Simple, fluent, elegant – Introducing an alternative writing system

I have always been planning to write this article due to the amount of comments I have received in connection with the beautiful writing system I use to write Neo-Ugric. Let’s reveal the truth: the alphabet is called ‘Tciaar’ and was invented by Ricardo Reséndiz Maita and Cialy Saturno Maita in 2005. According to Omniglot, the creators were inspired by writing systems such as Arabic and Mongolian, which seem to share a lot of interesting traits with the outcome.

“Oι Γκρίκοι”, the Grecanici of Southern Italy

“Our roots are Greek but we are in Italy. Our blood is Greek but we are Grecanici,” said Mimo Nicura, a member of the so called Griko minority of Calabria and Apulia (Puglia). As we all know, Italy serves as the home of numerous ethnic communities. However, the history of the Griko people – and their language – deserves a special mention. The people are said to be the “remnants of the once large Ancient and Medieval Greek communities of southern Italy.” (Wikipedia) Although most Greek inhabitants have since become entirely Italianised, this unique community has managed to preserve its original culture. Let me emphasise, however, that the Griko people are distinct from today’s Greek immigrants who happen to have chosen the old region of Magna Graecia as their new home. Firstly, the quote at the beginning of this article indicates that the people advise us against confusing ‘Greek’ with ‘Grecanici’. Secondly, we shall not forget that the ancient Greek colonisation of Southern Italy and Sicily dates back to the 8th century BC. With this in mind, the Griko and Calabrian Greek dialects – the former of which I aim to present in this article – have an unbelievably close relationship with their mother tongue and its successor, Modern Greek.

Can you guess the language?

Although I have never written an article in this style, today I will attempt to create a little quiz for you. I have prepared a selection of five languages, which I will present in the form of an audio sample. The task is easy: guess the language!

The recordings are from RhinoSpike.com, so I will link to the environment in which they originally appear as soon as I can reveal the answers. So here is the deal: I give you three days and you guess the five languages – or as many as you can – in a comment. Let the game begin!

አማርኛ ፊደል, or the ‘Amharic Fidel’

Although the summer holiday is taking way too much of my free time, I will attempt to write a very special article today. This post shall serve as a brief introduction to one of my favourite writing systems, the Amharic Fidel, or አማርኛ ፊደል. This abugida is a modified version of the Ge’ez script (ግዕዝ), used to write the Amharic language of Ethiopia. Let’s talk a bit about the language first.

With its 25 million speakers, Amharic (or Amarəñña) is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic, and the official language of Ethiopia (ኢትዮጵያ). In addition, there are large numbers of speakers in other countries, including Eritrea (ኤርትራ), Somalia, Djibouti, Canada, the USA and Sweden. Despite the interest I gained when I first heard Amharic being spoken in Central Rome, my favourite aspect of the language remains its unique alphasyllabary.

It’s all Greek to me!

I have a tendency to write incredibly long articles, I know. But having a quick look at my other posts made me realise that in some cases a short piece of writing can be just as successful as a longer one. So please don’t expect a lengthy article this time! As you can see from the title, today I am going to write a bit about Modern Greek, more specifically my own experience with it. You may have read in my introduction that my mother is Greek and that this wonderful language and culture had a great impact on my early life. It was the first foreign language I came across, and the first one I began to learn in class. However, the years of studying did not seem to pay off at the end. And – in my opinion – are yet to pay off! Let me tell you a bit more about why my views on this are so pessimistic.

Afrikaans, or South Africa’s Dutch?

Today, as our hopes are with Nelson Mandela who is spending his 95th birthday isolated in a Pretorian hospital room, I decided to show my respect towards him by presenting something “South Africa-related”. I have always been interested in the history of the Afrikaans language and the extent of its mutual intelligibility with the parent language, Dutch. For those of you who are even less familiar with the topic than I am, Afrikaans (or ‘Cape Dutch’) is actually a dialect of the well-known West Germanic language, which happens to be considered a separate standard language rather than a national variety for a number of historical reasons. So how has Afrikaans developed? And what makes it so unique?

What’s behind the ISA sign?

Symbols, especially those intended to be used all around the world on a daily basis, must be clear and simple. They are a form of non-verbal communication which should be able to give out messages to people of any age and background without the need for a caption. The International Symbol of Access, also referred to as the ‘disabled’ or ‘handicapped’ sign, was designed in 1968 by Susanne Koefoed. However, the sign did not look exactly as we would expect: the figure did not have a head! As we know, a circle was later added to represent the person’s head, but this did not really change the overall impact, neither to the better, nor to the worse. Despite its impersonality, the drawing soon became the only acceptable way of illustrating permission cards, reserved parking spaces, public lavatory facilities for wheelchair users, ramps, buttons to activate automatic doors etc. But now, it’s time for a change! Why? Let me explain…

More about Lingua Franca Nova

Since I published the article ‘My adventures in 10 languages‘ nearly a week ago, I received quite a few questions about one of the paragraphs. This mysterious paragraph was written in a constructed language called Lingua Franca Nova, which I would like to write about in this article. So around two years ago, while searching for simple conlangs on the internet, I found an article about LFN and – as I expected – it gained my interest in the language. At this point I began to look through everything related to the subject that I could find on the internet (and surprisingly, there was a wide variety of available materials). Despite my great enthusiasm, it was only last week that I decided to have a go at using the language without being able to speak it. And, believe it or not, it seems to have worked.

