Darkoshi

many languages

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 00:26:09 GMT

The letter I received with my new health insurance card for 2023 includes an impressive sheet. The sheet says the following in many different languages: "To access language services at no cost to you, call the number on your ID card."

This sheet, and the languages included on it, are probably determined by law, but it is the sheer number (66) and variety of the languages included which impresses me.
Some of the less-common-for-me-to-see languages included are:

Bantu-Kirundi, Cebuano, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chuukese, Cushitic-Oromo, Gujarati, Igbo, Ilocano, Kru-Bassa, Marshallese, Micronesian-Ponapean, Navajo, Nilotic-Dinka, Pennsylvanian Dutch, Sudanic Fulfulde, and Yoruba.

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Manipur

Mon, 05 Jul 2021 00:32:45 GMT

Manipur - one of the eastern-most states of India, on the border with Myanmar.
Meitei - a language and ethnic group of people in that region.
Sanamahism - a religion in that region.

The history of India is so extensive. I don't remember learning any of it in school, except perhaps a brief mention of the East India Company and Gandhi. I wonder if they teach much more of it in British primary schools?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_integration_of_India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princely_state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal_Empire

Manipuri dance, a traditional dance form, has some quite unusual-looking dresses:

Video title: Manipuri classical dance Basanta Raas
Posted by: WildFilmsIndia
Date posted: Feb 3, 2016

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strange folk song

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 21:40:25 GMT

This song was released today, by Laurita Peleniūtė & Auļi:
Sveteliai / Ciemiņi

The page says it is a Lithuanian folk song and lists the Lithuanian lyrics (as sung) as well as Latvian and English translations.

The first word in the title, "Sveteliai" must be the Lithuanian title, and the 2nd "Ciemiņi" must be the Latvian, and they both seem to mean "Guests".

The English translation of the lyrics start out as might be expected for a folk song, about drinking and ploughing fields. But there's an odd feel to them.

This line occurs twice in the song and raises my curiosity: "I’ve never had guests like this before." The rest of the song doesn't explain what is meant by "like this".

The song has a creepy end: "If you don’t want to sleep, go hang yourselves. I made some ropes of hemp for you."
The earlier parts of the song about ploughshares and scythes felt odd to me, because why would you tell guests to go out and work in the fields? But in retrospect those parts are also creepy due to the singer stating that she has made those items (ie. sharp steel blades) for the guests.

I don't know what to make of the song.
I didn't find any other webpages about this song, to help explain it.
But it definitely has a sinister murderous feel.

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what does it say about itself

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 20:07:42 GMT

It occurred to me to wonder in what year Wikipedia was started. So what do I do? I look it up on Wikipedia!

2001, by the way.

This chart is a reminder that Wikipedia is not only an English-language resource:
Article count of European Wikipedias by language family

There have only been a few times I recall seeing or reading articles in a non-English language Wikipedia. I wonder if you look up something on one language version of the site, if the results ever include articles in the other language versions? Or are they completely separate. Are there completely different articles in different languages on the same subject? That would be interesting to see, sometimes. They ought to link to each other.
But I only wonder, not wanting to take more time of my day now looking up about that.

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Maltese

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 05:51:02 GMT

I've been reading a bit about Malta as I had only a vague idea of where it was, and knew not much else about it.

Per Wikipedia, in the past Jews and Muslims were expelled from the island, and Catholicism is now the main religion (83%) there. Yet the predominant language, Maltese, is descended from Silician Arabic (which is now extinct).

So Malta is a mainly Christian nation with an Arabic-sounding language. I wonder if there are any other countries like that.

Video title: The Sound of the Maltese language (Numbers, Greetings, Words & Sample Text)
Posted by: ILoveLanguages!
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIv_7dMTl3g
Date posted: Nov 7, 2020

According to that video, "Good Afternoon" in Maltese is "Il wara nofs in-nhar it-tajjeb!"
I wondered what the literal translation of that was, as surely that is saying more than just "good afternoon".
But from checking the individual words in Google translate:
wara = after
nofs = half
in-nhar = in the day
it-tajjeb = the good
So it sort of means "good second half of the day", which really does simply mean "good afternoon".

.

Then I clicked on a suggested video explaining How to Roll Your R's.
My R's aren't rolling yet but maybe if I keep practicing. Once in a while, even before, I've been able to get a very short trill, but nothing sustainable.

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lawyers, avocados, syllabaries

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 05:16:30 GMT

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abugida
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida

"a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as a unit; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary."

I'm still not clear on the difference between an abugida and a syllabary or alphasyllabary. But no matter. I'm posting this mainly in case I forget the word, as I suspect I will.

It feels like a Spanish word to me... abogada/abogado, that's what it reminds me of. Lawyer.
And that sure is similar to avocado, now that I think of it.

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translating spoken Chinese from audio file

Tue, 18 Feb 2020 02:16:39 GMT

I got a strange voicemail in Chinese on my cellphone from the number 202-495-3793 (a Washington, DC area code). It's a short official-sounding recorded message in a female voice, with a simple musical tune in the background. (I like how the Chinese language, being tone-based, is itself melodic even without the music.)

