People who enjoy learning languages, travelling, learning about different cultures and/or meeting people from different countries tend to be more open to difference, and more tolerant. At least that is my experience. While other people might be more inclined to fear the different and the foreign.
In UK schools the most widely-taught languages are French, German and Spanish [source]. Other languages, such as Italian, Russian, Mandarin and Japanese are also taught, but they are less common. Many British people go on holiday to France or Spain, so the ability to speak French or Spanish might be useful for a few weeks each year. The rest of the time these languages aren’t all that useful, unless you have lots of French, German or Spanish-speaking friends, or you end up living or spending a lot or time in a country where they’re spoken.
I’m not saying that these languages aren’t worth learning – all languages are worth learning, as far as I’m concerned. However, might it be a good idea if schools started also teaching languages that are actually spoken in their local areas? Languages like Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Arabic, Polish, Cantonese and so on. Pupils could use what they’re learning regularly, and maybe by learning more about the communities that speak these language, any fear and suspicion they have of the other and the foreign would diminish.
Last weekend I went to see a friend in Newcastle, and while we were exploring the place, I was listening out for languages other than English. The only ones I heard were Mandarin and Spanish, and my friend and I spoken mainly in English and Welsh, with a bit of Czech thrown in for variety.
While I was there we saw The Revenant, which includes dialogue in English, French and Arikara, a Caddoan language closely related to Pawnee, and spoken by a handful of people in North Dakota.
I’m sure other languages are spoken in Newcastle, as it’s a relatively large city with a number of universities and plenty of foreign students, but maybe we were in the wrong parts to hear much foreign talk.
I also heard plenty of Geordie, the local dialect, and didn’t get some of the things people said to me first time, so had to ask them to repeat themselves. It differs from standard English in various ways, and if you’re not used to it can sound almost like a different language.
Are there any regional accents / dialects in your country that you have trouble understanding?
Last night at ukulele club there was a new member from Spain, and I talked a bit with her in Spanish. It’s a long time since I’ve studied any Spanish, and I rarely use it these days, so I thought I’d forgotten most of it, but I found that I can still have a basic conversation, even if I make mistakes. I had similar experiences with German in Berlin last year and the year before at the Polyglot Gathering – I could understand quite a bit and found that when I tried to speak it I could at least make myself understood.
At the moment I have no real need to awaken my Spanish or German, but if I do need them, I’ll try to find ways to bring them back.
How do you brush up, bring back, awaken or revive languages you have forgotten or not used for a long time?
A few months ago, I learned Spanish to a B1 conversational level in a month while living in Medellín, Colombia. If you want to see the whole story and see how to learn Spanish fast, like I did, watch the documentary here.
But all Spanish is not the same, and I learned a specific breed – “paisa” Spanish. Paisa refers to people from Antioquia, the region where Medellín is.
So, below I will explain how some things are said differently here. These are trends I’ve noticed, and by no means is the definite “how things are” – which doesn’t really exist.
The Basics
You will almost never hear “de nada” or “adios” – instead, your welcome is “con gusto” or “con mucho gusto“, or literally, with pleasure. This is also how you say nice to meet you. “Adios” is only really used for long periods of time – at least a few weeks. Instead, people use “ciao“, mostly, or “hasta luego“.
The phrase “es que” is used a lot – literally meaning “it’s that…”, it starts most explanations.
It’s common to exchange several greetings before ever saying anything of real meaning. “Como estas” is still extremely common, but the “paisa” way is “bien o no”, or, “bien o que”, which literally means “good or not?”, “good or what?”.
Between friends, another common greeting is “¿que mas?“, which means “what more” – and outside of a greeting, it still means that – but as a greeting, it means “what’s up?”. “¿Que tal?“, which is used elsewhere as well, is also used.
If you bump into someone, need to excuse yourself in a crowd, make an error, or otherwise do something that would render an “sorry, excuse me” or a “oh! sorry”, use “que pena“, which literally means “what shame”. If something makes you embarrased, you’d use “me da pena“.
Affirmatives
If you come to Medellín and want to sound local, drop the “si“, and use one of three main affirmatives:
Claro = of course. This is used a LOT. Cierto = right/yes Eso = literally means “that”, but it’s used as a general affirmative, in a wide variety of situations.
Common filler words
Anyone who has done some research on Paisa Spanish has probably heard of the heavy use of the word “pues“.
“Pues” literally means, “well”, and it’s still used as such, but it’s also used as a filler. You could add it to almost any part of any sentence and it would make sense – it’s almost meaningless. It’s like an “uhhhm”.
“O que” is another common one – it’s added to the end of lots of sentences to form a question. This is almost as common as pues.
Paisas are also fond of throwing a “que” in front of adjectives to express a feeling. So instead of “chevere” (cool), they will say “que chevere” (how cool/ a stronger “cool”). This is part of the culture of everything being great, and the common exaggeration of everything, good or bad. Speaking in a bland “it was kinda cool”, has the potential to leave Paisas bored.
Local slang
Something (generally) uneducated young women will do is transform many words to end in “is“. For example, instead of “hola“, they will say, “holis“, and instead of “raro“, they will say “raris“. It’s very improper and actually quite annoying to hear, but if you hear it, that’s whats going on.
“Amigo” is rarely used between friends. Instead, people use “parce / parcero“, which basically means “dude/mate/bro” (use this and you’re instantly better friends with any guy, trust me). If you’re good friends, you’ll even use “guevon“, which is offensive if you don’t know someone. Worse than guevon, there is “marica“, which basically means fag, which is definitely offensive if you don’t know someone, but is sort of teasing if you’re good friends.
There are few ways to say “awesome” – the most common would be “bacano“. If something is REALLY awesome, you use “brutal“, which is the equivalent of “sick” in American English.
