Tag: Language of the Week
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Language of the Week #8: Tamazight
ⴰⵏⵙⵓⴼ ⵢⴰⵏⴽⵏ (Welcome) to this next article in the Language of the Week series. Today, we’ll be discussing Tamazight, ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖ, a language family spoken throughout North Africa. It is hard to discuss the Tamazight languages independently, so I’ve decided to cover them all together. However, it is important to note that the multiple Tamazight languages…
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Language of the Week #7: Nuosu
Onwards now, we move to China’s spice capital of Sichuan, to discuss one of its ethnic minorities, the Nuosu, or Yi, and their prestige language. For clarity’s sake, this article will use Nuosu to refer to the language, and Yi for the people and broader language grouping. (AN: I apologise for the delay in this…
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Language of the Week #6: Crimean Tatar
Welcome back to Language of the Week. I do apologise for the break, I was recovering from a flare-up. This “season”, as it were, will discuss minority languages, especially those pressed between multiple cultural forces. So, evidently, we find ourselves turning to Crimean Tatar, a language spoken by an ethnic group of the same name…
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Language of the Week #5: Tok Pisin
Onto the final language of this trip around the world, we head to Papua New Guinea (PNG) to cover one of its many languages. Tok Pisin connects people across cultures in the most linguistically diverse country on Earth.
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Language of the Week 4: Guaraní
Next up, we cross the Atlantic into Paraguay, home to Guaraní, the only nationally institutionally recognised Native American language. Many of its speakers are still monolingual, especially in rural areas, and the language has seen a relatively balanced co-existence with Spanish compared to many of its neighbours. The basics Guaraní (Avañe’ẽ) is part of the…
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Language of the Week #3: Swahili
Up next on our linguistic tour du monde, we head to the East African Community (EAC) with its lingua franca of choice, Swahili. The Bantu languages stretch far and wide from the southern tip of the continent up as far north as Cameroon. The basics The Bantu languages are an incredibly diverse and historically rich…
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Language of the Week #2: Mongolian
Taking a long and indirect flight away from Wales, we now head to Mongolia and cover Mongolian, a language with a great deal to offer. The Mongolic languages have travelled far across the steppe, shaping and being shaped by their neighbours across Eurasia, and developing into a sprawling mix of dialects and languages. The basics…
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Language of the Week #1: Welsh
The Welsh language, Cymraeg, has always been fascinating to me. I grew up around it, but not immersed in it, so it was always just something slightly beyond my comprehension in my environment. I’ve spoken a little since I was a kid, but only recently started properly diving into it as a proper learner project.…
