Category: Chinese (中文)

Oideas Gael

By Simon

I’m having a wonderful time in Gleann Cholm Cille learning to play the harp and speaking plenty of Irish. The course is going really well – we started with basic techniques, and have learnt a number of tunes, including some from the Bóroimhe / Brian Boru suite by Michael Rooney.

I’ve videoed our teacher, Oisín Morrison, playing all the pieces we’ve learnt so far, and he’s going to give us some more pieces to learn at home.

People come here from all over the world on holiday and to do courses at Oideas Gael – this week you can do Irish language classes, harp playing, or hill walking – so there are opportunities to speak quite a few languages, including French, German, Swedish, Mandarin, Dutch and Scottish Gaelic. I’ve even learnt a bit of Serbian from a Bosnian woman who is studying Irish here.

Extreme Polyglottery

By Simon

The Polyglot Gathering in Berlin last week was fantastic and I enjoyed everything about it. The organizers did an excellent job and everything went well, with only minor hitches. Many other people helped things to run smoothly, and gave talks and/or arranged discussions and language practise sessions.

The A&O Hauptbahnhof hostel/hotel where the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin took place in June 2014

Venue
The venue was a huge hostel/hotel near Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof (main station), and not far from famous places like the Reichstag (home of the German parliament) and the Brandenburg Gate. It was equipped with hotel and hostel-style rooms, a dining hall in the basement, a reception area with seating and a games section on the ground floor, and a roof-top bar on the 5th floor. The gathering itself took place mainly in function rooms on the 5th floor, with a large room for the talks and activities and two smaller rooms for discussions and talks. One of the smaller rooms also served as a tea room – Gufujo (owl room in Esperanto) – in the evenings for those looking for somewhere quieter than the bar for a chat. There were also spontaneous outbreaks of polyglottery in other parts of the venue, and outside as well.

The program for the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in June 2014

Program
The program included lectures, talks, discussions, games, and plenty opportunities to practise languages and to talk about language learning, language and languages – or polyglottery as I like to call it. The talks and discussions ran from 9am to 1pm, with two hours for lunch, and from 3-6pm. In most time spots there were two or three things going on at the same time, so you couldn’t go to everything. Fortunately the talks were all videoed and the videos will appear online when they have been edited, so I can watch the ones I missed, and those who weren’t there can watch all the ones that interest them. The program booklet was printed several months before the gathering, so there were some changes, and people filled in empty spots with talks on a variety of language-related topics, and other activities.

The talks I went to include ones on Proto-Indo-European, careers for polyglots, neuroscience and language learning, practising languages in virtual words, Scots and Scottish English, Welsh; and discussions on passive v active learning, and synesthesia; and introductions to Indonesian, Toki Pona and Macedonian. Some talks were quite academic, others were more informal. All were interesting.

On the first evening there was an international culinary festival with food and drink from many different countries. There were polyglot games on the subsequent two evenings, and an international culture evening with songs and poems in many different languages on the final evening. I started it off with a song in Welsh – Lisa Lân, and my Manx/English song about seagulls and chips – Spollagyn son tey / Chips for tea, and finished it with my song Everyday Adventures, which all went down well.

Here’s me singing Lisa Lân and Spollagyn son tey / Chips for tea (videoed by David J. James):

The most impressive contribution was Richard Simcott singing Let it Go from Frozen in some 20 different languages from memory:

Participants
There were some 230 participants there from all over the world ranging in age from teenagers to pensioners. All spoke at least two languages, and many spoke quite a few more – I think the average number of languages spoken there was around four or five, with a number of people who speak ten or more languages. There were plenty of students there who are studying languages, and many other subjects, as well as people who run language-related businesses, or work as translators, writers, journalists, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and many other professions. Whatever our background, we all shared a passion for languages, and were interested in finding out about other peoples, countries and cultures.

