Language of the week: Welsh
Did you know that Welsh is now one of the 111 languages available to learn with uTalk? And as it was Saint David’s Day yesterday, we’ve chosen Welsh as our language of the week.
1st March each year is when the Welsh celebrate the patron Saint of Wales, who died on that day in or around 569 AD. People all around the globe mark the day by wearing the national emblems, either a leek or a daffodil, and there are parades and various music and cultural events to celebrate the holiday.
St David was buried in the Cathedral of St David’s in Pembrokeshire, which has now become a popular place of pilgrimage.
Here are some fun facts and figures about the Welsh language and Wales (Cymru):
- Arsenal footballer Aaron Ramsay, and singers Connie Fisher, Rhydian Roberts, Cerys Mathews and Duffy all speak Welsh, as do actors Ioan Gruffudd and Matthew Rhys.
- The Welsh alphabet does not include the letters J, K, V, X and Y.
- The Welsh Motto is: ‘Cymru am byth’ (pronounced come-ree am-bith), which means Wales for ever, or long live Wales.
- 21% of the population in Wales speak Welsh, and 20% of primary school children are taught in Welsh.
- The village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the longest place name in Britain. Anyone want to have a go at pronouncing it?!
- The national animal of Wales is the Dragon, which appears on the country’s flag.
- Welsh is a Celtic language and was one of the earliest written languages in Europe.
- Since 1865, there’s been a Welsh colony in Patagonia, Argentina. The people there speak Patagonian Welsh, which is different to the Welsh spoken in Wales. This year is the colony’s 150th anniversary.
- Wales is said to contain more castles per square mile than any other country in the world.
- A traditional dish in Wales is laverbread, which is made from seaweed (have you ever tried it?)
Did you celebrate St David’s Day yesterday? Tell us about it in the comments!
Language of the week: Thai
This week on the 5th, 6th and 7th November, it’s the Yi Peng and Loy Krathong festival in Thailand, otherwise known as the Lantern Festival. After seeing some pictures and watching some videos, it looks like one of the most breath-taking festivals I have seen.
Yi Peng and Loy Krathong
Both of the festivals are a spiritual, ancient and sacred affair that invite new beginnings via spiritual cleaning. Yi Peng is where thousands of people gather to release Khom Li (Lit lanterns) into the night sky and make a wish, as well as paying homage to the Buddha. The sky is completely transformed into a wonderful and mesmerising spectacle. 
The Loy Krathong festival is believed to be an ancient Brahmanic or Indic festival. Originally it was a ceremony where people paid their respects to three different gods known as Phra I-Suan (Shiva), Phra Narai (Vishnu) and Pra Phrom (Brahma). However, one hundred and fifty years ago it was adopted by Buddhists as a ceremony to honour the Buddha. Today people create small floating vessels made from banana stalks and decorated with incense, offerings, flowers and candles. They are then floated down the river and are meant to symbolise the drifting away of bad luck and misfortune. Many Thai people also see it as an opportunity to honour the goddess of water.
Thai
Did you know that over 60 million people speak Thai? Outside of Thailand, the largest concentration of Thai speakers is in Los Angeles where there are approximately 80,000 immigrants.
In terms of learning Thai, it is very important to get the tones correct. Within the language there are five tones:
Mid tones
Low tones
High tones
Falling tones
Rising tones
It is very important to distinguish these tones, as getting them wrong may lead you to say something completely different to what you had intended. For instance:
ไมล์ [mai] – mile
ใหม่ [mài] – new
ไม้ [mái] – wood
ไม่ [mâi] – not
ไหม [mǎi] – silk
They all look like they should be spoken in the same way; however, it is the tone that differentiates the word.
This week we want to hear if any of you have been to Thailand and your adventures you had had whilst over there. Or maybe you’re learning Thai, and have some tips for our readers? Let us know in the comments!
Amy
Japanoises (How things sound in Japanese)
Have you ever wondered how to make the sound of a typewriter in Japanese? Or how to describe the noise a cat makes?
Well, wonder no more. We present to you – Japanoises! (Yes, we were so excited that we made up a word.)
Which one’s your favourite?
Other Japanese sounds that almost made it into our top ten – ‘Doki-doki’, which is the sound of an anxious heartbeat, and ‘Chokon’, which is, literally, the sound of silence.
How do you describe these sounds in your language?
Like this? Please share it with friends! Let’s get #Japanoises trending… 😉
Embed This Image On Your Site (copy code below):
Language of the Week: Japanese
As it was the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday, we have chosen Japanese as our Language of the Week.
First and foremost, our thoughts and good wishes go to Jules Bianchi for his full recovery following his crash on Sunday at Suzuka.
