I’ve been given free access to the online courses offered by Online Trainers to give them a try, and have one course to give away.
The languages available are English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch.
If you’re interested, just drop me an email at feedback[at]omniglot[dot]com and I’ll send you an access code that gives you three months’ free access to a course of your choice.
[addendum] This course has now been claimed. If I’m given any other free courses, I’ll let you know.
According to an article I came across in the Daily Telegraph today, the best / most useful languages to study, for those in the UK, are:
1. German
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Mandarin
5. Polish
6. Arabic
7. Cantonese
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. Portuguese
The reasons why each language is useful vary quite a bit. For example Brazil is the sixth largest economy in the world and will be hosting the next (football) World Cup and Summer Olympics; apparently Russia is the UK’s fastest-growing major export market; and Poland is the largest consumer market in the EU. Languages valued by UK employers includes German, French, Spanish, Polish and Mandarin.
If a language is useful or in demand by employers, that’s quite a good reason to study it, but if you that’s your only reason for choosing a particular language, studying it might seem like hard work. If you also have an interest in the language itself, the culture of those who speak and/or the places where it’s spoken, you’re more likely to enjoy your studies and became proficient in the language.
Have you studied any languages solely because you thought they might be useful?
One of the comments on the article suggest that it is better to study a vocational subject such as science, medicine or law and to study a language as a secondary subject, rather than just focusing on a langauge. Another comment states that a university in a language or languages isn’t particular useful if you don’t have other skills.
Last week I was told that the English word car originally comes from the Irish word carr (donkey cart). Apparently when cars came to Ireland Irish speakers thought it was better to come up with a new word for them than to name them after the humble donkey cart, so the term gluaisteán (‘moving thing’) was coined. I hadn’t heard about this before so thought I’d check it.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the English word car has been used to refer to a wheeled vehicle since 1300 and comes from the Old Northern French word carre, from the Latin carrum/carrus, which originally referred to a two-wheeled Celtic war chariot, from the Gaulish word karros, from the Proto-Indo-European word *krsos, from the root *kers- (to run).
There are related words in Welsh carr (cart, wagon), and in Breton: karr (chariot, cart), in Cornish: karr (car), in Manx: carr (car), in Spanish and Italian: carro (cart, wagon) and probably in other languages.
The word chariot comes from the same root as car, but cart probably comes from the Old Norse word kart-r (cart), according to the OED.
Another vehicle-related word we discussed last week is carbad (chariot), from the Old Irish carpat (war-chariot, waggon). It is related to the Welsh cerbyd (vehicle, car, carriage, coach), the Old Breton cerpit, the Gaulish carpentoracte, from the Latin corbis (basket), from carpentum (two wheeled chariot), which was probably borrowed from Gaulish. The root idea is ‘wicker’, referring to the basket character of the body of these chariots.
Last weekend I saw a couple of parades – a small and rather damp one in Bangor on Saturday that was part of the Bangor Carnival – and a rather bigger and more elaborate one on Sunday in Manchester that was part of the Manchester Day celebrations. This got me wondering about the origins of the word parade.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary parade meant “a show of bravado” and “an assembly of troops for inspections” in the 1650s, and comes from the French word parade (a display, show, military parade). This comes either via Middle French, via the Italian parate (a warding or defending, a garish setting forth) or the Spanish parada (a staying or stopping), from the Vulgar Latin *parata, from the Latin parer (arrange, prepare, adorn). Parade came to be applied to non-military processions in the 1670s.
Parer comes from the Latin parare (to make ready), via the Old French parer (to arrange, prepare, trim), from the Proto-Indo-European root *per- (to bring forward/forth).
Last night I learnt a song, En el pozo María Luisa (In the Maria Lusia mine), from a Spanish friend. This song, which is also known as Nel Pozu Maria Luisa or Santa Bárbara Bendita, comes from Asturias in north west Spain and is usually sung in Asturian, Spanish or a mixture of the two. It is the story of a mining accident in the Pozu Maria Luisa coal mine, in the town of Ciaño in the municipality of Langreo.
While I was able to understand most of the words after hearing them a few times, some of them puzzled me. For example, when I heard the word pozo (mine) it sounded to me more like porzo, which I couldn’t find in my Spanish dictionaries when I looked. Eventually I found pozo when looking in the English-Spanish section for the word mine. Another word for mine is mina.
Pozo /’poθo/ is a well; a deep pool, the deep part of a river; a shaft, pit or mine; or the hold (of a ship). It comes from the Latin word puteus (pit, dungeon, well, cistern).
