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In this episode I discuss which languages are easiest to learn for native speakers of English, and what factors make languages easy or difficult to learn, including grammar, spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, the availablity of resources, and so on.
The Happy Hedgehog / Y Draenog Hapus
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In this episode I take you on an adventure in etymology, the study of where words come from, and how they have changed over time. I start with the word etymology, and see where I end up.
Push ad Pull / Gwthio a Thynnu
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In this episode I talk about reasons why we stop learning learning langauges. Why we give up on them and quit. This is based on a poll I posted on the Omniglot Fan Club on Facebook.
Top reasons for giving up on a language include losing interest, not having enough time, getting distracted, another language seemed more interesting, and it being too hard.
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch
See the score for this tune.
Lifting the Lid / Codi’r Caead – a tune I wrote on the cavaquinho in 2020.
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In this episode I talk about talent, particularly talent for languages. Do some people have an innate talent for learning languages? Do others lack such a talent? If you don’t have a talent for languages, can you learn one anyway?
Further reading:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-innate-talent-a-myth/
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch
See the score for this tune.
Little Red Boats / Cychod bach coch – a tune I wrote on the cavaquinho in 2017.
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In this episode I talk about, and in, Gibberish – what it is, where it comes from, how I learnt it, and possible reasons why some people find it difficult to learn.
How to speak Gibberish:
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch
See the score for this tune.
Dancing on Custard / Dawnsio ar Gwstard – a tune I wrote on the harp in 2016.
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If you’re good at languages, does it follow that you’re good at music, and vice versa? In this episode I talk about links between languages and music. I explore similarities and differences between learning and using languages, and learning and playing music, based mainly on my own experiences.
Languages and Music
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338120/
https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/133/the-relationship-between-music-and-language
Edinburgh Language Event
https://edinburghlanguageevent.com/
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch
See the score for this tune.
The Whistling Windows / Y Ffenstri Sïo – a tune I wrote on various instruments in 2017.
Here’s a video I made at a music session in Y Glôb, a pub in Bangor. Musicians from Wales, England, Singapore and France were there that night.
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In this episode I talk about Volapük, an international auxilliary language created in the late 19th century by Johann Martin Schleyer, a German priest. I look at the history of the language and its structure and vocabulary, and also talk a bit about Schleyer himself.
Volapük was the first international auxillary language, or indeed constructed language, to attract a significant number of adherents. At its peak there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages.
Not long after that, however, the Volapük movement began collapse and by the early 20th century few people were interested in Volapük. Many former Volapükists switched their attentions to Esperanto, which was published in 1887. Or tried to improve the language, and create new versions, none of which had much success.
The photo above is of Johann Martin Schleyer and comes from: Wikipedia
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/volapuk.htm
http://volapük.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volapük
https://wikisource.org/wiki/Gramat_Volapüka/Lafab_Volapükik
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch (played on the guitar)
See the score for this piece
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In this episode I talk about some of the benefits and advantages of learning minority and lesser-studied languages, focusing particularly on the Irish and other Celtic languages. I talk about my own experiences with these languages, and the benefits they have brought me.
There’s no point in learning small languages, is there? They’re spoken by relatively few people and maybe only in one country or region. So why bother? It would be better to learn a language that has many millions of speakers and that is spoken in many countries, like Spanish or French, wouldn’t it? Perhaps, but whatever language you learn can bring benefits and opportunities, even small, lesser-studied and minority languages.
Hedge Cats / Cathod y Gwyrch
See the score for this piece
The Elephant Song / Cân yr Eliffant
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In this episode I talk about language families – what they are, and how they develop, and I introduce some major and minor language families.
According to Wikipedia, a language family is “a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family”.
According to Ethnologue there are currently 142 different language families and 7,111 living languages. The ten largest languages families account for about 88% of the world’s population, and 74% of the world’s languages.
| Language Family | Number of languages | Number of speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Niger-Congo | 1,526 | 519,814,033 |
| Austronesian | 1,223 | 325,862,510 |
| Trans-New Guinea | 478 | 3,580,507 |
| Sino-Tibetan | 453 | 1,385,995,195 |
| Indo-European | 445 | 3,237,999,904 |
| Afro-Asiatic | 365 | 499,294,669 |
| Australian | 204 | 37,032 |
| Nilo-Saharan | 200 | 53,359,610 |
| Otomanguean | 177 | 1,715,045 |
| Austro-Asiatic | 167 | 116,323,040 |
| Total | 5,238 | 6,143,981,545 |
Here’s an illustration a the family tree of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish languages:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvish_languages_(Middle-earth)
More information about language families
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/langfam.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family
https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/family
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/language-families/
Dancing Donkeys / Asynnod sy’n Dawnsio
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In this episode I talk about pidgins and creoles – what are they, how they develop, what they sound like, how they are structed, and so on.
Here’s how a pidgin or pidgin language is defined on Dictionary.com:
1. an auxiliary language that has come into existence through the attempts by the speakers of two different languages to communicate and that is primarily a simplified form of one of the languages, with a reduced vocabulary and grammatical structure and considerable variation in pronunciation.
2. (loosely) any simplified or broken form of a language, especially when used for communication between speakers of different languages.
The definition of pidgin in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is even simpler:
a simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages
In the 19th century a form of pidgin, known as Chinese Pidgin English, developed between European and Chinese merchants in China. Pidgin was the way the Chinese pronounced business, and referred to this form of language. Later it was used to refer to all such contact languages. It was first used in writing in 1807 [source].
Dictionary.com defines a creole language:
a creolized language; a pidgin that has become the native language of a speech community
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a creole language as:
a language that has evolved from a pidgin but serves as the native language of a speech community
The word creole was first used in the 17th century, and comes from the Portuguese crioulo (a slave born in one’s household, person of European ancestry born in the colonies), probably from criar (to bring up), from the Latin creāre (to create) [source].
Bislama
Tok Pisin
Haitian Creole
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/langfam.htm#creoles
Details of the Polyglot Cruise 2020 – remember to use the code OMNIGLOT to get US$50 off!
Time To Play / Amser i Chwarae
The Frog’s Excuse / Esgus y Llyffant
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