Iaith a Meddwl
Language and Thinking. Rhan o raglen radio Quirks & Quarks sy’n trafod y syniad bod iaith yn effeithio’r ffordd dyn ni’n meddwl. Gallwch lawrlwthio MP3 o’r rhaglen:
Does the language we speak really affect the way we think?Well, that’s been a hotly debated topic among scientists for almost a century Ò and it was one of the panel discussions at last week’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Among those who support the idea is Dr. John Lucy, a professor of human development and psychology at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Lucy has studied the Yucatec Maya people of Mexico for the past 3 decades. And he believes their language Ò which does not use any form of the plural for its nouns Ò actually causes them to think about the world in a completely different way from English speakers.
[via kottke]
Diwylliant neu Culture?
Mae Ralph yn gwybod.
Fowlerism
Dw i wedi blogio’r hon o’r blaen, ond mae Fowlerism yn werth ail-drafod. Pete Fowler yw’r boi sy’n wneud clawrcelf SFA ac mae gwefan wych ’da fe, gyda llawer o bethau bach rhyngweithiol. Mae ’na gyfweliad gyda fe ar wefan Clwb Malu Cachu, ’fyd.
Nos da, Spike
Bu farw Spike Milligan y bore ‘ma.
What are we going to do now?
Sen a’r crefft…
Erthygl ar John Cale, Super Furry Animals a Gorkys yn y cylchgawn Americanaidd In These Times:
Yet both bands have found a way to incorporate their national heritage into their music; both have recorded in Welsh, and often return to the language as a badge of pride as well as willful display of stubborn eccentricity and obscurantism. In a sense, the music they make is as much a part of their particular location as the Velvet Underground were to their own. The isolation of Wales mirrors the isolation of New YorkÌs outsider scene of the late Ì60s, enabling artists to gleefully make music free from the constraints of expectation.
Wooaaarrrggghhh!
Un i Maff: Death Metal Karaoke.
[via blort]
Pa mor ddrwg yw’r byd?
Mae’r byd yn ddwrg iawn, gyfaill.
Tro nesa bydd un o’m myfyrwyr yn cwyno bod y Gymraeg yn rhy anodd, bydd ateb parod ’da fi. Dyw hi ddim mor anodd a Siapanaeg:
Japanese grammer is not for the faint of heart or weak of mind. What’s more, the Japanese also do not have any words for “me”, “them”, “him, or “her” that anyone could use without being incredibly insulting (the Japanese word for “you”, for example, when written in kanji, translates to“I hope a monkey scratches your face off”). Because of this, the sentence “He just killed her!” and “I just killed her!” sound exactly the same, meaning that most people in Japan have no idea what is going on around them at any given moment. You are supposed to figure these things out from the “context”, which is a German word meaning “you’re screwed”.
Sportsfilter
Ooooh, we’re on the march with Arfon’s Army
We’re going to Division Two…
Newydd ymuno â SportsFilter. Dw i ddim yn lico chwaraeon, ar y cyfan, ond ro’n i am rannu y clip bach ’ma gyda’r byd.
Gweld y llun mawr
Llun o’r byd gan loeren newydd.
cymera hwn
Mae hwn yn swnio fel swydd i Action Item!
Googlewack
Dw i wedi dwyn (a drysu) cannoedd o ymwelwyr i’r weflog gyda fy sillafiad unigryw o’r meme diweddaraf, Googlewacking [sic]. Mae’n debyg bod ni’n arbennig, wedi’r cwbl.
Linci, linci
Save the Welsh. Syniad da.
Map Cymru, gyda swn.
Blog gan ddysgwr sy’n cynllunio gemau cyfrifiadur.
Mae rhifyn newydd Y Triban Coch wedi’i gyhoeddi.
Erthygl arall sy’n gwrthwyneb i honiadau David Crystal yn Golwg wythnos o’r blaen am farwolaeth anochel ieithoedd lleiafrifol ar y we:
“The monopoly of the English language in the Internet world will soon be over,” says Elisabeth den Os, who led the EURESCOM project BabelWeb, which was finished last year. Researchers from the Netherlands, France, UK, Italy and Portugal co-operated in this project.The work was based on the assumption that small businesses as well as large corporations have to be able to provide multilingual Web-based services. Research has shown that customers stay twice as long on Web sites in their native languages and buy three times as much. The demand for multilingual Web sites is therefore high, but designing them is difficult.
Syniad gan actor o Montreal i helpu pobl sy’n byw mewn gwlad ddwyieithog weithio trwy gyfrwng eu hail iaith:
He came up with the idea when he realized he was having a tough time breaking into the French side of the business. Dunlevy speaks a fluent but accented French. On top of that, nobody in the French milieu knew who he was.“I spoke with some of my (French-speaking) actor friends and realized they were experiencing the same thing in English,” Dunlevy said. “(In the majority of cases) as soon as you have an accent, you don’t get the role.”
Yn anaml iawn (am wn i) dych chi’n gweld actor sy wedi dysgu Cymraeg fel oedolyn yn chwarae unrhyw rôl mewn drama Gymraeg ei hiaith heblaw am rôl “Y Dysgwr”. Wrth gwrs, mae hwn yn adlewyrchiad o broblem llawer mwy na phrynder gwaith ymysg actorion sy’n ddysgwyr. Cwrddais i â dyn ddoe a’m gofynnodd “Cymro dych chi?” cyn iddo siarad Cymraeg â fi. Wel, Cymro ydw i, ie, ond Cymro yw fy nhad hefyd - fyddai ynteu ddim wedi deall y cwestiwn. Dw i’n nabod digon o Saeson a fyddai wedi’i ddeall - beth fyddai eu hymateb nhw?
Yn yr un grwp o bobl, oedd Saesnes sy’n dysgu’r iaith ar hyn o bryd - roedd bron pawb yn defnyddio Saesneg â hi, er bod hi’n gwneud ymdrech enbyd i feistroli’r Gymraeg.
Yn ôl awdur V.S.Naipaul nid oes angen llenyddiaeth ar gymdeithasau ‘marwaidd’:
Seeking to disagree with the Prime Minister on the plight of Indian writing in non-English languages, Naipaul said if the language authors had written great works, they would have become popular themselves.
Yr Inuit a’r Saeson, hanes y perthynas rhwng y ddau bobl. Lluniau gwych, ac adroddiadau cyfoesol yn y Saesneg wreidddiol:
And being ashore, vpon the toppe of a hill, he perceiued a number of small things fleeting in the Sea a farre off, whyche hee supposed to be Porposes, or Ceales, or some kinde of strange fishe: but comming nearer, he discouered them to be men, in small boates made of leather.
[via nutlog]
Ces i anrheg oddi wrth Yr Wniwn, sef copi tudalen ffrynt papur fy nyddiad geni.
Erthygl diddorol am effaith iaith ar feddwl y siaradwr:
Outside of English, many languages give nouns a gender, a grammatical distinction that linguists have long considered to be without any real meaning. But in 2000 Boroditsky found that the system subtly changes a speaker’s experience of everyday objects.The word “key”, for example, is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. Boroditsky recruited two groups of volunteers, native German speakers and native Spanish speakers, who spoke English well. She then asked them to name three adjectives to describe objects.
She found a consistent pattern of German speakers using more masculine terms to describe the key - such as “hard, heavy, jagged” - while Spanish speakers favored more feminine descriptions, such as “golden, intricate, lovely.” Boroditsky said she is now considering studying how the design of bridges - a masculine word in Spanish, but a feminine word in German - differs between the two cultures.
[via kindall]
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