Author Archives: polyglottando

Swahili: Some survival phrases and East African art

Author: Amoghavarsha, Wikipedia Commons

Today’s blog post is taking us to East Africa, to the area where Swahili is spoken. Swahili is a language of the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family of languages and its name is derived from the Arabic word sawahil سواحل, meaning “coasts” (from sāḥil (ساحل), meaning “boundary” or “coast” ). Kiswahili means ‘coastal language’, the prefix ki- indicating a noun of the noun class which includes languages.

Author: Brocken Inaglory, Wikipedia Commons
Zanzibar

Standard Swahili developed from the urban dialect of Zanzibar City and was originally spoken by the people living along the coast of the mainland and was spread by fishermen to the islands off East Africa, but then became the language of coastal trade and from the 7th century CE onward it was heavily influenced by Arabic, mainly in the vocabulary. Other influences came from Persian, Portuguese, Hindi, French and English. Swahili is the official language of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as being the lingua franca of the Great Lakes region of Africa. It is spoken by about 50 million people. The name Zanzibar derives from Arabic Zinj el-Barr, which means Land of the Blacks. Zanzibar Island is called Unguja in Kiswahili, and Zanzibar Town is known as the Stone Town or Mji Mkongwe.

Author: Justin Clements, Wikipedia Commons
wooden door at Lamu in Kenya

Author: Maclemo, Wikipedia Commons
door at Fort Jesus in Mombasa

Here some survival phrases in Kiswahili:

Habari Hello

Tutaonana Goodbye

Asante Thank you

Karibu You’re welcome

Tafadhali Please

Ndiyo Yes

Hapana No

Pole Sorry

Samahani Excuse me

Jina lako nani? What’s your name?

Jina langu ni.…. My name is….

The greeting ‘jambo‘ is used to greet tourists who are presumed not to be able to speak Kiswahili. Hujambo? means ‘How are you?’ and the answer is Sijambo, meaning ‘I am fine’.

And here are the words for the most iconic East African animals:

simba lion

tembo elephant

chui leopard

kifaru rhinoceros

twiga giraffe

punda milia zebra

swala gazelle

Tingatinga paintings in East Africa

Tanzania is also home to two internationally recognized art styles, Tingatinga painting and Makonde carvings. The Tinga Tinga school of painting is a style which developed in the second half of the 20th century in the Oyster Bay area of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and is named after its founder, Edward Said Tingatinga. It later spread to most of East Africa. The art style is characterized by its bright colours and its depiction of people, animals or daily life. Tingatinga paintings are traditionally made on masonite (a hardboard made of steam-cooked and pressure-molded wood fibres) or on canvas, using several layers of bicycle paint which gives the paintings their brilliant and highly saturated colours. Tingatinga paintings are an example of a tourist-orientated style, with their subject matter chosen to appeal to western tourists, e.g. featuring the Big Five of Eastern African mammals. The paintings are also usually small, so they can be easily transported, and their style can be considered both naive and caricatural, and sarcasm and humour are often evident.

Author: MatthiasKabel, Wikipedia Commons
Makonde carving c.1967

Author: MatthiasKabel, Wikipedia Commons
Makonde carving c. 1967

Makonde art is a sculptural style developed by the Makonde, a tribe native to Tanzania and Mozambique. It is famous for the high Ujamaas (Trees of Life) made of the hard and dark wood of the ebony tree (Diospyros ebenum and Swartzia ssp.). The Makonde traditionally carve masks, figures and household objects.

Focus on Architecture: Muqarnas

Today’s blog post will take us to the Islamic world again, and to a feature of Islamic architecture, the muqarnas (Persianمقرنس , Arabic مقرنص). Muqarnas are ornamented vaults consisting of a complex arrangement of vertical prisms, and are sometimes also called stalactite or honeycomb vaults, due to their resemblance to these. When the muqarnas resemble stalactites, they are known as mocárabe (Arabic al-halimat al-‘uliya, or ‘the overhang’).

