MLN Languages

Nynorn

2010-08-09T17:51:00.002+02:00

Norn was a North Germanic language that was spoken in Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. It is not known exactly when Norn became extinct but the last reports of Norn speakers are claimed to be from the 19th century.
There are now a group of people trying to reconstruct and revive this language and they are calling it Nynorn (new Norn).

Here is what it looks like:

Basque Lessons

2010-08-05T10:09:00.004+02:00

Here are a couple of Basque lessons for you.

The Sweet Language

2010-05-14T10:01:00.003+02:00

I had never really thought about Portuguese very much until this project was uploaded to MLN. Since I speak reasonable French and Catalan and understand a bit of Spanish, Protuguese obviously sound slightly familiar to me. But at the same time, it has some really odd (to me) sounds that make it really different and interesting to listen to.
According to Wikipedia, Cervantes once called Portuguese 'The Sweet Language'. I think I know what he means.

The Celtic Languages

2010-01-21T00:02:00.023+01:00

The Celtic languages are divided into two sub-groups, goedelic and brythonic. The goedelic group contains Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. The brythonic group contains Welsh, Breton and Cornish. It's interesting to note that each group contains two languages which are relatively healthy and widely spoken and one language that has been brought back from the brink of extinction. All of these languages are spoken in the British Isles except for Breton, which is spoken in north-west France. Welsh has the most speakers and Cornish or Manx has the least.

Anyway, here you can see and hear all six of the Celtic languages:

Brythonic Languages	Goidelic Languages

There are also currently efforts to revive an old brythonic language, Cumbric.

Here are some good links to Celtic language stuff:
Welsh:
http://www.saysomethinginwelsh.com/home/ - A great site with plenty of audio and a good community.

Breton:
http://www.kervarker.org/ - The best site on the internet for learning Breton.

Cornish:
http://www.moderncornish.net/beginners-notes/section-1-2.html - Nice course for beginners but no audio.

Irish:
http://www.erinsweb.com/gae_index.html - Very extensive and detailed course but no audio.

Scottish Gaelic:
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/ionnsachadh/ - A nice list of links.

Manx:
http://www.learnmanx.com/ - The best site on the internet for learning Manx. Plenty of good material with audio.
www.mylanguagenotebook.com/learn_manx.aspx - A good 25 lesson course for beginners with audio.

And here is a link to the people who are reviving Cumbric.

BASQUE

2010-01-12T00:38:00.002+01:00

I am getting more and more interested in the Basque language and I am seriously thinking about learning a bit of it. As a lot of people know, Basque isn't related to any other language in the world. Well, no definite link with other languages has ever been proven, although many attempts have been made to find any such links. It is the native language of over 600,000 people and if you include second language speakers, over a million people can speak it.
I found this site the other night, which has some basic phrases/lessons which I have made into an MLN project (what a surprise) so that you can hear the language.

I emailed the guy who made the site (André Signoret) to say I thought he had done a nice job but my email got bounced back saying that the email address no longer exists. So I went back to his site and saw that it hasn't been updated since 2000 and also in the About setion, it says that André was 76 at the time he was making the site. So I hope you are still around André and if you are Nola Zare Jauna?

Le chien des Baskerville

2009-11-20T01:05:00.002+01:00

I am half way through reading my first ever foreign book, 'The hound of the Baskervilles' in French. I could have done this years ago but I used to be obsessed by not reading something unless I could understand every word. So I would start a book and have a dictionary ready to check any words that I didn't understand. This was so annoying that I always gave up after a few pages. Now I just don't care and haven't looked at a dictionary once. I understand about 80% of it, I can work out another 15% from the context and 5% I haven't got a clue about. I have realised that you have to push yourself and you don't have to understand everything.
The same goes for watching TV. I have read a lot of people talking about this sort of thing but it is true, just watch films, documentaries, cartoons, anything, even if you don't understand it all and it gradually becomes easier.
I want to read a French book by a French author afterwards, it's got to be fairly easy though.

Navajo Conversation

2009-10-21T09:40:00.006+02:00

Here's another language for you, Navajo.
It is a native american language spoken by about 140,000 people in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. It is spoken by Navajo people of all ages as an everyday language which is apparently quite unusual amongst Native American tribes. The language is however in decline. Here is the wikipedia entry for the language.
And here is a sample conversation that I found at this site and converted to MLN format.

Learn Some Manx in just TEN MINUTES!

2009-10-09T13:07:00.006+02:00

A while ago, Phil Kelly, a fluent Manx speaker started making some Manx lesson using MLN. He has now made over twenty of them and he does a new one about once a month. Anyway, I finally thought I would try to learn a bit of Manx using his lessons and I was amazed how easy it was. After studying Lesson 1 (below), for only ten minutes, I was able to understand it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is an easy language and I know it is only lesson 1 but I think Phil has a very good way of teaching. What he does is to teach you a few things and then use them throughout the lesson in various contexts so that they get consolidated in your head. He then starts mixing in new stuff alongside the stuff you have already learned and at the end, there are tests.
Have a go for yourself! (If you have a spare 10 minutes)
* Read through the entries and listen to them by double-clicking on them. (you will need to scroll down in the player)
* Test yourself by hiding the translations (middle tick) and selecting 'Reveal Mode' (torch icon) and then trying to guess each translation. The translation will only appear when you select the entry (so it is pink). You can select an entry and then use the up/down arrow keys to select other entries.

