Subscribe to Blog via Email
November 2024 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Category: Other Languages
Is Braille Alphabet universal, or is it specific and different for each language?
Braille – Wikipedia; English Braille – Wikipedia; Unified English Braille – Wikipedia Braille is an encoding of alphabets; since the alphabetic repertoire is going to be different within Roman script, let alone other alphabets, there will be differences in the repertoire. Not all Braille alphabets will have a W, or a É, or a Ч. […]
Why is the Icelandic language more linguistically conservative than other Germanic languages?
Our guesses: Language change is quicker in places where there are a lot of people, lots of social difference, and a lot of traffic. Lots of people generate more random linguistic variation; lots of social difference generates more deliberate linguistic variation; lots of traffic helps idiosyncratic distinctions that one person comes up with propagate. Iceland […]
How can my native language (Sgaw Karen) be added to Google Translate?
I refer you to: I want to add a new language to Google Translate. How do I do that? What are Google Translate requirements and criteria to add new language into the list of translated languages? How do I add malayalam language to Google translate for translating from english to malayalam? It’s a straight-out prioritisation […]
What is the word to call the husband in your country’s language?
Ah, Dimitris. Yoruba oga “boss” vs Ottoman Turkish ağa [aɣa, now aː] Agha (Ottoman Empire) “an honorific title for a civilian or military officer” < Old Turkic aqa “elder brother”. Three letter word, final vowel the same, consonant similar, meanings in the same ballpark. You can see why I’m not impressed. Islam was shared between […]
What does the inscription SOEGENG RAWOHIPOEN mean? Which language is it in?
Thank you Google RAWOHIPOEN SOEGENG. As Daniel Lindsäth pointed out, SOEGENG is Indonesian. When you google SOEGENG, you get Sugeng, which reminds me that Indonesian used to be spelled more Dutch than it is now, including using oe. I also realised that the SOEGENG comes first, the writing forms an arc. SOEGENG RAWOH IPOEN. Switch […]
What does Georgian sound like to foreigners?
What Sven Williams said. I have listened along to Chakrulo, that greatest of Georgian songs, with the transliterated lyrics; and I just could not hear the crunchy clusters. In fact, I’m going to do the same with some lyrics I just found: Hai, Khidistavs shevkrat piroba,chven gakhvdet ghivdzli dzmaniachaukhtet Mukhran Batonsa.Tavs davangriot bania! Hai, hai, […]
Why is an Acadian French accent considered funny compared to Quebecois French, which also has a funny accent?
Answer written with no knowledge of Acadien French other than that gathered through episodes of Acadieman. Remember. Dialects never sound funny because of something intrinsic to the local phonetics. It’s always political. It’s always about the relative prestige of the speakers. And it’s not about how dialects are supposedly ill-lettered corruptions of the pristine standard […]
Do you collect dictionaries? What is the favorite volume in your collection?
I have in my time collected dictionaries, though often it was for utilitarian purposes, so photocopies rather than books. The one I think of with the most affection is John Sampson (linguist): The dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. It’s uncompromisingly scholarly, from a time when the Roma were considered beneath the notice of decent […]
Not counting click languages, what is the oddest sounding language to speakers of English?
The weirdest sounds cross-linguistically would have to be those with a different airstream mechanism to the normal, pulmonic egressive mechanism. The normal pulmonic egressive mechanism is simply making the sounds while breathing out of your lungs. The lingual ingressive mechanism involves making sounds while sucking in air around your tongue. Those are, of course, clicks. […]
Why is the word “cat” almost the same in all languages?
The word cat is the same in a lot of languages, for the same reason that Coca-Cola is the same in even more languages. Because most cats were domesticated, and originated, in one place: Egypt. Not all cats: there was a separate domestication, Wikipedia tells me (Cat), in China. And extremely early domestication in Cyprus […]