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this page:
dictionaries, translation /
other alphabets /
non-alphabetic scripts /
other links /
endangered languages
dictionaries, translation
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quicker-loading websites
Check out the glossarists at http://www.glossarist.com/ - a pretty good list of
lists
Working hard at satisfying dictionary needs, monolingual and multilingual,
are http://www.yourdictionary.com and
http://www.dictionary.com
http://reality.sgi.com/btd/babelfish.html
is apparently a quicker and more error-free interface to Babelfish,
named after the translating fish from the 'Hitch-hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy' http://dictionaries.travlang.com/
is the dictionaries part of travlang, the bit you might want to
visit first (how to put that Portuguese phrase into good Swedish?),
and the quick-loading bit too
More curiously, a site promising quick language-learning using soundalike memory tricks, at
http://www.unforgettablelanguages.com
http://www.rhodes.edu/forlanghtmls/genlang.html
is a useful collection of general language links, as are
http://www.languageimpact.com/
http://languagebox.com/LanguageZone.html
http://www.language-learners.com/aboutll.htm
http://www.language-learning.net/
http://www.foreignlanguagelearninglinks.com/
http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/call/
http://www.foreignlanguagehome.com/
http://www.edvista.com/claire/call.html
http://llt.msu.edu/
http://www.languagelearn.co.uk/
http://ilk.kub.nl/~signll/
http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/linguistics/
And a wonderful facility you may not think is handy until you
find you suddenly need it - a database of hundreds of common herb
and flower names in several European languages pieced together by
friends like Henriette, Alessandro, Pawel and other collaborators...
http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/database.html
...a fine store of information |
slower-loading websites http://www.travlang.com/
is a language superstore bursting with colourful features
http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn
is the more official face of the deservedly popular Babelfish site
Three handy online dictionaries for a tricky trio of East-European languages;
Polish-to-and-from-English at
http://www.poltran.com,
Czech-to-and-from-English is here at
http://www.mtranslations.cz/30/en/dictionary/dictionary.htm and
Hungarian-to-and-from-English is here at
http://dict.sztaki.hu/english-hungarian with, logically enough,
Hungarian-to-and-from-German at
http://dict.sztaki.hu/deutsch-ungarisch
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other alphabets
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quicker-loading websites
Korean ~
is an interesting one, because at a casual glance a
Westerner can mistake it for Chinese ideograms - yet it is an
alphabet, or at least a syllabary... in a wonderful way Korean
letters (and they are letters, perfectly phonetic) can group on top
of each other in little bunches of two or three and so look a bit
like some of the simpler Chinese characters - discover more at http://catcode.com/kintro/cons1a.htm
and http://www.teleport.com/~napoleon/korean/modernalphabet.html
and http://members.aol.com/keithenev/Language/Korean.htm
Japanese culture is the proud owner of not one, but two
alphabets, which go alongside the extensive use in Japanese of about
half the set of Chinese word characters (three to four thousand
rather than the seven to eight thousand recognised by educated
Chinese readers) - so you can go to these sites to learn the more
important hiragana alphabet, plus the katakana alphabet they use to
spell words imported from foreign languages, http://www.harapan.co.jp/english/japan/hiragana.htm
and http://www.1freespace.com/art/japanxstacey/jp.html
and some more lovely websites about Japanese (check also the right-hand column)
http://entropy.tmok.com/~tumble/qadgtj.html#preface" target=_blank
http://www.lingolex.com/jap/comver.htm
http://133.41.17.13/mizumat/pictcards_e.html
Arabic ~
one of the most beautiful and cursive scripts, is an old,
grand language unifying a huge culture of five hundred million
people spread across over twenty countries and two continents -
one of the world's most misunderstood cultures, now more than
ever;
Check out
http://www.al-bab.com/arab/visual/calligraphy.htm for
writing and calligraphy in one of the world's most calligraphy-conscious
languages
http://www.sakkal.com/ArtArabicCalligraphy.html
and more calligraphy at
http://www.arabiccalligraphy.com/
while for learning the language
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/arabic.htm
http://www.ukindia.com/zar1.htm and once you've learned it,
this Arabic-language online bookshop at
http://www.saehlib.com/main.aspx
can help you start to enjoy one of today's oldest and largest
living literatures
Hindi ~
the biggest language of the world's now most populous
country (yes, more people than China), India;
Learn Hindi, like Arabic, again from the remarkable UKIndia site
http://www.ukindia.com/zhin001.htm
download Hindi fonts from
http://www.ebazm.com/hindi.htm
Hindi and Urdu maps are at
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/hindiint.html
is an overall list of Hindi resources