Expressions containing pozo include:
– pozo artesiano = artesian well
– pozo de petróleo = oil well
– pozo ciego/negro = cesspool
– caer en el pozo = to fall into oblivion
– pozo de aire = air shaft
– pozo de registro/visita = manhole / inspection hatch
– ser un pozo de ciencia = to be immensely learned
– es un pozo de maldad = he is utterly wicked
I assumed that the song was in Spanish, and that the words that puzzled me they were just ones I hadn’t heard before, like pozo. Now I realise that some of the words might have been Asturian – the Spanish friend who taught me the song is from Asturias.
I’m currently making a new video in Xtranormal – this time in Spanish. Here’s the script, with English translation:
¡Hola!
HiBuena día. ¿En qué puedo ayudarle?
Hello, How can I help you?Busco trabajo.
I’m looking for work.¿Qué tipo de trabajo?
What kind of work?Como payaso y cirujano de cerebro.
As a clown and brain surgeon.¿En serio? ¿Me está vacilando?
Really!? Are you pulling my leg?¡No, lo digo en serio!
No, I’m serious!¿Tiene Usted algun título y experiencia?
Do you have any qualifications and experience?¿Sí, por supuesto! Estudié medicina en Madrid, y tengo cerebro y zapatos muy grandes.
Yes, of course! I studied medicine in Madrid, I have a brain, and very large shoes.Bueno. ¿Cómo piensa combinar la bufonada y la cirugía?
Ok. How do you plan to combine clownery and surgery?Bueno, podría ayudar a la gente a relajarse antes de la cirugía con mi bufonada.
Well, I could help people to relax before surgery with my clowning.¡Buena idea! Lamentablemente no tenemos ofertas de empleo para la cirugía del cerebro en el momento.
Good idea! Unfortunately we don’t have any jobs for brain surgeons at the moment.¡Qué lástima! ¿Tienen ofertas de empleo para los payasos?
What a pity! Do you have any jobs for clowns?Lo siento, no tenemos. Pero ¿ha contempla la posibilidad de entrar en la política?
Sorry, we don’t, but have you considered going into politics?¿La política? Pero no tengo ningun experiencia.
Politics!? But I have no experience.¡No importa! Es como hacer el payaso, pero con menos de tortas de crema.
It doesn’t matter! It’s like clowning, but with fewer custard piesBueno. ¡Eso parece ideal! No me gusta las tortas de crema. ¿Quando puedo comencar?
Ok. That sounds ideal! I don’t like custard pies anyway. When can I start?Hay una elección en unos pocos meses.
There’s an election in a few months.Tal vez voy a intentarlo.
Maybe I’ll give it a try.¡Buena suerte!
Good luck!Muchas gracias.
Thanks a lot.¡Adíos!
Goodbye.¡Adíos!
Goodbye.
If you spot any errors or have suggestions for how to make this funnier or sillier, just let me know.
I make these videos mainly for fun, but the process of writing in other languages also helps me to improve my knowledge of them. Making them funny and/or silly makes the vocabulary and grammatical constructions more memorable for me.
It is now possible to up load audio to Xtranormal as well as using the text-to-speech facility, so I could use recordings in any language I know, and plan to do so.
[addendum] The video is now finished and available on YouTube. I’ve even worked out how to add speech bubbles and subtitles.
Yesterday a friend asked me about the origins of the words today and tomorrow, and whether the to- part of them was orginally the. You sometimes come across expressions like ‘on the morrow’, and words appear with hypens in older texts: to-day and to-morrow.
According to the OED, today comes from the Old English tó dæg – the dæg part means day and the tó part means “at/in/during (a time), or on (a day). Tomorrow comes from to morȝen or to morwen – the morrow part means morning.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, today comes from the Old English todæge or to dæge (on (the) day), and Tomorrow comes from the middle English to morewe, from the Old English to morgenne (on (the) morrow), with morgenne being the dative of morgen (morning). They were written as two words until 16th century, then hypenated until the early 20th century.
In German (der) Morgen means morning, and morgen means tomorrow, and tomorrow morning is morgen früh or morgen vormittag, not morgen Morgen!
In French the word for today, aujourd’hui, comes from the expression au jour d’hui (on the day of today) – hui comes from the Latin hŏdĭē (today), a contraction of hŏc diē (this day). The Italian word for today, oggi, comes from the same root, and the expression al giorno d’oggi (nowadays, these days, today) has the same structure as aujourd’hui, though hasn’t replaced oggi as aujourd’hui has replaced hui in French. The Spanish and Portuguese words for today, hoy and hoje, also come from the same root and are used without embellishment. The Romanian word for today, astăzi, comes from a different root though – the Latin ista die (that day).
Sources: Wiktionnaire, Wikizionario, Wikcionario, Wikcionário & Wikționar.
