Language Museum Blog

There’s an interesting post on The Economist’s Johnson blog looking into the debate about which language has the biggest vocabulary.

Stephen Fry apparently claimed English has the largest vocabulary by a “long, long, long, long way”. Is he right? Skipping to the end of the post (although it’s definitely worth a read):

…If I had to give a short answer to the question “does English have the biggest vocabulary?,” I’d say “Who cares?” English is a rich and beautiful language, not least because England has been conquered by Vikings and Normans, and has happily been open to foreign influence through its history. We know more of its wonderful rare words because English has been written for over a thousand years, and its many dialects are well described. That’s good enough for me. We shouldn’t need it to have the biggest vocabulary—which can’t be defined in any sensible way—to enjoy it.

I have to agree with the writer – enjoy your native language, and any new ones you’re lucky enough to pick up. You’ll constantly learn and discover new words and phrases, so who cares about the statistics?

Dickens has been translated into street slang, by the author who re-wrote Shakepeare’s plays in text-speak.

The ‘translator’ Martin Baum, has modified 16 Dickens novels into stories nine or ten pages long, including changing the immortal line from Oliver Twist – “Please Sir, I want some more” – into “Oi mate, gimme some more”.

He said:

“There are many people who love and understand great literature but many more who don’t. My book is the bait to draw them in and get them interested in some wonderful stories.” ( Source: The Australian)

Hmm, seems like a gimmick to me. Perhaps I’m biased though, as I have an aversion to Dickens’ work!

* I’m not quite sure where this phrase comes from, but my mum uses it a lot. It seems to mean that the required outcome of a task will be hard to achieve – “I had a dickens of job trying to pull up those roots.” Anyone know the origin?

England haven’t yet been kicked out of the World Cup (despite the shameful draw with the USA) so to celebrate, why not learn some more South African slang?

Last week I brought you such gems as ‘chips! Chips!’ – now it’s time for some more useful terms:

BLIKSEM (BLUK-SEM): If you’re in a pub and you accidentally spill a beer belonging to a man with a thick neck, he may say: “Do you want me to bliksem you?” Don’t respond. Just run. Run for your life. It’s the Afrikaans word for hit or strike or punch.

That could definitely come in handy.

DINGES (DING-US): An indeterminate, nondescript thing or term for an object whose name you’ve momentarily forgotten. Like this: “Please pass me my dinges there.” “What?” “My dinges. I want to blow it.” “You mean your vuvuzela?” “Yes, my vuvuzela.”

Dinges seems to me like the South African version of ‘thing’ or ‘thingy’ in English. As in: “Please pass me my thing there.” “What?” “My thingy. I want to blow it.” “You mean your vuvuzela?” “Yes, my vuvuzela.”

ROBOT: When you’re asking for directions and someone says: “Left at the third robot,” it is not because our streets are overrun with menacing cyborgs made by Japanese scientists. No. A robot is simply our word for traffic light.

(Source: Times Live)

With the football World Cup starting tomorrow, it’s time to take a look at some South African slang.

The slang is taken from South Africa’s 11 different languages, which all have constitutionally guaranteed equal status. These languages reflect the diversity of the country, and are:

Afrikaans
English
IsiNdebele
IsiXhosa
IsiZulu
Sepedi
Sesotho
Setswana
SiSwati
Tshivenda
Xitsonga

In addition a number of other languages are spoken including Khoi, Nama and San languages, sign language, and some indigenous creoles and pidgins.

Here are some examples of slang – I particularly like ‘chips! Chips!’:

Babbelas (bub-a-lars). Hangover – usually rather a bad one. From the isiZulu word for hangover isibhabhalazi. “Hello, hello. Great party last night. How’s your head? Are you a bit babbelas?”

Bra (brah) or bru. Nothing to do with underwear at all, but an informal term for “my friend” or “mate”, deriving from “brother”. ‘He’s my bra but that team he supports is rubbish.” Bru stems from the Afrikaans for brother, broer.

Chips! Chips!. Nothing you’ll find in the kebab shop around the corner but an expression of alarm or warning. “Chips! Chips! He’s off-side”

(Source: The Guardian)

Over at the LanguageHat blog I saw a post about a live translation event taking place as part of the London Review Bookshop’s World Literature Weekend.

The challenge has been set by the francophone novelist Alain Mabanckou – two translators will offer up their translation of his short text, and then discuss and debate the differences with the author and each other. The idea is to bring out aspects of the text that aren’t normally paid attention to as well as paying attention to the process of translation itself.

Audience members will receive a copy of the French text as well as the two English translations to help them follow along.

The event is being held at the British Museum in London on Saturday 19th June. Definitely looks well worth attending!

A little fun for the afternoon – a quiz on synonyms from the Guardian.

Synonyms are words with identical or very similar meanings. If you’re writing an essay or letter and you’ve used a word too many times, the synonym option on your word processing package can be very useful. Some writers take the quest for different words a little too far though – a carrot as a “popular orange vegetable” is an example from the Guardian’s Mind Your Language blog.

Some useful resources on synonyms are Synonyms.net (self-described as “the world’s most comprehensive synonyms resource”), which offers synonyms in English only, and Thesaurus, with synonyms in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

Back in April I posted about how to pronounce Eyjafjallajoekull, the troublesome Icelandic volcano.

A friend sent me this amusing cartoon from The Oatmeal, so I thought I’d share.

*Oops, the image doesn’t seem display fully, so go check it out over on The Oatmeal’s website.

A quirky admissions exam that asked candidates to write an essay based on a single word has been scrapped by an Oxford University college.

All Souls College had offered the exam since 1932, along with more traditional tests. Applicants would discover the word in the exam and have three hours to somehow produce a coherent essay.

It’s described as the “hardest exam in the world”, but surely spinning an essay out of a single word can’t be that difficult?

The horrifying thing about Essay is not how difficult it is, but how simple. You turn over the plain blank sheet of A4 paper, and there is a single word on it; you have nothing else to write about for the next three hours….

The Essay is an exceptional test of intelligence. Ask someone when the Battle of Hastings took place, and they’ll either get it right or wrong. Ask them, “How did Athens run the Laurium silver mines?” – as I was asked in my ancient history Finals – and the answer is still pretty specific. But ask someone – or don’t even ask them, just state to someone – a single word, and there’s infinite room for genius, or stupidity, to expand within the word’s parameters. (Source: The Telegraph)

Here’s a word for you to ponder on: language.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a book by Daniel Everett called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes.

Coincidentally I just came across a post on the Omniglot blog sharing a video in which Everett talks about the Pirahã language, amongst other things. It’s called Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge, and can be found below as well as here. Enjoy!

A cool new application from Google will soon be able to help you translate from written words.

Google Goggles users can point their phone at a word or phrase they wish to have translated, and then fine-tune their onscreen selection to a smaller area. Using the phone’s camera, the application will recognise the language and give you an option to translate it. This makes the application perfect for globetrotters – whether you need a menu or sign translated, you can do so without the hassle of searching through a guide book or dictionary.

The application can only translate languages based on the Latin alphabet such as English, French, Italian, German and Spanish at the moment, but once the text is captured it can be quickly translated to other languages. Google are apparently confident that other languages, including Chinese, Arabic and Hindi will soon be added to the app.

Whilst the app is free, you’ll need a mobile device running Android 1.6 or higher. I’ll definitely be giving this a try on my trip to Italy next month!