face. I also quite like the sounds of Dutch, which again sounds to me like a funny kind of German.

The only Germanic languages I currently know are English and German. I plan to learn one or two others, Norwegian and maybe Dutch, in the not too distant future.

A friend recently starting learning Norwegian and he’s really enjoying it. He finds it a quirky and fun language and says that he’s never before studied a language that makes him laugh out loud so frequently.

Which languages put a smile on your face?

Time capsules

By Simon

A while ago I came across an interesting language learning-related idea but then promptly forgot where it was. I finally found it again today here. The idea is that you record yourself speaking the language(s) you’re learning every so often, then go back to the recordings later to see how much progress you’ve made. These recordings could be said to be linguistic time capsules.

If you’ve learning to play a musical instrument or to sing, you could make something similar – a musical time capsule.

Which language to study?

By Simon

If you’re trying to choose which language to learn, the following question, which is based on one I came across yesterday, might help you to decide:

If you were offered a free trip to one of the countries where the languages you’re considering are spoken, which country would you choose?

For me, choosing which language(s) to learn is a frequent conundrum, though often the choice is between learning a new language, or brushing up and improving my knowledge of
languages I already know. Often I end up trying to do both.

Language proficiency tests

By Simon

I came across some useful online language proficiency tests today on the Transparent Language site. There are tests for Chinese (Romanized), Dutch, English, English (for Spanish Speakers), French, German, Irish, Italian, Japanese (Romanized), Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The questions are all fill-in-the-blanks type and each test consists of two grammar sections, a vocabulary section and a reading comprehension section.

I just took the Irish test and got a overall score of 105 out of 150 or 70%. My highest scores was in the vocabulary section – 27/30 or 90%, and the reading comprehension – 25/30 or 83%. I didn’t do so well in the grammar sections getting only 27/45 or 60% in each one. Obviously my Irish grammar needs more work.

Does anybody know of any online language test that include listening? I’m sure I’ve seen some somewhere but can’t remember where.

An Umbrian mystery

By Simon

In the walls of the Palazzo Bucelli in Montepulciano, Italy, which was built in the 17th century and remodelled in the 18th century by the antiquarian Pietro Bucelli, there are a number of inscriptions. These inscriptions are generally thought to be in Etruscan or Latin, but they look more like Umbrian to me.

Here is an example of one of the inscriptions:

Umbrian inscription?

This inscription, which reads from left to right, can be transliterated as something like: “AOTETINA ARNTNI TETINALISA”.

You can see more here.

What do you think?

Context matters

By Simon

This morning I’ve been chatting with a friend in Shanghai who asked me how to say various things in English, and about the meaning of various English words and phrases. In each case I had to ask about the context to be sure that I chose the appropriate meaning or translation.

Some words have a number of possible meanings. In some cases you can only work out which meaning is intended from the context. In some cases though, the context might be ambiguous, either deliberately, perhaps for comic effect, or unintentionally.

When reading text or listening to speech in a foreign language, you can often guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context. Or you can at least work out whether they are nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. It’s very useful to develop this skill and not to rely on dictionaries all the time.

Overlearning

By Simon

Today I came across an interesting article on Overlearning, via Polyglottery, which argues that it’s better to learn a relatively small amount thoroughly than to try to learn as much as possible of a language.

The author’s main point is that some language learners don’t repeat words and phrases enough before moving on to the next ones. This results in them half-knowing quite a lot, but unable to produce what they know smoothly and fluently.

A better way is apparently to repeat things many times, then practice using them with native speakers as frequently as possible. In this way, you are able to produce words and phrases without conscious thought – they just flow out when you need them.

The author also says that you can pick up the grammar by learning how to use words and sentence patterns in various situations. You may not know why a particular inflexion is needed, but you will be able to apply it when necessary.

This makes a lot of sense to me and sounds similar to the Pimsleur method.

How many of me?

By Simon

I came across an interesting website that tells you how many people there are in the USA who share the same name as you. I looked up my name and discovered that there are 38,996 Simons, but only 1,800 Agers. The number of people in the States called Simon Ager is zero.

According to another site that does the same thing for the UK, there 10 other people who share my name. The site says that “There are probably more people killed in yoghurt, cream, marshmallow and fluffy thing accidents each year then there are of you.” – isn’t that nice to know! You can also leave messages for people who share your name that they’ll see if they search for themselves.

There’s probably a Greek or Latin-derived term for the practise of searching for yourself and/or your name online, but can’t think what it is. Any suggestions?

Coptic lives!

By Simon

Coptic, a descendent of the Egyptian language of the Pharaohs, is generally thought to have died out as an everyday language in the 17th century. Since then it’s been used only in the religous ceremonies of the Coptic Church in Egypt. However, according to the Daily Star Egypt, there are a couple of families who still speak Coptic as their language of daily conversation.

The Coptic speaker mentioned in the article says that she does not speak Coptic with her children because she felt that Coptic was a worthless language to have her children speak, therefore she did not do so when they were young. So, unless there are any undiscovered Coptic speakers out there, the language probably won’t survive for much longer.

When words fail you

By Simon

When you find yourself unable to recall a particular word, there are quite a few alternative filler words you can call on. In English these include thing, thingumy, thingumybob, thingamyjig, wotsit, doobree, doodad, and whatchamacallit. Few of these words have a standard form, so you can spell them how you like.

Knowing the equivalents of these words in other languages is very useful because there will always be gaps in your vocabulary. What kinds of filler words do you use in your language?