In Chinese, many basic words are made up of one syllable, but many other words are compounds of 2 monosyllabic words. Many of those compounds were also borrowed into Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese, even though none of those three languages has any known genetic relationship to Chinese. The following table lists a few of…… Continue reading Disyllabic compound nouns in east and southeast Asia
Month: January 2025
BBC in Welsh and Gaelic
I’ve only just noticed that the BBC News web site has separate tabs for Wales and Scotland not just in English, but also in: Welsh Newyddion a mwy – BBC Cymru Fyw Scottish Gaelic Naidheachdan – BBC Naidheachdan
Great sound charts for 14 languages
There is a superb collection of sound charts at https://ielp.ehe.osu.edu/sep/interactive-ipa-charts They cover 14 languages: Arabic, Bengali, English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Nepali, Persian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Vietnamese. The document for each language contains: a chart showing the consonants used in that language, transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) another chart showing those…… Continue reading Great sound charts for 14 languages
Xmas with kids
Spending a week with our grandchildren between Christmas and New Year, I noticed a few things about how they use language. Strong verbs I came across 2 more examples of some creative formations of a past participle and of a simple past tense from strong verbs: our middle grandson (now 7 years 0 months) produced…… Continue reading Xmas with kids
Hard and soft consonants in Russian
Most Russian consonants come in pairs, of one ‘soft’ consonant and one ‘hard’ consonant. A soft consonant is one that is palatalised—pronounced with the centre of the tongue raised towards the roof of the mouth (palate). A hard consonant is a consonant that is not soft. One example of a distinction in English between a…… Continue reading Hard and soft consonants in Russian
I apologise for not having an allergy
In recent years, servers in cafés and restaurants in England (particularly younger servers) have taken to saying ‘no problem’ or its near-synonym ‘no worries’ in response to each order by each customer. This sometimes leads to odd results. Fussy, but no problem I presume that ‘no problem’ used in this way originated as a response…… Continue reading I apologise for not having an allergy