Author: Patrickringgenberg, Wikipedia Commons
Isfahan Royal Mosque – muqarnas

The muqarnas design is a geometric subdivision of a so-called ‘squinch’ into a large number of miniature squinches, arranged into complex prisms. The squinch probably originated in Iran (from Persian “سه+کنج) “سکنج) sekonj) and is a masonry construction in the upper angles of a square room which forms the base for a spherical or octogonal dome. It is constructed either by an arch or a number of corbelled arches built diagonally across the corner. The muqarnas are used for domes and, in particular, half-domes in apses and entrances and are purely decorative. The individual niches in the prism are called alveoles.

squinch

Author: Jvwpc, Wikipedia Commons
Alhambra, Granada

The stalactite design of the muqarnas is said to be a symbolic representation of the cave where Muhammad received the Quran.

Author: Jasleen Kaur, Wikipedia Commons
Muqarnas corbel balcony, Qutb Minar

Author: Daniel Csorfoly, Wikipedia Commons
Sevilla

Icelandic: Elves and some survival phrases

Today’s blog post is taking us to the far North of Europe, namely to Iceland, the land of geysirs and volcanoes, sagas and eddas, Vikings, and of álfar (elves). 🙂 The elves living in Iceland are also known as Huldufólk, which derives from huldu– ‘pertaining to secrecy’ and fólk ‘people, folk’. There are said to be 13 different types of elves living in Iceland, who have the same size and the appearance of humans, but are invisible to most humans. Building and construction projects sometimes have to be altered because they would damage or disturb the rocks and places where elves are said to reside. Elves usually live in mounds and like dancing, but dislike electricity, churches and crosses, and one should not throw stones in Iceland because of the possibility of hitting elves. Precursors to the Huldufólk date back to the writings of Snorri Sturluson and to skaldic verse. The legends surrounding elves are an example of the intangible and oral heritage of Iceland. In the picture below, you can see some álfhól (elf houses):

Author: Christian Bickel, Wikipedia Commons
Elf houses in Iceland

The Huldufólk are also part of Faroese folklore, where they are said to have black hair and to wear grey clothes. The Faroese language is closely related to Icelandic.

Here is a photo of a road which had to be built around rocks where elves are said to live:

Author: Christian Bickel, Wikipedia Commons
Álfastein in Kópavogur near Álfholsvegur 125

Here are some survival phrases in Icelandic:

Halló Hello

Bless Goodbye

Takk fyrir! Thank you

Þakka þér kærlega fyrir! Thank you very much!

Það var ekkert You are welcome

Fyrirgefðu Sorry

Afsakið Excuse me

Hvað heitir þú? What’s your name?

Ég heiti…. My name is…

Hvernig ert þú? How are you?

Allt fínt. En þú? Fine. And you?

Focus on cultural diversity: Miswak twigs

Today’s blog post will be about miswak twigs, teeth cleaning twigs made from the Salvadora persica tree, which is known as pilu tree in India (Hindi पीलू pilu or कूम्भी kumbhi) and as arak tree (Arabic أراك ) in the Middle East. Miswak twigs (Arabic السواك) are known as kayu sugi in Malay, and are also often called just siwak. Miswak twigs are commonly used throughout the Middle East, India, Central and Southeast Asia, and are especially common in Muslim countries, since the Prophet Muhammad recommended their use in a hadith. The use of miswak therefore plays a role in Islamic hygienic rules, and its use is recommended e.g. before religious practice, on Fridays, before journeys, before joining a gathering, etc.

Author: Iqbal Osman, Wikipedia Commons
Miswak twigs

To use a miswak twig as a toothbrush, you just cut off the end of a twig, then chew it lightly, so that its end will fray and turn into bristles. You then use these bristles to brush your teeth. Miswak has slightly antiseptic properties and can stop tooth decay. You can buy miswak twigs in oriental and Asian foods stores.

Author: J.M. Garg, Wikipedia Commons
Salvadora persica tree (pilu tree)

The evergreen pilu tree (Salvadora persica), from whose twigs miswak sticks are made, is a salt-tolerant shrub or small tree that is native to arid zones in the Middle East, India and Africa. The use of its twigs dates back 7,000 years ago, to the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians. In Pakistan, the tree has an association with graveyards.

Useful language learning tool: ‘Word of the day’

Author: Paul, Wikipedia Commons

Today’s blog post is about a language tool I find very useful, both for learning new languages and for keeping up old ones: the ‘Word of the Day’-feature offered by several websites for free, which you can often also subscribe by email.