I was curious as to what the message said, so I saved it to an audio file on my laptop. Then I opened Google Translate in the Chrome browser (the option for translating from audio / microphone input is only available in Chrome, not Firefox). The page's text input box has a microphone icon in the lower left that you click for it to start listening. But first you need to select the language; it won't auto-detect when using the mic input. Then I played the audio file.

The translating didn't work very well. I tried it several times. Mostly, it didn't recognize any words, and showed no output. A couple of times, it showed the following output. This is only a small portion of what was said:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi
Chinese Ambassador to the United States

But I'm not even sure that much of it is correct. In the audio, I can hear "Zhongguó zhù" at the very beginning, but not "mei dàshi" after it. Maybe that is from a different part of it. It's spoken so fast that I can't tell.. I do hear "shi" a few times but not sure about the rest.

I tried again and this time got:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan
中国驻美大使馆
Chinese Embassy in the United States

Zhongguó = China
dàshi guan = Embassy

I also tried playing back the recording at 2/3s speed, in hopes that would let Google Translate hear the words better. But it did not help.

Hum, this is sort of fun: Try to say Chinese sounding things and see what it translates to. But you have to click the mic to stop and restart in between, as otherwise it seems to output the same thing over and over again. ("No no no")

I seem to have learned how to say "China" (Zhongguó) pretty well! (But I doubt I'll remember it.)

Ah, in my trying to read "Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan", it instead translates it to "The beauty of life".

But I tested translating from me speaking German, and it translates that very well! I can hardly say anything that it doesn't understand! Even with my not-so-great speaking voice.

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the passion of dandelion and hickory

Sat, 11 Jan 2020 23:12:42 GMT

Although I'm vegan, I don't often buy much fresh fruit and vegetables. Doing so results in needing to wash, peel, cut, cook, (etc.) as well as eat them, and to do so before they go bad, regardless of whether I have the time that day or week. Background stress. Not buying them avoids that. Usually I'll only buy a few easy things here or there. Avocados are good. Occasional fruit. Carrots; they last almost forever in the fridge without going bad.

I felt like cooking something this weekend though, and that fruit would be nice too. So yesterday I bought:

a passion fruit
2 oranges
blueberries
blackberries
jicama (pre-cut sticks, ideal for munching on! such a great convenience even though it comes in a plastic container)
fennel
dandelion greens

The fennel didn't have a bar-code on it. At the self-check-out station, it wasn't listed in the item look-up menu. A Kroger store employee came over to help, but we couldn't find it on their physical cheat-sheet either. Then I said, "It's also called anise, but I don't think it would be listed under that..." Yet it was listed as "anise / fennel".

.

My erstwhile flu or cold still lingers a bit. Last weekend, my upper right chest area ached for a day; might mean a slight lung infection. My throat has been phlegmy; I still have a slight cough and occasional runny nose. Otherwise, I've still been feeling ok. Still much better than the usual kind of colds I get, where my nose is runny and/or congested non-stop for days or weeks.

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Kleenex has renamed their "Cool Touch" tissues to "Cooling Lotion". In the store yesterday, I wasn't sure if it was the same product. The ingredient list included polyethylene (plastic!?), which I hadn't remembered it having. So I took a photo of the label and didn't buy any. But comparing that now to a "Cool Touch" box which I still have, the ingredients are the same.

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While walking, I passed a hickory tree and thought of that children's rhyming song, Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock. Except I thought the rhyme must be like "Tickety tickety tock, the mouse ran up the clock" (since clocks go tick tock). I recall thinking, well if I *did* put in the word "hickory", how should it go, "Hickory hickory hawk?" I played around with other variations in my mind, "clickety clickety clock", "clippety clippety clop"

Looking it up today, I was surprised that my brain's initial word association of "hickory" with the rhyme was correct. It's interesting that those words "hickory dickory dock" may have come from Cumbric numbers.

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Kazakh

Sat, 03 Aug 2019 06:37:44 GMT

This Kazakh music video is both visually and audibly (the sound of the Kazakh language) intriguing to me, even though I don't like the scenes of war and fighting. From what I've been able to find, it was made in honor of Kazakhstan's 550th anniversary. The music group is named Gauhartas.

Video title: Гаухартас- "Казагым-ай" (клип 2015) (Gauhartas "Kazagim-ay")
Posted by: Айганым Баймуратова
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FlBCJbb2oo
Date posted: Oct 23, 2015

Here are the lyrics along with an English translation. Some of the translation does not make much sense, and Google Translate seems to do a better job for those parts.

Some things I learned after watching the video:
Kazakhstan has a small ethnic group of Germans.
The Volga Germans were ethnic Germans who settled in a region of Russia in the 18th century.
About 100,000 ethnic Germans from Russia immigrated to the U.S. by 1900.
During WW2, the Soviet Union deported all of the Volga Germans (over 900,000) to camps in Siberia and Kazakhstan as a "preventive measure". A third of them died during the deportation.

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Korean numbers

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 03:42:36 GMT

Counting Numbers in Korean - there are 2 different sets of number words, used for counting different things. That explains why the numbers we learned in TaeKwonDo class don't always match the Korean numbers I hear in other contexts.

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counting

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 03:58:05 GMT

www.languagesandnumbers.com - a neat site where you can look up how to count in many different languages.

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