Category: English

Synesthesia and Language Learning

By Simon

I came across an interesting article today about a possible link between synesthesia and language learning.

The article reports a survey of students in Prague and British Columbia which found that those who learn a language or languages after reaching school age are somewhat more likely to have synesthesia than those who are bilingual from birth or a very early age.

The article speculates that synesthesia might be a learning aid that is particularly useful for people learning “opaque” languages. That is languages with complex spelling systems, like English, and not so useful for “transparent” languages like Czech, where the links between spelling and pronunciation are much more straightforward.

The English orthography is described as “a hot mess of weird rules, exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions”.

Do you think this is a fair description?

Do any of you have synesthesia?

If so, does it help with learning languages?

Plains, pianos and floors

By Simon

Flat piano on a wooden floor

The Welsh word llawr [ɬau̯r] means floor, deck, gallery, stage, platform, cellar, basement, ground, face, and a few other things. I discovered today that it has cognates in all the other Celtic languages:

– leur (Cornish) = floor, ground
– leur (Breton) = area, ground, floor, soil
– lár (Irish) = ground, floor, middle, centre
– làr (Scottish Gaelic) = floor, ground, storey
– laare (Manx) = storey, deck, floor, bottom, flat, set, sill, level

These words all come from the Proto-Celtic *ɸlārom (floor), which comes from the Proto-Indo-European *pleh₂rom or *ploh₂rom, from *pleh₂- ‎(to be flat).

THe PIE word *pleh₂- is the root of many other words, including:

– The English piano, plain, plan, floor and flake
– The Dutch vloer (floor, ground, surface)
– The German Flur (hall, hallway, corridor, stairwell)
– The Italian piano (flat, level, smooth, plane, softly, quietly)
– The Spanish llano (even, flat, level, plain) and plano (plain, level, flat)
– The Latvian: plats, plašs ‎(wide, broad)
– The Lithuanian: platus ‎(wide, broas)
– The Russian плоский (flat, plain, level)

Sources: Wiktionary, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, Maga Cornish Dictionary / Gerlyver Kernewek, Dictionnaires bilingues de Francis Favereau, teanglann.ie, Am Faclair Beag, On-Line Manx Dictionary, Reverso

Cold Wintry Wind

By Simon

凩 (kogarashi) cold wintry wind

I learnt an interesting Japanese word and kanji today – 凩 (こがらし / kogarashi), which means ‘cold wintry wind’ or ‘the cold wind that reminds us winter is coming’. It is also written 木枯し or 木枯, and is considered ‘untranslatable‘ by some.

The character 凩 is a 国字 (こくじ / kokuji), that is one that was made in Japan rather than being borrowed from Chinese. It combines 几 (ki – armrest, desk, table, screen), which can also mean ‘to envelope; to wrap around’, with 木 (ki / moku – tree, shrub, bush, wood).

Other kokuji include:

– 凧 (いかのぼり; たこ – ikanobori; tako) = kite
– 凪 (なぎ; な.ぐ / nagi; nagu) = lull; calm
– 働く (はたらく / hataraku) = work
– 峠 (とうげ / tōge) = mountain peak; mountain pass; climax; crest
– 杢 (モク / moku) = woodworker
– 杣 (そま / soma) = timber; lumber; woodcutter

In Welsh there is a word that is similar to 凩: rhewynt, meaning an ‘ice-cold wind’, from rhew (frost, ice) and gwynt (wind, breath). There are also a number of other interesting wind-related expressions:

– gwynt carthen = breeze created by shaking a blanket (said comtemptuously of a preacher’s artificial eloquence)
– gwynt coch Amwythig = the east wind (“the red / sorching wind of Shrewsbury”)
– gwynt y creigiau = north-west wind (“wind of the [Snowdonian] rocks”)
– gwynt ffroen yr ych = the east wind (“the wind the ox’s nostril”)
– gwynt pilyn = breeze created by shaking a sack in order to separate the chaff from the grain when wwinnowing (“wind of a garment”)
– gwynt traed y meirw = the east wind (“the wind of dead men’s feet” – refers to the custom of burying people with their feet to the east)

Sources: http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/kokuji-list.html, Geiriadur yr Academi, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru

Are there equivalents of 凩 (kogarashi) in other languages?

