Tag: Irish

The Most Beautiful Words in the World

The Most Beautiful . . . 
Words in the World . . .  

Some words just sound beautiful! As if you are singing them, just by pronouncing them! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but … it could also be in the … ear!

My favourite word in the English language is probably Serendipity. I say probably because … there are so many beautiful words! Even the word ‘beautiful’ is literally … beautiful!

 

Where does serendipity come from?
In the mid-1700s, English author Horace Walpole stumbled upon an interesting tidbit of information while researching a coat of arms. In a letter to his friend Horace Mann he wrote: “This discovery indeed is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word, which as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of….” Walpole’s memory of the tale (which, as it turns out, was not quite accurate) gave serendipity the meaning it retains to this day.

 

And there is a very good chance that beautiful words from other languages do not have an English translation, then I have that covered already with a previous blog post entitled “Untranslatable Words or … The Mystery and Beauty of Communication“. I got you covered!

A list of the ‘23 of the Most Beautiful Words in the World” will make it very difficult to choose your favourite word, in both sound and meaning!

A very tough choice for me, but I will go with “Mångata“, a Swedish word that means ‘the reflection of the moon on water‘. There was a Super Moon here a few weeks ago and it was absolutely spectacular!

But, a very close second is the Japanese word for ‘light filtering through the trees‘, ‘Komorebi’, as I like biking through Mystic Vale each day to and from work!

And a few more great lists AND some images, are at:

And in my brief research this morning I came across what J.R.R. Tolkien thought was “The Most Beautiful Word in the World“! And there is probably a translation of it in … Sindarin! 

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

10 Stunningly Beautiful
English Words

15 Beautiful Words
That Will Soothe Your Brain

Beautiful Untranslatable Words
From Around the World

Beautiful Foreign Words
With No English Translation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Longest Words in the World

The Longest . . . 
Words in the World . . .  

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a word that once you hear it, or at least, the singing of it from Mary Poppins, just rolls off your tongue quite easily!

Guilty pleasure – I enjoy saying this word to students when the topic of fun, strange, different and long words comes up! LOL! And don’t forget about the The ABC Song from Sesame Street, although whether the alphabet ITSELF qualifies as a word … is a debatable point!

The obvious contender is …. Antidisestablishmentarianism ! Who hasn’t heard of this word before! But, it only holds the record because it is considered a “non-medical, non-coined, nontechnical word” and it does have an interesting history! 

The longest word in the world has …. 189,819 letters. Yes, that is right, 189, 819 letters. And it could be surpassed due to the chemical components required to ‘name’ strands of DNA. This is mind boggling to me that a single strand of DNA could have so many letters!

METHIONYLTHREONYLTHREONYGLUTA . . . ISOLEUCINE 

Note the ellipses. All told, the full chemical name for the human protein titin is 189,819 letters, and takes about three-and-a-half hours to pronounce. The problem with including chemical names is that there’s essentially no limit to how long they can be. For example, naming a single strand of DNA, with its millions and millions of repeating base pairs, could eventually tab out at well over 1 billion letters.

And the other 11 long words can be found at ” What’s the Longest Word in the World? Here are 12 of Them, By Category” for your Spelling Bee practice!

And growing up, The Reader’s Digest was always a source of humour, articles and .. WORDS with their Word Power pages. And they too have an article on the longest word in the world. And they agree!

And you can certainly fill your boots with an alphabetical list of the longest words in the English language at “A-Z List of Long Words and Their Meanings That’ll Leave You Baffled” !

But what about … the rest of the world! There are so many languages in the world, surely, there must be longer words! And… THERE ARE!

So the answer lies within “What Is The Longest Word In The World?” And the funniest, longest word in the World is from Vietnam, and that word is nghiêng.  What? That isn’t long AT ALL! Ah, but it is the SHORTEST LONGEST WORD in the world! Yes, the longest word in Vietnamese is only 7 letters long! 

nghiêng

This clearly isn’t the longest word in the world, but this Vietnamese word at just seven letters long has the distinction of being the longest word in Vietnamese. That also means it’s the shortest longest word that exists. Arguably, nghiêng is a single morpheme, not a word, but Vietnamese is an “isolating language.” Instead of combining prefixes and suffixes to create new words, Vietnamese uses multiple small words that combine to change the meaning. This only works if your definition of a “word” is any combination of letters surrounded by spaces, however.