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/hindilinks.html
Hindi software
http://sanskrit.gde.to/hindi/
A multicoloured Hindi alphabet
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/hindi/alphabet/
a guide to Hindi with song lyrics
http://www.hindilyrix.com/
and two sites about the Canadian Inuit script, based on Pitman
shorthand of all things, at
http://www.halfmoon.org/inuit.html and
on the splendid omniglot at
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ucas.htm
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slower-loading websites
http://www.shodouka.com/
is a remarkable site; the idea is you can view other sites through it, and so not
need to download software to look at Japanese writing, and
http://www.lfw.org/shodouka/http://www.thehaucks.com/lesson4.html is
an example of the concept in operation
http://www.wellscs.com/robert/nihongo/howjapan.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/yt/lvovjya/linkss.html
http://japanese.about.com/homework/japanese/bl_verbs.htm
http://www.magenet.com/~pam/
http://pweb.cc.sophia.ac.jp/~britto/weblab-j.html
A sometimes slightly slower, but neat and clear guide to both
Japanese alphabets at http://www.acsys.com/~tallman/ktable3.html
http://laurencio.webz.cz/mongolxel/qaguchin/bichig.htm
is a beautifully mellow website about the traditional Mongolian
script - so clearly laid-out that English-speakers shouldn't fret
about the explanations being in Spanish While http://members.tripod.com/ggdavid/georgia/language/anbani.htm
is a colourful site about the Georgian (or, rather, Gruzian) alphabet, but of
course a little 'Tripod' box pops up when you open the site
http://www.angelfire.com/ga/Georgian/alphabet.html
is a richly-coloured introduction to Georgian also, but this time
with a little Angelfire box opening itself without asking you
For more on Arabic, check out
http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ishaq/arabic/asm/asm.html
for some old software links and a few magazines in Arabic and about the Arab world
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non-alphabetic scripts
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quicker-loading websites
http://www.zhongwen.com/
loads fast and is a clear introduction in English to written
Chinese ~
the language and on-line resources
A mighty set of clearly-arranged Chinese dictionaries is at http://www.chinalanguage.com/Language/Dictionaries/ecdict.html with all the major systems for coding Chinese ideograms in Western letters or numbers.
http://tech.irt.org/articles/js133/#viewing
is a clear list of references in English about software you need to
view websites that are written in Chinese script
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slower-loading websites
http://www.ocrat.com/ocrat/chargif/
is a good introduction to Chinese in English and has little moving
drawings to show those with Java-enabled PCs how to write Chinese
characters properly (it's much easier if you keep to the established
sequence for drawing the pen strokes in each character - it's not
unnecessary pedantry as you might think - it helps)
http://www.chinapage.org/is a big list of
Chinese-language sites, energetically beautified and recoloured
during December 2000 - very comprehensive
If you go to http://www.nttdocomo.com/i/tagindex.htmland
then click on 'list of picture symbols'3/4 of the way down the
page, you get a list of visual mobile-phone-screen symbols for such
everyday concepts as 'fog' or 'karaoke' used on Japanese DoCoMo
i-mode handsets - Japan is of course a place, like China, where
written language is a lot more than an alphabet
At least as ancient a type of picture-writing as Chinese
ideograms was Egyptian heiroglyphs, and here, at
http://www.torstar.com/rom/egypt/egypt.html you can use an
on-line translator and make little sentences up in semi-authentic
heiroglyphic script - because of course the writing of ancient Egypt
gives us an intriguing chance to see the transition from pictorial to
phonetic writing ...they had pictograms, but the symbols, while
staying pictorial, over centuries came to also convey sounds and
work more like an alphabet, which http://library.thinkquest.org/J002037F/heiroglyphics.htm
explains, as does http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~nicholson/egypt/heiroglyphics.html
with all three sites featuring charming mock-sandstone colour
schemes
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endangered languages
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quicker-loading websites
These are some useful general sites for linguists and others
working with endangered languages in general, with pride of place going to
a
European bureau for lesser-used languages (eblul.org) - perhaps
a better phrase than 'endangered' languages in fact....
http://www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ichel.html http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/ europe_index.html and
the purpose-built http://www.ogmios.org/ Specifically
Canadian indigenous languages are smartly introduced at http://www.ohwejagehka.com/ |
slower-loading websites
For a glimpse of one of Europe's most intriguing languages, try this - a short excerpt from
Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding translated into Gypsy/Roma by
Dragan Ristic.....