I was asked today about the origins of the word worship. The person who asked was told by a highly-educated minister that “worship” is derived from an old English word, “word-skip”. Supposedly, “word-skip” means “word shaper” or “shaper of words”.
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary: worship comes from the Old English worðscip, wurðscip (Anglian), weorðscipe (West Saxon), “condition of being worthy, honor, renown”, from weorð (worthy), and -scipe, “state, condition of being”. The sense of “reverence paid to a supernatural or divine being” is first recorded in about 1300. The original sense is preserved in the title worshipful (c.1300). The verb to worship first appears in writing from about 1200. The word weorð comes from the Proto Germanic *werthaz (toward, opposite), which is possibly a derivative of Proto-Indo-European word *wert- (to turn, wind). from *wer- (to turn, bend).
The OED and the Collins Dictionary give the same etymology, and the OED lists the numerous ways worship was written in Middle English, including worðscipe, worðschipe, worðschepe, worþssipe, worþschip, wortscip, wortschyp, worsipe, worssipe, and so on.
The Dictionary of Word Origins says the worship originally meant “worthiness, distinction, credit, dignity” in Old English. Later is came to mean “respect or reverence”, and was used in religious contexts from the 13th century, and that is was used as a verb from the 12th century.
A related word is venerate, from the Latin venerāt- from venerārī/venerāre (to reverence, worship, adore), which comes from venus (beauty, love desire), from the Proto-Indo-European base *wen- (to strive after, wish, desire, be satisfied) [source]. This is also the root of the words for worship in Italian (venerare), Portuguese (venerar) and French (vénérer). The equivalent in Spanish is adorar or rendir culto a.
The word purse has an interesting history, I discovered today. It comes from the Old English word purs, from the Late Latin word bursa, which had a number of meanings of the centuries, including skin or leather; (money) bag; scrotum; exchange; and scholarship, allowance, and comes from the Greek word βύρσα (hide, leather).
bursa is also the root of bursar, bursary, purser and reimburse; and of words for purse in the Celtic languages: sparán (Irish) sporan (Scottish Gaelic), sporran (Manx), as well as the French word bourse (grant, purse, stock market, stock exchange), the Spanish word bolsa (bag, exchange, stock exchange, pocket, purse), and of similar words in quite a few other languages.
In British English purse usually refers to a small container used, mainly women, to keep their money, credit cards, etc in – British men generally carry their money in their pockets and/or in a wallet. What do Americans carry their money in?
In American English purse generally refers to a bag used to keep money, keys and other essentials in, especially by women – also known as a pocketbook (?). The British English equivalent the American purse is a handbag.
Sources: OED, Dictionary of Word Origins, Cambridge Dictionaries Online
There was quite a bit of talk about ventriloquism on an episode of QI I watched recently, mainly because one of the guests was a ventriloquist. The word ventriloquism comes for the Latin words venter (stomach, belly, womb) and loquī (to speak) so it means “to speak from the stomach”. It was known as εγγαστριμυθία (gastromancy) in Greek, which means the same thing.
In other languages the word for ventriloquist is either from the Latin, e.g. ventriloquia (Spanish), ventriloque (French), ventriloquo (Italian), or a calque of the word: Bauchredner (German – ‘belly speaker’), Brzuchomówstwo (Polish – ‘belly speaker), 腹語術 (Chinese – ‘belly language art/skill’). In Welsh though, the word is tafleisydd, from tafle (to throw), llais (voice) and -ydd (suffix for a person or tool), so it means ‘voice thrower’.
Ventriloquism apparently started a religious practice. Ventriloquists were thought to be able to speak to the dead and predict the future, and the voices that seemed to come from the stomachs were thought to be those of the dead. By the 19th century ventriloquism became a form of entertainment and people started using dummies, at least in the West. In other parts of the world, such as among the Zulu, Inuit and Maori, ventriloquism is used for religious and ritual purposes.
Ventriloquism involves talking without moving your lips to make it appear that the words are coming from elsewhere. It is also known as throwing your voice, though no throwing is involved. To make bilabial sounds such as /m/ and /b/ without lip movement the trick is apparently to substitute similar sounds – /n/ and /g/. If you say them fast your listeners’ brains will hopefully hear the letters you want them to – we tend to hear what we expect to hear anyway. Then again, you could just use other words without the troublesome letters. More details.
Have you tried ventriloquism?
I can sort of do it, though would need more practice to do it convincingly.
What I wonder is whether it is easier to ventriloquise in some languages or accents than in others, and whether there are many bilingual/polyglot ventriloquists who speak one language themselves and have their dummy or dummies speaking others. That might be a fun way to practise languages and interpretation skills.