A group photo of most of the participants in the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in June 2014

Highlights
Meeting so many other polyglots and being able to talk in many different languages and about languages and language learning was wonderful. I don’t often get to do this as I only know a few other polyglots where I live, so the gathering was fantastic for me. I didn’t need to suppress or hold back any of my enthusiasm for languages, as I usually do to varying degrees when talking to people who don’t share my passion. Everyone was friendly, interesting, and had different stories to tell, and I now feel like a part of the polyglot community. Before the gathering I had watched videos and read blogs and forum posts, and even commented from time to time, so I was familiar with a number of polyglots with an online presence, but felt that I was kind of on the periphery of the community. Few people recognised me, but many were familiar with Omniglot, and were happy to meet the guy behind it.

I found the talks, discussions and other activities interesting and fun, especially the discussions on synesthesia, and on raising bi/multilingual children – I don’t have any kids, but my niece is being raised bilingually in English and Russian, and quite a few of my friends are raising their kids with two or more languages, especially English and Welsh.

I would recommend this kind of event to anybody interested in languages, and I’m looking forward to the Polyglot Conference in Novi Sad in Serbia in October.

Polyglot Gathering

By Simon

I arrived in Berlin yesterday for the Polyglot Gathering, which starts today. I flew here on KLM via Amsterdam, and unfortunately my luggage stayed in Amsterdam. It should arrive today though, and I’ve coped without it so far. This is only the second time this has happened to me – the last time was when I went to Cuba via Madrid, and my luggage stayed in Madrid for a few days.

Last night I met some of the other polyglots, some of whom speak even more languages than I do. I spoke lots of Esperanto, French and English, and some German, Dutch, Mandarin, Italian, Welsh and Spanish.

The next few days are packed with talks, language lessons and other language-related activities, and lots of polyglottery. A few people I’ve met so far are even familiar with Omniglot, which is great as I rarely meet people who know the site.

Learning varieties of Chinese

By Simon

The other day I was talking with a lad from Hong Kong. We were speaking mainly in Mandarin, with odd bits of Cantonese thrown in from time to time – I speak Mandarin fluently, but only know a little Cantonese. I asked him how he had learned Mandarin, and he said that he had just picked it up through listening and speaking, and that it wasn’t too difficult. I’ve heard similar stories from other people from Hong Kong and Macau, and suspect that it is easier for Cantonese speakers to pick up Mandarin than it is for Mandarin speakers to pick up Cantonese or other varieties of Chinese. This is partly because Mandarin is phonetically and grammatically somewhat simpler than the other varieties, and also because there are far more Mandarin speakers, and media in Mandarin is far more common.

Have you experience of the relative difficult/ease of learning different varieties of Chinese?

Leeds and neglected languages

By Simon

I’m in Leeds this weekend for an alumni reunion – it’s twenty years since I graduated from Leeds Uni with shiny new BA in Modern Chinese and Japanese Studies, and this is only the second time I’ve been back there since then. The East Asian Studies Department, where I studied, is also celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and there are various events to mark this.

I will be seeing old classmates and lecturers, and meeting others who studied in the same department at different times. It will be interesting to see where people have ended up and what they’re up to these days. I expect there’ll be some chat in Chinese and Japanese as well – my Mandarin is still fluent, but my Japanese is quite rusty.

On the train on the way here I was surrounded by Germans and was eavesdropping on their conversations. I could understand almost everything, when I concentrated, even though my German is perhaps even rustier than my Japanese. I did spend longer studying German, so perhaps it is more firmly embedded in my memory than Japanese.

Do you find that long neglected languages come back to you when you need them? Does it depend on what level you got to in them?

Polyglot chat

By Simon

Last night there were three of us at the polyglot chat group, which I’ve renamed Bangor Language Learners and which now at different times in a different venue. When I set up the group earlier this year my idea was that it would give me and other polyglots a chance to get together to chat in a variety of languages. Some weeks there have been enough of us to have several different conversations in different languages, other weeks there have been only a few of us and we have talked mainly in English, or in other languages we all had in common, like Welsh or German.