Who is Bodo Wartke?

A few years ago, while searching for multilingual music on the internet, I came across a pretty basic lovesong. Those who know me well enough may not understand how the words ‘basic’ and ‘lovesong’ could bind together to form something that I consider remarkable. So here’s the explanation: this song is sung in 88 different languages and dialects. Incredible! The author is Bodo Wartke, a German singer-songwriter, actor and poet. With his valuable experience in the field of cabaret, he successfully adds humour to his masterpiece through the use of national stereotypes, or simply by singing in Shakespearean English, Klingon, Elvish and several German and Swiss dialects. Most of the translations have been provided by native speakers who wholeheartedly contributed to Bodo’s project in this way.

My adventures in 10 languages

I have to admit that finding a title for this article took me “slightly” more than a second. By saying ‘adventures’ I intend to refer to my encounters with certain foreign languages – yes, this is what the article will be about. And by saying ’10 languages’ I mean that I will try my best at telling each little story in the corresponding language. I would like to emphasise that, even if the quality of my writing disproves this fact, the paragraphs below are not a result of clicking the ‘Translate’ button on our favourite instant translator website. It’s not worth copying the story of my English adventure from my introduction, so I shall move on to Hungarian, which will be followed by a bit of French, Neo-Ugric, German, Lingua Franca Nova, Modern Hebrew, Italian, Greek and Esperanto. In case you have some knowledge of any of these languages, I would appreciate if you could give me some feedback on my attempt, by leaving a comment on this post.

English from right to left

People always call me strange when they see me writing English in the opposite direction, using mirrored letters. This practice, however, has been known since the 15th century – or even before. Who else could give birth to this incredible idea, if not the famous Italian polymath, Leondardo Da Vinci. He was ambidextrous, which means that he was able to use both of his hands equally in order to write, paint, play an instrument etc. Da Vinci’s mirror writing was first discovered when his personal records were found: all of his texts, except the ones he intended to be read by others, were written using a unique shorthand. We could confidently state that his graphemes were visibly easier to write than the ones we use today, provided that we can ignore their mirrored direction.

Mao Zedong’s never-changing name

For most of you, putting your given name after your surname is without rhyme or reason. However, in several countries, including Hungary, this is what normally happens. I always find it hard to explain to a British audience that the consonant cluster between my given name and my surname (which is, of course, placed at the end in the UK), is due to the fact that my original name is “switched”. The problem occurs when they begin to call me by my surname, as “that comes first in Hungary”. At this point I have to let them know that the change is in the order only, not in the role of the two names.

An labhraíonn tú Gaeilge?

The Irish Gaelic language (or as I prefer to call it, Gaeilge) has been identified as ‘endangered’ several times in the past few decades. Despite its history of over 2000 years, the language has no more than around 133,000 native speakers today (according to Wikipedia). The number seems even less if we consider that 70 million people in the world – including significant populations in the USA, Canada and Australia – claim to be of Irish decent. But how is Gaeilge kept alive in Éire (Ireland) and abroad? I’ll move on to that as soon as I finish my habitual ‘brief analysis’ on this beautiful-sounding language.

Alex Rawlings, Europe’s human phrasebook

Over a year ago I came across an interesting article on the website of my favourite linguistic-themed magazine, the Hungarian ‘Nyelv és Tudomány’. This was the first ever time I read the word ‘polyglot’ and I was indeed very impressed by the existence of such an extraordinary talent. The only thing that managed to impress me even more was a video attached to the article, which showed a 20-year-old British student talking about himself in 11 languages. A few weeks later I found myself being asked to “show something inspirational” at the end of a Year 9 French lesson. I was aware that these pupils were about to make their choices regarding what subjects they wanted to carry on studying, so I was striving to promote languages as thoroughly as possible. As I was sitting near the projector with a class of not so enthusiastic 14-year-old language learners staring at me, I decided to let Alex Rawlings – the mentioned hyperpolyglot – transform the mood in the classroom into something more vivid. The video was yet to finish, but the room was already filled with whispers, each and every one of them questioning how such talent could exist, and letting their speakers reconsider their attitudes to learning foreign languages. In September, half a year after this amazing experience, I was pleased to hear Alex’s voice through the loudspeakers of the French room. Yes, showing “the boy who speaks many languages” to the youngest of the school has by now become a traditional element of French lessons.

