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Here’s the latest news from the world of Omniglot.

New language pages:

• Aghem (Aghɨ̀m), a Grassfields language spoken in the North West Region of Cameroon.
• Kogi (Kággaba), a Chibchan language spoken in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in northern Colombia..
• Daai, a Southern Kuki-Chin-Naga language spoken in Chin State in western Myanmar.

New numbers pages:

• Zigula (Chizigua), a Bantu language spoken mainly in Tanzania, and also Somalia.
• Zenaga (Tuẓẓungiyya), a Berber language spoken Mauritania and Senegal.
• Zaiwa (Zaiwa mying), a Northern Burmish language spoken in southwestern China and northeastern Myanmar.

New constructed script: Velikirillitsa (Великириллица), an alternative way to write English, Russian and Hungarian created by Murray Callahan,

On the Omniglot blog this week there’s a new post entitled One Another about the Chinese word 彼此 (bǐcǐ) and related words in Japanese, and there’s a new language quiz. See if you guess what language this is:

Here’s a clue: this language is spoken in Mexico and the USA.

The mystery language in last week’s language quiz was Mnong (Bu Nong / ឞូន៝ង), a Southern Bahnaric language spoken in Vietnam & Cambodia.

There’s a new Adventure in Etymology entitled Perilous Experiences, in which we find out what the word experience has to do with fear, peril and pirates.

There’s a new post on the Celtiadur blog this week entitled Glowing Stars about words for star, coal and other glowing things in Celtic languages.

In other news, I’ll be leaving Zhaoqing tomorrow (12th Janaury) and headed to Hong Kong. I’ll spend a week there, then fly back to UK. It’s been nearly 30 years since I was last in Hong Kong, and I’m looking forward to seeing it again.

Here are a few more photos of Zhaoqing showing parts of the city tourists might not necessarily visit.

Bamboo is widely used as scaffolding, and this is one of the guys who delivers it on his high-tech cart

A building site next to the housing complex where I’m staying. Someone has made part of it into a little garden to grow vegetables – there’s no point in letting a bit of land sit idle after all.

A fairly typical backstreet in Zhaoqing.

A backstreet, still under construction, like many places here

Zhaoqing city wall (肇庆古城墙), which was constructed in 1053 AD/CE during the Northern Song Dynasty. It was originally built of rammed earth, and looks like it’s changed a bit since then.

Me in front of Zhaoqing city wall

Piyun Tower on Zhaoqing city wall / 披云楼肇庆古城墙

A view from the city wall

By the way, this happens to be the 5,000th post I’ve published on my blogs, and the 223rd episode of the Omniglot News. The majority of posts (3,942) are on the Omniglot blog (started in March 2006), and there are 546 on this blog (started in June 2018), and another 512 on the Celtiadur blog (started in September 2018). I think I’m starting to get the hang of this blogging lark.

For more Omniglot News, see:
https://www.omniglot.com/news/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/omniglot/
https://www.facebook.com/Omniglot-100430558332117

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