As long as there are words out there, there will be interesting topics! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

18 Super Long Words
From Around the Globe

The Longest Words
in Any Language

Pronouncing the Longest
Words in English

So Easy, a 7 Year Old
Can Spell It!!!

 

 

 

 

 

English Words That Don’t Translate Into OTHER Languages

English Words That . . . 
DON’T Translate Into . . . 
OTHER Languages . . . . 

English is considered to have the MOST words of any language … IN THE WORLD!

That is somewhat debatable and will be a future post. Previous posts have shown examples of the variety of words and phrases in other languages that don’t translate into English, but have beautiful, amazing and even profound meanings!

But what about the other way around? With SO many English words, there must be some that do not translate into any other languages! And …. there are!

Here are “10 Common Words That You’ll Only Find in English” and that you probably use each and every day! Serendipity is one of my own favourite words of All-Time (another future post!) and Silly is definitely in my Top 20 Word List! 😂

 

 

 

 

Another site shows just how many “English Words That Can’t Be Translated“. An especially nice word, is actually the word, Nice!

Another relatively new word, has long-term, time travel and alternate universe implications! At the very least, it will impact the next generation of Star Trek Fans! FacePalm!

And Canada is officially bilingual with English and French, but to me, the more the merrier! So what happens with subtle nuances in English, that do not necessarily translate into French! Well, you go and search the internet and find … “English Words and Nuances That Don’t Exist in French“! My old friend, the World Wide Web has grown up!

Usually, it is the other way around, but there ARE “10 English Words That Don’t Exist in Japanese“! And that includes the SHORTEST WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ‘I‘ ! Well, it is tied with some others, but I bet you don’t know them ALL! Another future post!

And of course, to include some YouTube demonstrating examples of English words that don’t exist in French and German! 

ENJOY!                TTFN!

 

10 English Words
That Don’t Have an Exact Translation in French

9 English Words
That Don’t Exist in German

 

 

 

 

Unpronounceable Words or . . . I Didn’t Quite . . . Catch That . . .

Unpronounceable Words or . . . 
I Didn’t Quite . . . 
Catch That . . . . 

Unpronounceable Words!!!

And I am not talking about tongue twisters. More like tongue twisters ON STEROIDS! Even English words are sometimes hard to pronounce … even for English speakers!

I always have problems with … Worcestershire Sauce, and I still can’t pronounce it right, even today, even if Dictionary.com tells me how to pronounce it!!

And then throw in learning a new language where making new sounds that HAVE MEANING … IS THE BALL GAME!

I am simply in awe of EVERYONE that does speak more than one language! Sadly, my French is nowhere near where it once was, but …. I can still follow ‘La Soirée du hockey‘! Ah, hockey, the international language! “La Première Étoile .. GUY LAFLEUR!” 

Oh, and if you don’t think this is not going to happen to you …. how about this. You go out to a very nice Italian restaurant! And you decide to order some BRUSCHETTA as an appetizer, an early ESPRESSO to warm your palate taste buds, a main course of GNOCCI with free range raised GUANCIALE as the main ingredient.

Are you CERTAIN you pronounced ALL those words right?

If not, better check here:

Menu items you’re mispronouncing
(and how to say them)

And watch the YouTube Video below if you are curious about the three words/phrases below and how they are pronounced! GO FOR IT! And I dare you to say the phrase below, in English, FIVE TIMES REALLY FAST – the squirrel line!! LOL!

And a future post might just highlight even MORE English words that are hard to pronounce! So many Blog posts to do … not enough keyboards!

ENJOY!                TTFN!



Five hundred fifty five ice skating squirrels!

 

18 Words from around the World
You can’t pronounce

 

 

 

 

Untranslatable Words or … The Mystery and Beauty of Communication

Untranslatable Words or …
The Mystery and Beauty
of Communication

Untranslatable Words!!!

This doesn’t mean the word makes no sense, it just means the word has no equivalent in another language! It could be cultural, historical or even anecdotal ….  or just made up!

It does not lessen the meaning and I would argue, enhances the meaning OF a word, when another language or culture can actually embrace what might be described as …’There really is no word for (fill in the blank here) in English!” 

I found a wonderful site that not only lists 30 amazing words, but the artist has provided some amazing posters too! Check out “30 Untranslatable Words From Other Languages Illustrated By Anjana Iyer” and let me know which one is your favourite!