Though in many respects I’m a complete petrol head, I have never found Grand Prix very interesting to watch, lap after lap, rarely exciting in my book. However, when I started to research the history of the Japanese Grand Prix, I found some interesting facts:
Surprisingly it is the only circuit that crosses over itself in a figure of eight and therefore runs both clockwise and anti-clockwise.
The fastest lap ever recorded at the Suzuka circuit is 1:30.54 minutes and was set by Kimi Räikkönen in 2005. To put this into perspective, since the track is 3.387 miles long, if a Cheetah could run at its fastest for further than 1500ft, it would take it approximately 2.7mins!
When looking to learn Japanese it can appear very daunting because of the characters. However, it is one of those languages which is much easier to speak than write. Unlike the majority of languages, nouns do not have genders and there is also no differentiation between singular and plural. Personally, we love both these facts. There are also no pronunciation or tones.
Here are a few fun facts about Japan:
Japan’s trains are among the most punctual in the world, their average delay is just 18 seconds. (What we’d give for that on a rainy Monday in London!)- Japanese farmers are growing square watermelons, because they are easier to stack and store. (Now that is thinking outside the box! Or is that inside?)
- In Japan there is a cat café where you can and go drink coffee whilst hanging out with cats for hours (Is that a new kind of speed dating opportunity?)
- This one has to be one of our favourites – sleeping on the job is acceptable as it’s a sign of exhaustion from working hard. (Sweet dreams!)
- In Japan there is no Ronald McDonald!! But panic not Big Mac fans, he’s called Donald McDonald due to the lack of a clear “R” sound in Japanese.
- There is an island in Japan called Ōkunoshima or Rabbit Island, since numerous feral rabbits run wild, though apparently they are quite tame!
The challenge for you all this week is another tongue twister:
Niwa no niwa ni wa, niwa no niwatori wa niwaka ni wani wo tabeta
Which means: In (Mr) Niwa’s garden, two chickens suddenly ate a crocodile.
So let’s see your best efforts! Send us your videos on Twitter to @EuroTalk using #itsJapaneasy or send them to us on Facebook – our favourite will win a free uTalk Premium in a language of your choice. Get twisting!
Are you learning Japanese? Or do you have any favourite facts about the language or the country? Let us know in the comments!
Amy
Language of the Week: German
As the annual festival of Oktoberfest gets underway in Munich this week, we’ve chosen German as our latest Language of the Week.
If you’re anything like us, when you hear ‘Oktoberfest’ you probably think of beer (oh – just us?) but there’s a lot more to the event than that. Oktoberfest is actually the world’s largest funfair, and it’s a 16-day festival running from late September to early October. There is a lot of beer consumed though – 6.7 million litres at the 2013 festival! – and it’s also a great place to try traditional German food.
German is often described as a less attractive language to learn than, say, Spanish or Italian, but we’re not sure we agree. For one thing, German’s far more creative. How many other languages have a word for ‘a face badly in need of a fist’? It’s backpfeifengesicht, in case you were interested.
Here are a few fun facts about German:
– It’s an official language of five countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, and has at least 100 million native speakers around the world.
– You might know more German than you think – ever used the word ‘angst’, ‘kindergarten’ or ‘doppelgänger’? These are just a few examples – there are plenty more.
– German is known for its very long words, which are created by sticking together other words to explain a concept. In 2013, the language lost its longest word – rindfleischetikettierungsueberwachungsaufgabenuebertragungsgesetz – which is 63 letters long and means ‘law delegating beef label monitoring’, thanks to a change in EU regulations.
However most of these long compound words don’t appear in the dictionary. The longest word that does appear is kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (‘automobile liability insurance’) at a mere 36 letters long, although we wish donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe (widow of a Danube steamboat company captain) was in there too.
We love this video by Language Hat, which is a really fun explanation of how these long words are put together. If you don’t find yourself craving rhubarb cake or beer by the end of it, you’re doing better than us!
– ‘Gift’ may be a nice thing in English, but in German it means ‘poison’, so be careful who you give it to…
– In German, when telling the time, ‘half three’ actually means ‘half an hour before three’ (i.e. ‘half past two’) – definitely worth knowing before making any plans.
– Germany is often known as Das Land der Dichter und Denker, which means ‘the land of poets and thinkers’. Not surprising really, since this is the country that gave us Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein and the Brothers Grimm. It’s also the home of the first pregnancy test, invented by German researchers Selmar Aschheim and Bernhard Zondek. So now you know.
We know there are a lot of German fans out there, so please tell us why you love the language and the country – either in the comments or on Twitter to @EuroTalk with hashtag #loveGerman 🙂
And if we’ve convinced you to give German a go, remember you can start learning it completely free with uTalk or the free demo on our website.
