A bill aiming to boost the use of Gaelic (Gàidhlig) and of Scots has passed another stage in the Scottish Parliament. If the Scottish Languages Bill becomes law, it will enable parents to ask for a Gaelic school to be established in their area. Local authorities would then be required to assess whether the request…… Continue reading Scottish languages make progress
Month: June 2025
Saying where things are in Japanese
Like English, Japanese often uses a basic locative construction to answer a question about where something or someone is. But Japanese uses different constructions for some questions of that kind, although English would use the basic locative construction in those cases too. Kita (2006) summarises 4 such cases. Basic locative construction Japanese often uses a…… Continue reading Saying where things are in Japanese
Dictionary of an obscure constructed language
A recent new book announcement tells the world about A dictionary of the artificial language Oz, by Alan Libert The announcement says that: Oz is an artificial auxiliary language created by Charles Milton Elam. in spite of its name, it was a serious project. it belongs to the a priori group of artificial languages, i.e.…… Continue reading Dictionary of an obscure constructed language
Polish nasals
There are 2 nasal vowels in Polish: ɛ̃ (written<ę>); and ɔ̃ (written <ą>). Nasal phoneme or partly nasal diphthong? There are 2 views of the 2 nasal vowels in Polish: the nasal vowels are a single vowel phoneme (a single vocalic unit). Advocates of this view include Rothstein (1993). the nasal vowels are diphthongs having…… Continue reading Polish nasals
England lose their first game
A sub-headline in today’s edition of The Times contains at best an ambiguity—and at worst an outright error. It reads: Woeful England deservedly lose their first game under Tuchel Out of context, this could mean any of the following: England [the England men’s national football team] lost their first ever football match, and the match…… Continue reading England lose their first game
Care for some oney on your weasel?
Picking a pizza at a restaurant in Bayeu (Normandy), I was puzzled to find that one of the ingredients in the Pizza Belette was Oney. Then I looked at the original and all became clear: the French says miel (‘honey’). The letter <h> isn’t pronounced in French. Presumably, that fact makes French people more…… Continue reading Care for some oney on your weasel?
What kinds of human language exist?
Hammarström (2016) defines human language as ‘a human-learnable communication system with conventionalized form-meaning pairs capable of expressing the entire communicative needs of a human society’. He points out that two kinds of such human languages are attested as mother tongues: spoken languages, whose form is acoustic. Spoken languages distinguish vowels from consonants. signed languages, whose…… Continue reading What kinds of human language exist?
Museums of language and languages
Did you know there is a museum about language? Actually, there are several. There is a list of them in online book Language museums of the world, edited by Ottar Grepstad and published in 2018 by the Centre for Norwegian Language and Literature. https://languagemuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/Language-museums-of-the-World.pdf The oldest language museum in the world is the Ivar Aasen…… Continue reading Museums of language and languages