This weekend I’m off to Edinburgh for some polyglottery at The Language Event. There will be talks and discussions about language-related topics, and chances to talk about and in a variety of languages. It’s being held at the French Institute of Scotland on Saturday and Sunday. If you’re going, I’ll see you there.
I went to a simliar event four years ago in early 2020, just before lock-downs started. I haven’t been to any of the larger polyglot happenings since, such as the Polyglot Conference or the Polyglot Gathering, and have realised that I prefer smaller events.
Last week I was on holiday. I spent most of the time learning Scottish Gaelic songs at a college on the Isle of Skye, and stopped at my mum’s in Lancashire for a few days on the way back. I had a wonderful time, met some interesting people, and learnt some beautiful songs.
It was my 9th visit to the college since 2008 and certainly won’t be my last. When I first went there I used as much Scottish Gaelic as I knew, and filled in any gaps with Irish, which I speak more or less fluently. As the two languages are closely related, this sort of works, though differences in the pronunciation and meaning of words can lead to some misunderstandings.
Recently I’ve been learning a lot more Gaelic with Duolingo, and can now speak it fairly well. This makes understanding the songs easier, although they often use poetic and old-fashioned words that don’t usually appear in my lessons. As well as speaking Gaelic, I also spoke some Dutch, Japanese, Welsh and a bit of English.
Normally I try to add a certain number of pages to Omniglot each week, and to write blog posts, and make podcasts and videos. Last week I didn’t do any of that, apart from one Celtiadur post, and had a break from it all, which was great.
This got me thinking – do I really need to do so much every week? Did you miss the Adventure in Etymology last week, or the Celtic Pathways or Omniglot News podcast, or the new language and other pages that weren’t added to Omniglot? Were you aware of all of these?
Maybe I’ll start doing the Adventures in Etymology every other week, and alternating with the Celtic Pathways podcast.
Incidentally, here’s a little piece I wrote on the train from Glasgow to Mallaig. I was trying to write a train-related song, and came up with this. I haven’t thought of a tune for it yet.
The snake of steel
rattles and shakes
through steep glens
where eagles soar
past foaming fishpaths
where waterdogs play
through empty lands
where none do bide
to the ocean’s edge
where seals hide
and the water meets the sky
The threads of distraction
are loosened
and there’s time to see
beyond the wind’s eye
time to think and dream
to talk and rest
As the iron horse
clitters and clatters
Along the metal road
I’m also working on a song in Scottish Gaelic inspired by my lessons in Duolingo. It’s called Thoir an Aire (Watch out).
Thoir An Aire (Watch Out) Seist (Chorus)
Thoir an aire, thoir an aire (Watch out, watch out)
Thoir an aire, tha Iain a’ tighinn (Watch out, Iain is coming)
Thoir an aire, thoir an aire (Watch out, watch out)
Tha Iain rùisgte is tha e a’ tighinn (Iain is naked and he’s coming)
Ghoid Màiri a drathais (Mairi stole his underpants)
Ghoid Màiri a briogais (Mairi stole his trousers)
Ghoid Màiri a geansaidh gorm is geal (Mairi stole his blue and white jersey)
Ghoid Màiri a lèine (Mairi stole his shirt)
Ghoid Màiri a brògan (Mairi stole his shoes)
Ghoid Màiri aodach Iain gu lèir (Mairi stole all his clothes)
Ruith air falbh, ruith air falbh (Run away, run away)
Ruith air falbh tha Iain a’ tighinn (Run away, Iain is coming)
Ruith air falbh, ruith air falbh (Run away, run away)
Tha guga aige is tha e a’ tighinn (He has salted gannet and he’s coming)
Càit bheil Calum? (Where is Calum?)
Càit a bheil Coinneach? (Where is Kenneth?)
Càit a bheil Ceiteag? (Where is Katie?)
Am faca tu iad? (Have you seen them?)
Càit a bheil Mairead? (Where is Margaret?)
Càit a bheil Mòrag? (Where is Morag?)
Ruith iad air falbh (They ran away)
oir tha Iain a’ tighinn (because Iain is coming)
All photos were taken by me. The videos are from the end-of-course cèilidh at SMO. I’m not sure who took them.