Or other interesting wind-related expressions?

Wheels with teeth

By Simon

An illustration of cog(wheels)

I discovered last night that in French a cog is a une dent, which also means a tooth, or une dent d’engrenage (“tooth gear”), and a cog wheel is une roue dentée (a toothed wheel), which is kind of a cog looks like.

The English word cog, meaning a tooth on a gear, or a gear or a cogwheel, comes from the Middle English cogge, from the Old Norse kugg (notch), from the Proto-Germanic *kuggō (cog, notch), from the Proto-Indo-European *gugā ‎(hump, ball), from *gēu- ‎(to bend, arch).

A cog can also refer to an unimportant individual in a greater system, e.g. He’s just a cog in the machine, which in French would be Il n’est pas qu’un rouage de la machine – rouage is another word for cog or gearwheel, and also means part. Les rouages means machinery, as in les rouages de l’État (the machinery of state) or les rouages de l’administration (the wheels of government).

In German a cog is Zahn (tooth) and a cogwheel is Zahnrad (toothwheel). He is only a cog in a machine is Er ist nur ein Rädchen im Getriebe (“He is only a little wheel in the works/gears/gearbox”), or Er ist nur eine Nummer unter vielen (“He is only a number among many”).

Are there similar expressions in other languages about being a cog in a machine?

Sources: Reverso, Wiktionary, WordReference.com and giantbomb.com

Polyglot Pub

By Simon

Polyglots polyglotting at the Polyglot Pub

Last week I went to the Polyglot Pub in London. I’ve been to similar events in Manchester and Liverpool, but this is the first one I’ve been to in London. It takes place once a month, usually at Penderel’s Oak, a pub in Holborn, and this month there were about 16 people there.

The conversation was mainly in English, but I also spoke Mandarin and French, and odd bits of Russian, Czech, Slovak, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and Dutch. Other languages were avaiable.

The next Polyglot Pub will be in the same place on the 16th February.

Do you go to, or know of, similar events elsewhere?

A Wayzgoose Chase

By Simon

Bertie & Gertie - the white geese that live pn Hirael Bay in Bangor

What do you call a printer that doesn’t work?

A wayzgoose [ˈweɪzɡuːs].

A wayzgoose‽ What’s that?

According to the Oxford Living Dictionaries, a wayzgoose is “An annual summer dinner or outing held by a printing house for its employees.”

The Oxford Dictionaries blog says that:

the wayzgoose was originally an entertainment given by a master-printer to his workmen to mark the beginning of the season of working by candlelight. In later use, it meant an annual festivity held in summer by the employees of a printing establishment, consisting of a dinner and (usually) an excursion into the country.

Traditionally the wayzgoose happened on 24th August, which is St Bartholomew’s Day, and St Bartholomew is the patron saint of bookbinders, and also of butchers, plasterers, cobblers, shoemakers and other leather workers [source].

The origin of the word wayzgoose is uncertain. It was usually written waygoose in earlier sources (the earliest known use is 1683). The z was added in the late 19th century, however in the 1731 Universal Etymological English Dictionary by Nathaniel Bailey, it is written with the z, and Bailey thought that the word wayz meant a bundle of straw or stubble, that a wayz-goose or stubble-goose was a goose fattened on the stubble left in fields after they were harvested, and that the wayz-goose was served at the wayzgoose feast.

This word was discussed on the Museum of Curiosity on BBC Radio 4 last night, which is where I got the idea for this post.

Going spooning

By Simon

Welsh love spoons (llwyau caru)

There’s a tradition in Wales of men carving spoons out of wood and presenting them to the ladies they love. If a lady accepts a spoon, then she and the man are considered a couple – engagements and weddings were apparently not common in rural Wales until the 18th century [source]. The websites that discuss the love spoon (llwyau caru) tradition usually mention that it’s the origin of the English expression “to go spooning”, which is one I haven’t come across before.