These ‘Words of the Day’ are offered for many languages, though not for all, unfortunately, and each website offers a different selection of languages. I find this feature really useful when used every single day because it makes sure that you hear at least one sentence a day in each language which you speak (provided there is a page which offers this feature for the language you want).

Here are some websites which offer them for multiple languages:

http://www.innovativelanguage.com/word-of-the-day – this is one of the best offers for the ‘Word of the Day’-feature since the number of languages offered is quite large. Beware, though, of their “free lifetime account”! I strongly recommend *not* signing up for it since all you sign up for is a lifetime of *spam* as this company will send you at least 2 emails each single day, often even 3, and the ‘unsubscribe’-function notoriously does not work!!! Their youtube channel is also good though.

http://www.transparent.com/word-of-the-day/ – this page offers a different selection of languages, some rather “exotic” languages among them, which other websites don’t offer

For Irish Gaelic: http://www.gaelchultur.com/ga/frasa_an_lae.aspx

The handwritten Hebrew alphabet

Today’s blog post is taking us to Israel and to the Hebrew language, and more precisely to the Hebrew alphabet. Since Hebrew courses and textbooks often only teach the printed version of the Hebrew script, but the handwritten alphabet looks markedly different, I thought the handwritten alphabet and how to write it would be a nice topic for a blog post. 🙂 Here is the handwritten alphabet, with little arrows indicating how to write the letters:

The same alphabet is also used for writing Yiddish, with only slight variations of some letters. The alphabet is written from right to left, and there are no capital letters. Five letters take a different form when they are in the final position of a word (last letter of a word); these are the letters khaf, mem, nun, feh and tsadi.

Author: Golasso, Wikipedia Commons
The Western Wall in Jerusalem

Survival phrases in Tagalog (Filipino)

Today’s blog post will take us to the Philippines and its national language, Tagalog or Filipino (Pilipino). Tagalog is an Austronesian language, the language family that also includes languages such as Malay, Bahasa Indonesia, Malagasy and Hawaiian to name but a few. The name Tagalog itself derives from ‘taga-ilog’, which means river dweller. Filipino, the national languages of the Philippines, was developed as a lingua franca in the 1930s, and Tagalog, a language spoken predominantly in Manila and Central and South Luzon, was chosen as its base, into which words and elements from other Phillipine languages were then incorporated. Tagalog vocabulary includes a wealth of words from Spanish and English, and the words for numbers, days of the week and for months are actually loanwords from Spanish, but spelled in Filipino.

Here are some ‘survival phrases’ in Tagalog 🙂 :

Kumusta Hello

Babay Goodbye

Salamat Thank you

Walang anuman You’re welcome

Ako si….. My name is……

Oo Yes

Hindi No

Hindi ko naiintindihan I don’t understand

Sori Sorry

Eksyus mi Excuse me

Kumusta po kayo? How are you?

Mabuti po I’m fine

Author: B. Navez, Wikipedia Commons
Ylang-ylang plant, a native plant from the Phillipines

Tagalog has also contributed some words to the English language. Some words of Tagalog-origin commonly used in English are:

Ylang-ylang a tropical tree with yellow flowers from the Phillipines, from which a fragrance is derived

Capiz a shiny oyster shell, which is used in the production of crafts

Abaca a type of hemp fibre made from the Abaca-plant, a plant in the banana family

Cogon a type of grass used for thatching, from the word kugon (a species of tall grass)

Boondocks a word meaning ‘rural’ or ‘backcountry’ in English, which is derived from a mispronunciation of the word bundok (“mountain”)

Jeepney in the Phillipines

Lithuanian months and their etymology

Author: luc viatour, wikipedia commons

Today’s blog post will be about Lithuanian, more precisely about the etymology and the meaning of the words for months. Like many of the neighboring Slavonic languages, Lithuanian, a Baltic language, does not use the Latin names for the months, but its own, more ancient names for the months, which are based on the seasons and agricultural activities (just like the Slavonic months).