My FAVOURITE from these posters is the Norwegian word Utepils which means ‘to sit outside on a sunny day enjoying a beer‘!

Although the FUNNIEST word is the Japanese word Age-otori which means ‘to look worse after a haircut‘! 🤣 And with physical distancing necessary, just how ARE you going to get a good haircut in the foreseeable future! 🤷‍♂️

Maybe you have a different favourite from the “50 Untranslatable Words From Around the World” poster below!

Oh yeah, and shameless promotion – I did “Untranslatable Idioms” the other day! LOL!

ENJOY!!!

TTFN!

JAVA Programming or … How to Order Coffee in Other Languages!

JAVA Programming or …
How to Order Coffee
in Other Languages

JAVA! JAVA! JAVA!

import java.util.Scanner; class PrimeNumberDemo { public static void main(String args[]) { int n; int status = 1; int num = 3; //For capturing the value of n Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in); System.out.println(“Enter the value of n:”); //The entered value is stored in the var n n = scanner.nextInt(); if (n >= 1)

Well, not THAT kind of JAVA! That is part of ACTUAL JAVA CODE to “…display first n or first 100 prime numbers” .. SERIOUSLY!   I did not write that! 🤣

MY kind of JAVA is more of the magical liquid elixir that most of us rely on to not only start the day, but to make it through the day! LOL! Ah, is there anything it can’t do! (Apologies to Homer and Donuts in German and ‘anything they can’t do’!)

Victoria has SO MANY FINE COFFEE SHOPS, including at UVic too! Let’s not forget about my favourite coffee spot on campus – The Munchie Bar! 

Walking into a Starbucks is actually a language lesson with all those Venti, Grande and a size I just learned about … TRENTA! Be warned, it is actually a size that is larger than … the average STOMACH!!!!

And my old friend, Dictionary.com – Order Your Coffee Like A Boss has some background on all those wonderful names for the sizes and kinds of coffee that are out there! Learn something new today… about COFFEE! ENJOY!!!

TTFN!

 

How to Order Coffee in …

JAPANESE !

RUSSIAN !

FINNISH!

MANDARIN CHINESE !

GERMAN !

FRENCH !

And if you made it THIS far, a bit of movie humour! How would a Marvel Super Hero, oh, say, Ant Man, order his coffee! LOL! You just need to see the first 1:15 of this for the coffee scene!

 

And if you have not seen Airplane 2, then .. this is about the only good scene!


YouTube Language Translations of Popular Shows

YouTube Translations of 
Popular Shows

YouTube? Translations? Well not quite translations, but clips from popular media (TV and movies) in other languages! Not quite Google Translate (a future post is in the works!) but good for a different perspective of popular shows, iconic moments and just plain .. FUN!

So below are a bunch of YouTube clips from some of my favourite TV shows and movies, all in other languages such as German and Japanese! Just a quick search at YouTube and I found all of these in a short period of time! Most people will instantly know the setting, movie or moments AND the iconic lines, so they offer quite a teaching moment, as well as some fun in learning a new language!

Besides, UVic HAS taught a course in Klingon! Really and for true! Qapla’! Today IS a good day to …  learn a new language!


TTFN!

 

Anakin Obi-Wan Star Wars Japanese

Star Wars in Japanese

Beam Me Up, Scotty! German!

Clip “Ich bin der König der Welt!”
Titanic!

Doctor Who in Five Languages

Doctor Who in Japanese

 
 

 

 

 

Top 10 ZOHO Links – The World According to Greg

The Top 10 ZOHO Links – According to Greg

NOTE: Unfortunately, I recently discovered that ZOHO is no longer free, at least for the purposes that The CALL Facility used it for. I still have access as an Admin, but I am researching how I might be able to continue to provide the same resources in perhaps a slightly different format. Options such as a website, pdf, Word, Excel or other kind of document, but so far, they are not as easy to use, create, support and maintain. But I am hopeful and optimistic!

MANY THANKS to everyone who supported The CALL Facility (& me!) in offering this very unique resource over the past many years, probably dating back about 15 years or more! ZOHO came about as a response to needing a quick way to access Language bookmarks in CALL! Way back when, and this is BEFORE GOOGLE, I would email an attached bookmark file for specific browsers such as Explorer (Mac!), Safari and even Netscape Navigator! Good times, good times!