LEONARDO Nashti te iris amen, achi,
von si but pashe amendar,
pal me musaj te lingrav tut.
BORI Zorasa? Sajek? Palpale?
LEONARDO Zorasa? Pal ko majanglal mangla te nashel.
BORI Me sema.
LEONARDO Ko godo nevo kantari shuvda pe moro grast?
BORI Me semas! Godo sas godo!
LEONARDO Kasko vastoro
buzuvni po grast shuvda?
BORI Akala vast save si tjire,
kana dikhen tut von kamen
trujal tji kor te aven.
Kamav tut, bares kamav tut!
Te mudardem tut
po limori e parne luludjora ka shuvav tuke.
Oj, savi bibah, savi jag
ka pharjovav ka pharjovav!
LEONARDO Chindjardi churi
pe tiri kovli chib.
Te bistrav me kamlem.
Bari plajin me vazdem
mashkar amare khera.
Kade sas? Avel tuke o gindo?
Kana dikhava tut dural
more jakha me phandava.
Feri e graste me tradava sar dilo koro manus
thaj vov arakhla vudar tiro.
Sumnakane suva chindjarde moro ilo
Thaj miri tati rat achili kali,
Me nashti bango te avav
shaj avel vareko aver
Bangi si kaja phuv
kade shukar kaj kerda tut.
Thaj e sung savi avel andar tjire putarde bala thaj
andar tjiro kolin.
BORI Oh, dilipe!
Sar te trajiv tusa po jek manro thaj po jek serand?
Tu cirdes man thaj me dzav,
dzav pala tute sar e balval.
Muklem sukare Rome po abijav thaj e familija,
Kana ascardem te khelav e pirostijasa an more bala.
Pe tute e holji ka perel,
so me chi mangav.
Muk man, nash mandar akana.
Khonik nasti zutil mange feri me.
LEONARDO Chiriklji thaj chiriklo
mashkar e krandza licaren pe phaka
E ratji si shudri.
E rat ande kadi ratji shutjol,
Po bar savo si sar e churi.
Ando garudipe amen ka dzas
kaj ka kamav tut
chumidav tut,
naj mange achilo pala aver manusha
thaj pala bilachipe savo avel andar lengo muj.
BORI Ka shuvav moro kolin pe shero tjiro
o suno te avel tuke maj mishto
sar dzuklji kaj sem.
Kana dikhav tut
tiro shukaripe mudarel man.
LEONARDO Jag pe jag dzal!
BORI Le man katar o vasari po vasari
Thaj sikav mori dukh
Te but manusa saj dikhen
sar more bijaveske seja
Po cheri khelen.
LEONARDO Kana gindiv sar trubul
musaj te mukav tut.
Feri me dzav katar tu dzas.
Thaj vi tu.
O chonut baro khuvda
moro kolin tire kolinesa sumnakane thavenca.
BORI Ashunes?
LEONARDO Aven!
BORI Dza! Musaj kate te merav
Kalo pani ka halavel more purne
E karne ka aven pe moro shero
Kana merava feri von ka dikhen man
Ka dikhen e uze cheja thaj e romnja
savi kerda baro bibahtalipe.
LEONARDO Achi!
BORI Dza! Nash!
LEONARDO Maj poloke! Chi dikhen amen. Dza! Tu anglal
inke jekhvar.
BORI Feri khetane.
A Dakota language homepage is at http://www.alliance2k.org/daklang/dakota9463.htm |
this page:
dictionaries, translation /
other alphabets /
non-alphabetic scripts /
other links /
endangered languages
*1 image by kind permission of / seeking permission
*2 image by kind permission of / seeking permission
*3 "Heaven" or "Sky" in written Chinese;
image by kind permission of / seeking permission
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