Sausis (January) – from sausas meaning ‘dry’; this derives from the fact that precipitation at this time of year is usually in the form of dry snowflakes

Vasaris (February) – from vasara ‘summer’; this is because the days begin to lengthen at this time and thoughts turn toward summer

Kovas (March) – derives either from kovas, meaning rook (a bird), or kova ‘struggle’; rooks are building their nests at this time, or alternatively the struggle between winter and spring

Balandis (April) – from balandis ‘dove’; the time when doves build their nests

Gegužė (May) – from gegužė, the cuckoo; its call is believed to herald the arrival of spring

Birželis (June) – from beržas, the birch, which blooms in this month

Liepa (July) – from liepa, the linden tree, which flowers in this month

Rugpjūtis (August) – from rugiai, ‘rye’, and pjauti, ‘to cut’, therefore literally the month in which rye is cut

Rugsėjis (September) – from rugiai, ‘rye’, and sėti, ‘to sow’, so the month in which rye is sown, which then overwinters in the fields before it starts to grow in spring

Spalis (October) – from spaliai, flax hards, which are harvested at this time of the year

Lapkritis (November) – from lapas, ‘leaf’, and kristi, ‘to fall’, the month in which the leaves fall

Gruodis (December) – from gruodas, which means something like a ‘frozen clod’, which forms in the fields at this time of the year

What becomes apparent when one compares these meanings with those of the months of the Slavonic languages (see also my last blog post), is that many months derive their names from the same event in the agricultural year, for example, the falling of the leaves (‘listopad’ in Slavonic), the flowering of the birch and linden trees, clods of frozen soil, etc., even though the languages are not related linguistically (Lithuanian is a Baltic language, whereas most languages in the neighboring countries are Slavonic languages).

Lithuanian is a very interesting language from the linguistic point of view, because it still retains many features of Proto-Indo-European, which are now lost in other lndo-European languages. It is closely related to Latvian.

Slavonic names of the months

Author: luc viatour, wikipedia commons

Today´s blog post will be about the names of the months in various Slavonic languages, which are not based on the Latin names and often have quite poetic names that have their origin in the seasonal changes and in agricultural activities typical for a specific time of the year. Many of these meanings are obvious, while others have been forgotten and their original meanings can only be guessed.

Here are the months in Ukrainian:

January січень – the slicing month (because of the ‘slicing’ cold)

February лютень – the angry month (angry frosts and blizzards)

March березень – the month of birches

April квітень – the month of flowers

May травень – the grass month

June червень – the red month (because fruits begin to ripen)

July липень – the month of linden trees

August серпень – the sickle month

September вересень – the heather month

October жовтень – the yellow month

November листопад – the month of falling leaves

December грудень – the month of the frozen soil

And here are the Croatian months:

January siječanj – the month of timber-cutting

February veljača – the huge month, with prolonged coldness

March ožujak

April travanj – the grass month

May svibanj – the month of vigorous growth and flowering shrubs

June lipanj – the month of linden blossoms

July srpanj – the month of the sickle (harvest month)

August kolovoz – the harvest month when wheat is harvested and threshed

September rujan – the reddish month (when the trees turn red)

October listopad – month of the falling leaves

November studeni – the cold month

December prosinac – the month when good weather and sunshine first appears after the autumn fogs

Author: Aplaster, wikipedia commons

The Czech names for the months:

January leden – the month of ice

February únor – the month of renewal

March březen – the month of birches

April duben – the month of oaks

May květen – the blooming month

June červen – the red month (fruits are ripening)

July červenec – the red month where fruits are ripening

August srpen – the sickle month (harvest)

September září

October říjen – the rutting month (of deer)

November listopad – the month of falling leaves

December prosinec – the month when good weather appears after the autumn fogs

Author: poco a poco, wikipedia commons

And finally the months in Polish:

January styczeń

February luty – the month of angry frosts

March marzec

April kwiecień – the flowering and blooming month

May maj

June czerwiec – the red month when fruits are ripening

July lipiec – the month of linden trees

August sierpień – the month of the sickle (harvest)

September wrzesień – the heather month

October październik

November listopad – the month of falling leaves

December grudzień – the month where lumps form on roads and fields

Vegetables in Serbo-Croatian

Today´s blogpost will continue with the vegetable theme, this time with the words for vegetables in Serbo-Croatian.

Polyglottando

A blog about languages, multilingual living and cultural diversity