ALL the bookmarks are  still ‘at’ ZOHO, and I can access them, and export them into a simple .pdf document if anyone wants them. I can subsort, or include them all in one document. Please let me know! But for now, I won’t be updating ZOHO on a regular basis while I research other, if any, similar resources for Instructors and students.

In the meantime, probably the best strategy, for Instructors, would be to Copy/Paste website inks directly into  Brightspace for students. Yeah, cludgy and inelegant, but … sometimes old school works! The first shift I had in the CALL Facility – was bulk erasing and then making copies of Spanish lessons .. on cassette tapes! Good times, good times!

AND, if you DO CLICK HERE or on the icon of a PDF to the left, then you can view and download a .PDF version of ALL of The CALL Facility ZOHO Bookmarks in alphabetical order. Yeah, not ideal, but … at least they are all in one document.

And many thanks to Mark vH who helped me set it up so very long ago!

As of this morning, there are 896 language related links at ZOHO! WHOA! So many!

So I will be editing them one day in the future, removing and/or updating many of them. Often, the links disappear, they become commercial, have too many pop-ups, are re-routed elsewhere, so they need to be attended to.

So I bring to you, the Hall of Fame ZOHO bookmarks that are the Top Ten of All Time! At least, in my opinion!

You turn to Youtube! I have had to update some of the videos as they have disappeared from Youtube for some reason! But found a few more! Needed an update anyways, from way back in about 2014!

#10 – Klingon Language Institute
Just for fun and I have been kidding about including Klingon as a language in The CALL Facility for … years! And there IS a connection to UVIC too! Just click … here! 

#9 – Tex’s French Grammar
Who would know that one of the best French websites is … deep in the heart of … TEXAS! And true love springs between Tex & Tammy – ARMADILLOS!

#8 – I’m Yan (Yan and the Japanese People)
THE most popular video series in CALL HISTORY! An original resource on VHS, no less, follow the adventures of Yan, a foreigner living and working in Japan! VHS? So not available anymore in CALL? Say it ain’t so … well … IT AIN’T SO! I have all 26 episodes digitized on a single DL-DVD! There is even a Wikipedia Page!

#7 – News and Media Sites such as CBC, BBC and CNN. There is also a single link for World Newspapers too! Many offer transcripts on a daily basis too.

#6 – CBC Digital Archives  are an excellent source for Canadian History with articles, texts, videos, etc.

#5 – DICTIONARY sites – all kinds of them! Merriam-Webster and Cambridge and even more here.

#4 – ThoughtCo. Lifelong Learning – once known as About, all kinds of language links and others too! 

#3 – Utilities – Another Filter where you can discover keyboard layouts, fonts, foreign characters, graphics, media conversions, Google Translate and even World CALL Language Links! One stop shopping for that hard to find font for the designer who has everything!

#2 – TED Talks! Bet you didn’t know there were Language based Ted Talks! Now …. you do!

#1 – UVIC SITES! Each Department has their own website with resources, links, tests, Instructor contacts and more! You might not need ZOHO for any of these, but they will be your single best resource for all the languages you are studying! Oh, and you can also download my CALL Orientation .pdf there too – which has all the Department links in it too!

TTFN!

Throwback Thursday – Language Learning Videos!

Welcome to Throwback Thursday here at Bog Blog!

What happens if you can’t find anyone to speak to you in …. German?

You turn to Youtube! I have had to update some of the videos as they have disappeared from Youtube for some reason! But found a few more! Needed an update anyways, from way back in about 2014!

How German Sounds to Other Languages

How to Speak Canadian

 A bit of Fry and Laurie

How to Speak with an Irish Accent (Complete)

Top 10 Oldest Languages in the World

What is the Funniest Language? Stephen Fry’s Planet Word – BBC

The CALL Facility … and other Mysteries of UVIC – Updated JANUARY 2020

So, what exactly IS …
The CALL Facility at UVic?
Well, here goes!

 

Just download the orientation .pdf below and you will get a good idea!

This post has been updated to JANUARY 2020!


CALL Facility Orientation
Fall January 2020 Version
Now!

  ⬇️ CALL A025 ORIENTATION JANUARY 2020 ⬇️

You could also watch the “Director’s Cut” version, as a movie, too, at YouTube below (this one is for January 2020):