A quick search on Google finds a number of books that include the phrase “to go spooning”, and from the context it appears to mean to go courting, but it’s not always clear. Are you familiar with this phrase at all?

Spooning has another meaning – “To lie down behind and against (another person) so that both bodies face the same direction with the knees drawn up slightly like nested spoons” [source], but I don’t think that’s what “to go spooning” is about.

Giggling wrigglers

By Simon

I learnt a nice new German word today – kichern [ˈkɪçɐn], which means to giggle or snicker. Related expressions include:

– ein Kicheranfall = a fit of the giggles
– Wir haben uns darüber gekringelt = We had a good giggle about it
– anfangen herumzukichern = to get the giggles

This also got me thinking about which words rhyme with giggle – there aren’t many, and few of them are commonly-used:

– friggle = to wriggle; to fiddle, fumble
– higgle = to hawk or peddle provisions; to wrangle (over a price)
– jiggle = a weak, shaking movement; to shake, rattle, or wiggle
– liggle = to laugh and giggle at the same time
– niggle = a minor complaint or problem; to dwell too much on minor points or on trifling details; to fidget, fiddle, be restless
– piggle = a long-handled fork for mixing or digging; to dig or uproot; to scrape; to worry about minor points
– scriggle = to squirm, wriggle or squiggle; to scribble, jot
– sniggle = to chortle or chuckle; snicker; to catch an eel by thrusting a baited hook into its den; to steal something of little value
– squiggle = a short twisting or wiggling line or mark; to write (something) illegibly
– striggle = to complain about one’s trivial social problems
– swiggle = to wriggle, wiggle or squirm; to drink to excess
– wiggle = to move with irregular, back and forward or side to side motions; to shake or jiggle.
– wriggle = to twist one’s body to and fro with short, writhing motions; to squirm.

Do you know any others?

Are there interesting words for giggles and other types of laughter in other languages?

Sources: Reverso, Wiktionary, Urban dictionary

Weathered pagodas and stretching times

By Simon

Picture of a pagoda

The word for weather in Russian is погода (pogoda) [pɐˈɡodə], which sounds more or less like pagoda in English.

The English word pagoda, which refers to an Asian religious building, especially a multistory Buddhist tower, comes from Portuguese pagode, which comes via Tamil from the Sanskrit भगवती ‎(Bhagavatī, name of a goddess) or भागवत ‎(Bhāgavata, “follower of Bhagavatī”).

In French the words for weather, temps, also means time and tense, and comes from the Latin tempus (time, period, age, tense, weather), from the Proto-Indo-European *tempos ‎(stretch), from the root *temp- ‎(to stetch, string), which is also the root of the English word tempest, via the Latin tempestas ‎(storm), and the English word tense.

Breton also has one word for time and weather – amzer, which comes from the Proto-Celtic *amsterā ‎(time, moment), which is also the root of the Irish aimsir (weather, time and tense), the Manx emshir (weather, time and tense) and the Scottish Gaelic aimsir (climate, weather, season, era, time, reign), the Welsh amser (time, age, tense), and the Cornish amser (tense).

Sources: www.study-languages-online.com, Wiktionary

I’ve started putting together a new section on Omniglot featuring weather-related words and phrases. So far I have pages in Czech, Russian and Welsh.

In the UK we talk about the weather quite a bit. It’s (usually) a neutral and uncontroversial topic, and while some people are genuinely fascinated by it, for most of us it’s just a way to start a conversation. Do people do this is other countries? Or do you use of topics as conversation starters?

Language plans

By Simon

While I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, I do make language plans. This year I’m continuing to learn Russian and Cornish, and would like to learn a bit of Slovak before the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava in May/June, and some Icelandic before the Polyglot Conference in Reykjavik in October.

I’m using Duolingo to learn Russian, and SaySomethingInCornish for Cornish. I haven’t tried Duolingo before, and am finding it quite good so far, and like the way it’s structured.

I’ve dabbled briefly with Icelandic and Slovak before, so they’re not completely new languages to me. If I get round to learning a new language this year, it will probably be Romanian.

Do you have language plans for this year?