This should get you sounding paisa when you come to the amazing city of Medellín. Click here to see the documentary I made while learning Spanish in a month here.
A Sardinian friend of mine, Elena Piras, knows six languages (Sardinian, Italian, English, Scottish Gaelic, French and Spanish) and sings in most of them, plus a few others, including Scots, Bulgarian and Georgian.
Here’s a recording of a performance from earlier this year in which she sings in Sardinian, Scots, English, Scottish Gaelic and Bulgarian.
Elena aims to sing each language in as close to a native accent as possible, and I think she does this very well.
Another multilingual singer is Jean-Marc Leclercq or JoMo, who holds the world record for singing in the most languages in one performance: 22. I heard him doing this at the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in May this year. His pronunciation in the languages I know didn’t sound entirely native-like, and it sounded like he had a strong French accent in the other languages.
Do you know other singers who sing in multiple languages?
How well do they pronounce them?
I myself sing in various languages, and try to pronounce as well as I can, but know I could do better.
Here’s a recording of a song I wrote earlier this year in the five languages I know best (English, French, Welsh, Mandarin and Irish):
One thing I noticed in New York was that there was a lot of Spanish around – in bilingual English/Spanish signs at the airport, and on trains and boats. There were also multilingual signs on the subway in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Haitian Creole. I heard many languages being spoken by local people around the city, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Gujarati, Croatian, Italian, and others I didn’t recognise, as well as all the languages spoken by tourists. So New York certainly is a multilingual city.
Are other parts of the USA like this?
Is it common for there to be bilingual signs in English and Spanish, or other combinations of languages?
This weekend I am in New York for the 2015 Polyglot Conference. I arrived yesterday afternoon after an uneventful flight from Manchester. It took a couple of hours to get out of the airport, and another hour or so to Manhattan.
Last night I met up with some other polyglots near the Statan Island ferry terminal – we were planning to take the ferry over to Statan Island, but unfortunately it started raining heavily and we decided to postpone the trip. We explored Lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village for a while, then I went home, while the others went on to a bar.
The conference started this morning at the SVA Chelsea Theater, which is just around the corner from where I’m staying. There were talks all day about a variety of interesting subjects, including Forensic Linguistics, Proto-Indo-European and Lakota language revival. There are plenty of people here who I know from previous polyglot events, and I’ve met lots of new people.
So far I’ve spoken English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Esperanto and Toki Pona, and have met people who speak various other languages.
The conference continues tomorrow, and then I have a couple of days of sightseeing before returning to the UK.
I discovered an interesting word in Irish yesterday – súilíní [ˈsˠuːl̪ʲiːn̪ʲiː] – which is a diminutive form of súil [sˠuːl̪ʲ] (eye) and means literally “small eyes”, and actually means eyelets, an aperture-sight, or bubbles. For example, uisce gan súilíní is still water (“water without bubbles”) [source].
More common Irish words for bubbles are bolgán and boilgeog.
The word súilíní is also used in Hiberno-English to mean “bubbles of fat floating on top of a stew or clear soup”, and is also written sooleens [source].
The word súil (eye) comes from *sūli, an alteration of the Proto-Celtic *sūle (suns), the dual of *sūlos, which is the genitive of *sāwol (sun), from the Proto-Indo-European *sóh₂wl̥ (sun). Apparently in Irish mythology the sun was seen as the “eye of the sky”, and the word for sun came to mean eye [source].
The words for sun in other European languages come from the same root, and most start with s, e.g. saũle (Latvian), sol (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese), Sonne (German), etc. There are some exceptions though, including haul (Welsh) heol (Breton), howl (Cornish) and ήλιος (ḗlios – Greek) [source].
Sometimes when I see new words in English or other languages I can immediately break them down into their component parts and work out their roots, but other times I just accept words as whole entities without trying to work out their derivation.
One such word in Welsh is arfordir, which I hadn’t tried to analyse before. Last weekend, however, I was explaining some Welsh words to a friend who recently moved to Cardiff and who wants to learn Welsh, so I was in the right frame of mind, and the probable etymology of that word jumped out at me – ar (on, by) + môr (sea) + tir (land), so it’s “land by the sea” or the coast. This is correct, according to the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru.
Another etymology I discovered today is the word competitor, which comes from the Middle French compétiteur (rival, competitor), from the Latin competītor (rival, competitor, adversary, opponent; plaintiff), from con (with) and petītor (seeker, striver, applicant, candidate, claimant, plaintiff, suitor, wooer).
Petītor comes from petere (to make, seek, aim at, desire, beg, beseech), from the Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- (to fall, fly), which is also the root of the English word petition, and the Spanish word pedir (to ask for) [source]
An interesting French expression I learnt last week is beau comme un camion, which literally means “pretty as a truck/lorry”, and actually means pretty, cute or beautiful.
Apparently this idiom appeared around the middle of the 20th century and was at first ironic, as few people find trucks pretty. However it came to mean graceful and beautiful, and the use of the word camion (truck/lorry) emphasizes the importance of the word beau (pretty, beautiful) [source].
Here are some equivalents of this phrase in other languages:
English
– pretty as a picture
– easy on the eye(s)
– cute as a button
Spanish
– estar como un tren = to be like a train
Flemish
– een lust voor het oog = a pleasure for the eye
Dutch
– een ‘stoot’ zijn = a punch in the gob
– zo mooi als een madonna / plaatje = pretty like a madona/picture
– als een vlag op een modderschuit = like a flag on a barge filled with mud
– beeldschoon = pretty as a picture
– een plaatje = a photo
Romanian
– a fi rupt din soare = to be detached from the sun
