I'm fascinated by languages (as you probably know, if you've been hanging out here for a while) and I'm also fascinated by cultural differences. Both language and culture intersect, of course, and sometimes using a different language shapes what you are thinking or how you are thinking. That is another fascinating thing for me.

If you like that topic as well, here's a book (series) recommendation: the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh. It's a very long series about humans and an alien species co-existing on a planet, and a lot of it deals with language, and culture, and differences between humans and atevi. (Also Cherryh has mastered the art of letting the humans appear as the aliens - not that extremely in the Foreigner story, but if that is tickling your curiosity now, check out her Faded Sun Trilogy and the Chanur series.

Smaller cultural differences can even be found inside of Germany - there's quite a difference between some things and how they are done in the South and in the North. The further you move, of course, the more cultural clash potential you can get:

Irish and German people offering things pic.twitter.com/AoPgWJpK6L

— Killian Sundermann (@killersundymann) October 7, 2021

Language is also very much connected with emotions - at least our mother tongue typically is. Second languages are not as much a part of our cultural background (as they were not present, typically, during the formative early years), so they can be more detached, which has an influence on our thinking when using them, like this article in conversation.com explains. Which also means that sometimes it may be easier to talk about something very emotional when using a second language... amazing, isn't it?

This year looks much better for in-person, on-site conferences than last year - though there's nothing really secure still at the moment. However, not only the Textile Forum is betting on everything being good enough, EXAR is also planning a conference this year.

It will take place in Perl-Borg, in a Roman villa museum; I've been there several times for Reenactment fairs, and it's a really beautiful place with lovely people running it. The EXARC conference is scheduled for September 23-26, and the topic is "Experimental Archaeology in Science and Education 2021". The Call for Papers is open until July 31, and registration for the conference is open as well. You can find out more about the conference here, and also register for it.

Talks will be in English and German, with a yet unknown ratio of the two languages. The board asks that slides for the presentations should be bilingual or in the other language than the one used for speaking so that everyone can follow along somehow.

I'm absolutely delighted that EXAR is using this as their current solution to the language dilemma - the society has developed into a larger, more international one from a purely German start, and a lot of the older members struggle with English as a conference and conversation language. Mind you, some of that struggle is probably due to the fact that Germans often underestimate their abilities in speaking and understanding English, and are a bit shy to use a foreign language because they feel self-conscious for all their mistakes.

I'm a proper German in that regard as well, by the way. I like to get everything right, and I do have to tell myself all the time that making mistakes is not bad, not speaking or writing to practise the other language is bad - and if that means making mistakes, that's good. It has gotten better recently with my wholesale slaughtering of the poor Finnish language, and the medieval French lessons where I also enthusiastically threw around interpretations that turned out to be, um... not quite matching the original content of the text. There was lots of learning that way, though.

It did help that the others in the study group also ventured forth with things they were not sure about, too. So offering up tentative solutions, or trying to talk about something where you might be a bit creative with vocabulary or pronounciation does not only help yourself to learn - it also helps others to maybe be more courageous. Good things all around!

Random pictures! No, not here - though speaking of it, you could actually have one:



The random pics I am talking about are actually on my phone... and are helping me to learn Finnish. I've posted a while ago about some of the things I learned about language learning over the years. One of the things that is a rather new tool for me, and that I enjoy a lot, is getting little images and charts and explanation pics via feeds on Instagram. There's a hashtag that I follow where a lot of these turn up, and if there's an especially helpful one, or funny one, I take a screenshot and save the image.

However, having the stuff is good, but not completely helpful yet - these things will only get more language into my brain if I can actually see them. So I've looked for a smartphone widget that picks random images from a folder and displays them.

There's a few of them in the GPlay app store, but most free ones that I tried had some trouble, or cut off the image if it did not by chance fit the frame, or were otherwise annoying. But a few days ago, by pure chance when looking again, I found one written by a German developer called Zufallsbild. This little thing does exactly what it should - you can select a folder or several folders and have it swap the image after a given time, or swap to the next one yourself. It scales the image to fit into the frame, too. Which means that I'm now very happy, and get to see all the nice and funny things on my phone home screen, one after the other.

So if you're looking for an android app for displaying images on your phone, because just having all those funny or nice or beautiful things is not enough... maybe it's the thing for you, too!

Have you ever noticed that different languages use different words to mimic or describe animal sounds? A professor in Adelaide has made a compilation of the sounds for animal sounds in different languages - you can find it here, complete with some common commands as well.

I can only speak for the German bits, where there's actually more sounds that can be used; at least I have heard other sounds as well in German language. In some cases, there's also a difference between mimicking the sound and describing it, and the table seems to mix both of them in some cases. I find it very interesting, though, and quite amusing to learn that French pigs go "groin groin"!

It's been not so long since I last wrote about language learning... and now I'm actually going to have a chance to improve my old language skills. Or, to be more precise: Learn some medieval French.

I chanced across information about an online course on medieval French, held through CHASE, and open to graduate students affiliated with CHASE (which is a collaboration of a number of British universities listed here). My first thought was that that is a very cool idea, and something like that course would have been enormously helpful back when I was working on my thesis.

My second thought was that it would be enormously helpful still, as my medieval French is about, hm, non-existant. I can read modern French allright, and I used to be able to speak it passably (gone all rusty from disuse now, though). So, because it's online, and because learning a language is good brain training, and because there's nothing to lose, I asked whether it might be possible to join in if there were free spaces left. To my great delight, I just received notice that it is, and I did get in!

I certainly get the impression that couses like that are getting more frequent these days, with the corona-induced restrictions lowering the resistance to trying out digital solutions. (Which, if you ask me, is certainly a good thing.) And I'm beyond thrilled to be able to finally get some medieval French skills!