During the summer quite a few of the regular attendees were away and the meetings petered out. Then with the start of a new academic year I thought I’d change the focus of the group and make it for anybody who is learning a language, rather than just people who already speak several languages. After discussion on Facebook we came up with better days and times and so far we’ve had two meetings, which have gone well. Last night, for example, there were three of us and we spoke mainly in Welsh and French, which are the languages we have in common, along with English. I’m hoping numbers will increase as more people hear about it.

After the language learners group last night, I went to Global Café, a group run by Bangor University Christian Union which aims to bring together international and local students, and others. I started going to it while I was a student, and have been going on and off since then, though haven’t been regularly for a few years as it clashed with the ukuele club. The ukuele club has now moved to another night and I can go to Global Café again. It’s a great way to meet people from many countries and to practise a variety of languages – as well as English I spoke Mandarin, French, German, Spanish and a bit of Italian, Cantonese and Hungarian last night. I really enjoy opportunities like this. Is there anything similar in your area?

Which language next?

By Simon

As today is the 1st October it’s time to change my focus to a different language on my Multilngual Musings blog – but which one? During the past three months I’ve focused on Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx – a different one each month – and have found the exercise of writing something and recording it every day very useful for my proficiency in them. While my knowledge of each of these languages has improved, there is still plenty more to learn.

As for the next language to focus on – I could continue the Celtic theme and choose Welsh or Breton, or go for one of the other languages I want to brush up, such as German, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto, French or Spanish. I feel confident writing in Welsh, and fairly confident in French, but the it would be a struggle with the others, which is one reason why I’m doing this as I need the practice.

Have you undertaken any language-related project like this? If so, how successful have they been?

Mandarin in China

By Simon

An article on BBC News reports that according the the Chinese Ministry of Education, some 30% of the people in China don’t speak Mandarin, of the 70% who do speak it, “many do not do it well enough”. As a result the Chinese government has apparently “launched another push for linguistic unity in China”. They will be promoting Mandarin particularly in rural areas and among ethnic minorities. A move that might not be welcomed by all.

China’s current population is 1,359,830,000 [source], so there are some 407,949,000 people in China who do not speak Mandarin, and around 951,881,000 who do – a very large number of people, though not as many as is generally believed. The idea that over a billion people speak Chinese is true if you count all varieties of Chinese, but not for Mandarin.

Math math

By Simon

This week I discovered that you can emphasize adjectives in Scottish Gaelic by repeating them. For example:
– bha e math math air faclan a chur ri chèile ann am bàrdachd (he was very good at putting words togther in poetry).

Emphasis can also be indicated with glé (very) – bha e glé mhath – with uabhasach (terribly) – bha e uabhasach math – or with fiadhaich (wild) – bha e fiadhaich math. Another example, which is mentioned in Leabher nan Litrichean by Ruairidh MacIlleathain, concerns an overheard conversation between two boys. One says “An robh an t-isag mòr?” (Was the fish big?), and the other replies, “Bha! Bha e mòr mòr mòr mòr mòr!”. (Yes! It was very very very very big!).

This doubling isn’t very common in English, though some people might use it. Alternatively you can elongate the adjective, it was biiiiig!. Do you double or enlongate adjectives at all, in English or other languages?

Eavesdropping

By Simon

One day last week I was walking through town and saw a couple walking nearby – a Chinese woman with a Western man. I wondered what language they were speaking to each other, so I eavesdropped and heard that it was Mandarin. This surprised me as it’s rare, in my experience, to hear non-Chinese people speaking Mandarin, especially round here. I was considering going over to introduce myself and finding out how the guy had learned Mandarin, but by that time they’d gone off in different direction.

If you speak a lesser-studied language and hear someone speaking it in public, would you go and talk to them?