Learning the Hungarian Runic script

Yesterday night seemed to be the right time to start the project I had dreamed of the most. Due to being a patriotic Hungarian, I always wanted to be able to read and write in the so called Old Hungarian Runic script or “rovásírás”. The alphabet, which fits the language’s phonology more than the Roman script, was used by the Hungarians before the 10th century. It was written right to left, or in boustrophedon style (alternating direction). Unfortunately, as the writing system has not yet been fully desciphered and several research projects are still active, finding a good source to learn it from was not as easy as I expected. Throughout the past few years, many associations in Hungary have encouraged the publication of books written in Hungarian Runes and the compulsory education of the script in primary or secondary school. Despite these nationalistic movements, the standardised material is not really accessible on the internet.

Mansaray: “Being a polyglot is a lifestyle choice”

A few days ago I found a very interesting article on the internet, which eventually filled my mind with subjective thoughts around the idea of wanting to become a polyglot. The title “Is Wanting to be a Polyglot a Misdirected Dream?” made me stop, think for a moment and rush into reading the article with the hope of finding an answer. The author is David Mansaray, whom I sometimes refer to as the ‘master of learning’, so I had no doubt about whether his opinion is worth considering. He explains that transforming this dream into reality requires incredibly hard work and a lot of time.

한국어를 읽을 수 있습니까?

Please don’t be put off by the strange “drawings” in the title. The question’s translation is “Can you read Korean?”, and is written… in Korean! The language uses the so called ‘Hangul’ script, which I often refer to as the simplest writing system in the Far East. Now, this article isn’t intended to be a beginners’ Korean lesson, especially due to the sorrowful fact that my knowledge of this beautiful language consists of no more than three sentences. However, I would like to introduce you to a special software using which you can easily learn the Korean writing system. When I first decided to learn the Korean alphabet (yes, it’s not a syllabary!), I spent quite a lot of time searching for the best free resource on the internet. Luckily, I found a software named Learn Hangul, which uses a unique technique to make the writing system memorisable. In addition to the program, I also recommend these practice sheets and this quiz if you would like to refresh your memory using a different type of resource. Believe me, learning the Korean alphabet is definitely worth the effort. It allows you to explore everything from a different perspective. Also, it may be quite useful in some cases. For example, if you see 강남스타일 written on a website, you automatically read the text as ‘Gangnam Style’ and have just enough time to click away before the video begins.

Polyglot Conference 2013 in Budapest

I was overjoyed to learn that the first ever Polyglot Conference, organised by Richard Simcott and Luca Lampariello (two of the most remarkable polyglots I know about) would take place in my hometown, Budapest. However, being in the UK deprived me of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Throughout the preceding months, Luca continuously updated his Facebook profile with news regarding the conference, which welcomed any language-lover regardless of lingual ability or profession. The speakers of the meeting included some of my greatest inspirations, such as Luca and Richard, Alex Rawlings, Benny Lewis, Susanna Zaraysky, Bálint Kőrösi and Emanuele Marini, whose incredible abilities surprised me when I first heard about him after the conference had taken place. Fortunately, the organisers uploaded quite a lot of summaries and even videos of the event to the internet, allowing me to take their teachings and recommendations on board. For those of you who are interested in accessing these materials, learning more about the project and perhaps joining Luca and Richard at their next destination, here’s the official website of the conference. Also, there seems to be another website, which introduces this year’s speakers individually.

Verbal profanity around the world

Did you know that children learn at least one swear word before they learn the alphabet? And that 0,7% of the words we use on a daily basis are swear words? But how is verbal profanity present (or not present) in other cultures? First of all, let’s talk about the amount and diversity of bad words in English and other languages. I was incredibly surprised to learn that the profane vocabulary of an average English-speaker is incredibly basic. Everyone is more or less familiar with those five to ten words that I won’t list in this article, but have you ever realised that putting these words together in many different combinations to create a more diverse rude vocabulary is simply an effective illusion? Believe it or not, if languages were ranked by the diversity of their vocabulary for swearing, English would be in quite a low position.

“Good morning, Dracula!”

Whenever someone comments on my strange Hungarian accent, which is often refered to as ‘Hunglish’ (from ‘Hungarian’ and ‘English’), I respond saying I sound like Dracula. Yes, I have always been aware of the fact that the original Dracula was played by a Transylvanian Hungarian actor called Béla Lugosi, and that several of his successors attempted to speak with the “vampire accent” later on, but it was only a week ago that I realised I had never even watched a scene from the movie before. So I started searching for the 1931 film on YouTube and found a few scenes that involve some sort of speech from Lugosi. Whoever said I sounded like Dracula was right. Although we can clearly hear that American English has had an impact on his accent, I have no difficulties when it comes to repeating his sentences with the exact same pronunciation. To show what I mean, here’s a video: