Two language varieties are often regarded as separate languages if they differ greatly and if speakers of each variety cannot easily understand the other variety. They are often viewed as dialects of a single language if they differ little and if their speakers can readily understand each other. In between those extremes, there is no clear distinction between a…… Continue reading Language or dialect
Tag: Swedish
Languages in Finland
A booklet called The languages of Finland 1917-2017 was written to celebrate Finland’s centenary as an independent state. The author, Fred Karlsson, Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki, and author of Finnish: a comprehensive grammar (2018). The booklet is available online at Languages of Finland_1917-2017.pdf (helsinki.fi), along with Finnish and Swedish…… Continue reading Languages in Finland
Citation form for English verbs
The form used as the name of a noun or verb is sometimes known as the noun or verb’s citation form. In some Indo-European languages, the citation form for a verb is its infinitive. In many cases, the infinitive has an inflectional suffix, for example French infinitives generally end in -er, -ir, -re or -oir.…… Continue reading Citation form for English verbs
Where did Albanian words come from?
In this post, I look at 70 words that Albanian inherited directly from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the presumed ancestor of the Indo-European family of languages. The information comes from the IE-COR database—a database of cognates for 109 modern and 52 older Indo-European languages. I’ve written before about IE-COR. Database of Indo-European cognates – Language Miscellany IE-COR…… Continue reading Where did Albanian words come from?
Importing a foreign consonant into Finnish
I found an interesting little example about foreign loan words in Finnish in New Perspectives in Historical Linguistics, Paul Kiparsky, in The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, edited by Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans (2014). The example is on foreign words containing /f/. I summarise below what Kiparsky says about 2 strategies for dealing with…… Continue reading Importing a foreign consonant into Finnish
140 years to make a Swedish dictionary
In late 2023, The Swedish Academy completed the 39th (and final) volume of its authoritative Swedish Dictionary. The Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB, the Swedish Academy’s Dictionary) is a historical and etymological dictionary, listing 511,960 words on 33,111 pages. https://www.saob.se/ The work began in 1883. Languages don’t stand still, so the Academy is now working on…… Continue reading 140 years to make a Swedish dictionary
English Grammar Day 2024
I went last week to an event called English Grammar Day 2024 at the British Library. This event has been held for the last 10 years, but I went for the first time in 2023. The event is sponsored by UCL (the official short name of University College London), the University of Oxford and the…… Continue reading English Grammar Day 2024
Sail in on a shrimp sandwich
It’s always fun to hear odd-sounding idioms and proverbs in other languages. Anita Shenoi’s nicely illustrated book Sail in on a shrimp sandwich … and other curious Swedish sayings (2017) lists 63 Swedish sayings. Here are 5 of them, with a literal translation, followed by a description of the meaning. Segla in på en täkmacka…… Continue reading Sail in on a shrimp sandwich
A is for Bee
A is for BEE: An Alphabet Book in Translation, by Ellen Heck, is a delightful alphabet book for children. Each page lists one or more words starting with the same letter and has bright pictures illustrating each word. The pages are in alphabetical order. This is an alphabet book with a twist: each page lists…… Continue reading A is for Bee
Nynorsk writer wins Nobel literature prize
The winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature was someone who writes in Norwegian, Jon Fosse. That award is notable not just because Fosse is the first winner known best for his plays since Harold Pinter (2005). And not just because he is the first winner who writes in Norwegian since Sigrid Undset (1928).…… Continue reading Nynorsk writer wins Nobel literature prize