On Saturday (1st April), I’m going to Scotland for a week. I’m staying in Glasgow that night, then on Sunday I’ll travel by train to Mallaig along the West Highland Line – one of the most spectacular train journeys I know of. From Mallaig I’ll take a ferry over to Armadale on the Isle of Skye, then a bus to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (SMO), the Gaelic college where I’ll be doing a course in Scottish Gaelic songs.
Glenfinnan / Gleann Fhionnain – one of the places you pass by on the West Highland Line
I’ve been to SMO many times before to do simliar courses, and am looking forward to it very much. Although the course is taught in English, there will be plenty of opportunities to speak Scottish Gaelic, and probably other languages. So, for the past few months, I’ve been brushing up my Gaelic on Duolingo.
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
I’ll be travelling from Glasgow with a Dutch friend I met back in 2019 when we both did a Gaelic song course at SMO. We’ve kept in touch ever since, and she, her husband and daughter came to visit me in 2022. When we met, I had only a basic knowledge of Dutch – now I can understand and read it quite well, and speak and write it to some extent. My Dutch friend has learnt Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, with a little help from me, and Duolingo.
On the way home I’ll stay with my mum for a few days, and we’ll be celebrating my birthday on 9th April.
While I’m away, I probably won’t have much time to update Omniglot, or to write blog posts or make podcasts.
The Japanese word 轟々 / ごうごう / ゴーゴー (gōgō) means thundering, roaring, rumbling or booming. The kanji 轟 (gō/kō/todoro) is made up of three carts (車), and is also used as a surname, which is pronounced Kuruma, Gō or Todoroki.
This kanji also appears in words like:
轟音 (gō’on) = thunderous roar, roaring sound
轟く (todoroku) = to roar, reverberate, be well-known, be famous, palpitate, throb
轟かす (todorosu) = to make a thundering sound, to make (one’s name, etc.) widely known, to make (one’s heart) pound
In Mandarin Chinese the character 轰 [轟] is pronounced hōng and means explosion, bang, boom, rumble, to attack, shoo away, expel.
It appears in words like:
轰动的成就 [轟動的成就] (hōngdòng de chéngjiù) = a howling success
轰动全世界 [轟動全世界] (hōngdòng quánshìjiè) = to set the world on fire
轰隆 [轟隆] (hōnglōng ) = to rumble
轰轰烈烈 [轟轟烈烈] (hōnghōnglièliè) = vigorously, grand and spectacular, fiery
轰赶 [轟趕] (hōnggǎn) = to drive off, shoo away
I like these compound characters that are made up of several duplicated characters. Other examples include
林 (hayashi – wood, forest), and 森 (mori – forest) which are made up of several 木 (ki – tree, shrub, bush, wood, timber). Put them together and we get 森林 (shinrin – forest, woods).
炎 (honō – flame, blaze, passion), which are made up of two 火 (hi – fire)
品 (hin – elegance, grace, article, item), which are made up of several 口 (kuchi – mouth)
龖 (tà – flight of a dragon), 龘 (tà – the appearance of a dragon walking) and 𪚥 (zhé – verbose) which are made up of several 龍 [龙] (lóng – dragon).
The dragon examples are rare and in Mandarin, the rest are in Japanese.
Languages are classified into families, meaning that all the languages within a particular family are known to have or thought to have developed from a common ancestor.
For example, the Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian, all developed from Latin. They are one branch of the Indo-European language family, along with Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Baltic, Indo-Aryan and other languages. It is believed that they all developed from a common ancestor known as Proto-Indo-European, which has been reconstructed.
Some languages have no known relatives and are known as language isolates. Examples include Basque, Ainu and Hadza.
In fact, most alphabetic scripts in use today come from the same Ancient Egyptian roots, or were inspired by or based on scripts from those roots.
Sometimes there is some debate about which family writings systems belong to, and whether they can be considered separate scripts, or variants forms of one script.
There are also many different scripts that are or were used in the Philippines. Some are considered regional variants of the Baybayin / Tagalog script, while others are considered separate scripts. For example, variants of Baybayin include Badlit, Kulitan and Basahan.
Are they separate scripts, or different versions of the Latin/Baybayin script? Does it matter? Who decides?
I’m putting together an index of writing systems on Omniglot arranged into families. It’s not quite finished yet though.