The rest of Phils Manx lessons are here.

Simple French

2009-10-08T13:09:00.002+02:00

I moved to Paris a few weeks ago so now I am trying to get back into French.
I was told about this website and it is very good for learners.
They have a daily 10 minute news podcast in what they call 'Simple French'. I can hear that the people are speaking pretty clearly and not at full speed so it would be simple if you were fluent, but it would not be simple if you were a beginner. I would say it is a bit above U.K. 'A' level standard. I have been listnening to it for a couple of days and it is definitely the right level for me as I understand the majority of it but not all of it, so I am still being tested.
Another good thing is that each podcast is accompanied with its transcription.
I will keep an eye out for anything like this in German or Catalan.

Celtic Polyglot

2009-09-26T20:23:00.004+02:00

The other day, I found The Science Of Fiction. I was interested to see that the author had written some short stories/poems and asked people to translate them into various languages. One of them, 'The Gondolier' has now been translated into all six of the remaining Celtic languages as well as others. So I got my girlfriend to do it in Catalan too. Here it is:
(you can click the middle tick to see the English translations)

THE TEN BIGGEST LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD AND WHAT THEY SOUND LIKE

2009-07-23T00:49:00.007+02:00

I realised recently that I didn't know what the ten biggest languages in the world were, let alone how they sounded. So I thought it would be nice to make an MLN project to show them with a sample of their text and audio. So here it is. Just double-click on the Audio Sample to hear it!

Catalan Progress

2009-06-22T15:37:00.002+02:00

I have just got back from Catalonia. I was there for 10 days and had plenty of opportunities to practice Catalan. I think I have improved a fair bit. Certainly my ability to understand what people are saying has improved a lot even if my speaking hasn't improved too much.
Anyway, while I was there, I noted down any useful/interesting/difficult sentences with MLN and got my girlfriend to record the correct audio for them so that I could practice. Here are the sentences:

Swiss German

2009-06-04T23:00:00.008+02:00

I have been living in Zurich for about 10 months and it is a great place. When I first got here, I tried to learn Swiss German as that is what everyone speaks here. I saw someone saying on a forum that Swiss German is to German as 'Geordie or Cockney slang' is to English. I personally think that it is more different than that; maybe like Lowland Scots is to English. I already knew some German when I got here so I bought Pimsleur's Swiss German CDs and made a start. I listened to the CDs twice and got a basic understanding of the language. The problem was what to do next as there are hardly any more learning materials available. I tried speaking to a few Swiss people in Swiss German but they just answered in high German or English. I am not blaming them, they are just trying to be nice but it makes it very difficult to learn their language. Another problem for Swiss German learners is that most of the Swiss speaking towns and cities speak it differently, some very differently apparently.
Learning Swiss can obviously be done but it would take a lot of effort. Not really because of the language itself as the grammar for example is simpler than that of high German, but because of the difficulty of finding the right learning materials and of finding an immersive enough environment to learn it.
The people in this part of Switzerland certainly do use Swiss German, you hear it constantly and I am starting understand more and more of it just by lving here but as for formally trying to learn it, I am giving up for the moment.

So I am concentrating on Catalan now!
I am actually going to Catalonia tomorrow for ten days and will probably learn more Catalan in those ten days than all the Swiss German I have learnt in ten months. The reason for this is that I will be totally immersed in Catalan for the whole time and everyone there will speak to me purely in Catalan. Theres no doubt for me that this is the best way to learn.

My Blog

2009-06-04T00:54:00.002+02:00

I've started this blog now so I should say a bit about why!
Well I like reading other peoples language blogs and reading about languages in general. I also like learning languages and I thought I could share some of my learning experiences with others.
I will talk about my failed attempt to learn Swiss German and my more successfull efforts to learn French and Catalan.
I also started this blog to demonstrate my MLN Player program, which is showing the language lessons/demos in this page.
I'll try not to post unless I have anything interesting to say. Probably won't be posting very often then ;-)
That's it for now.
Cheers,
Jim

Llanito Language

2009-06-03T15:49:00.000+02:00

I Just found out about the Llanito language from this great blog:
http://elllanito.blogspot.com/
The blogger teaches the language bit by bit in his posts! The language itself is very ineteresting as it is spoken in Gilbraltar and is a mix of English, Spanish, Genoese, Maltese and Hebrew.
Here is one of the lessons being shown in MLN Player:

Just double-click on a sentence to hear it!

By the way, my pronunciation is wrong and is just my guess at how it should be said ;-)

Manx Language - Then and Now

2009-06-03T14:58:00.000+02:00

Here are a couple of MLN projects with text and audio from some of the last old native speakers of Manx:

And here is a lesson provided by Phil Kelly, a current fluent speaker of Manx:

Todays Manx speakers seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping their language alive!