Discover the world of linguistics and how it can help you learn another language!
More about the French game:
French is the language of the Republic, so goes Article 2 of France’s constitution. However, if you were to stroll along the footpaths of Brittany, or hitch a ride through the Lyonnais mountains, then it would not be unusual for you to spot official signage in other languages, too. Breton is a regional language of Brittany in the northwest, and Francoprovençal is a regional language of the department of Auvergnes-Rhône-Alpes, home to France’s second city, Lyon, in the southeast. There are others too: Corsican, Gascon, Catalan, to name some others. These languages sometimes look a bit like French, as in the case of Francoprovençal, because they have the same Latin origins, but sometimes they don’t, as in the case of Breton, which is a Celtic language that has more in common with Cornish than French. The hardest language of all is Basque, which is a language isolate, not related to any other known living language. Linguists looks for parallels like this in number systems and other common vocabulary when deciding whether languages are related. Use your knowledge of French to plug the missing numbers in France’s regional languages, and see how far you get with the rest.
More about the German game:
German and English are related languages. They are both West Germanic languages (just like Afrikaans, Dutch, Frisian, Luxembourgish, Scots and Yiddish) and have a common ancestor: Proto-Indo-European. Therefore, German and English have a lot of similarities. Due to historic sound changes that occurred in German but not in English, many modern words look and sound similar but not exactly the same. For example, “pp” has become “pf” and “p” has become “f(f)” in many German words: compare English “apple” and “ship” with their German equivalents “Apfel” and “Schiff”. Similarly, “t” often corresponds to “s(s)” or “z” in related German words, e.g. “heart” – “Herz”, “water” – “Wasser”. These similarities and patterns can be really helpful for learners of German!
More about the Spanish game:
Languages, like living beings, change over time. This affects not only their sounds and grammar, but also the meanings of words. So, although Spanish ‘casa’ and Latin ‘CASA’ look identical, and even if it is easy to tell that ‘señor’ comes from ‘SENIOR’, the history of these words is rich and fascinating. So a Latin ‘CASA’ was more a hut than a house, and although ‘señor’ is someone you pay respect to, SENIOR simply meant older. What is truly remarkable about such meaning changes is that, although languages have countless words with complex histories, some common cross-linguistic tendencies can be observed in the ways in which meanings change over time, so that cases of ‘amelioration’ (Lat. CASA ‘hut’ > Sp. casa ‘house’), for example, are very common. By discovering the Latin etymology of some everyday Spanish words, in this game you will find out further frequent categories of meaning change that you may identify in the history of other languages too.