Revival time

Mercury Dictionary is a 17-language dictionary that just keeps on growing! The online pages have been down for a while though. A revival of the dictionary was called for, and this blog you are reading is intended to provide the same global service for people interested in languages and travelling. The blog language is English, but the dictionary that you will soon learn more about, is in 17 languages.

One of them being German, we start the travelling experience with Berlin where I just spent a few days. Flight itinary: Helsinki - Riga - Berlin- Riga- Helsinki. Once in a while you arrive in a place and feel right away that this is it, this is my kind of town! Berlin did that for me. The phrase Ich bin ein Berliner became reality to me - and surely to many others who were attending the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, and all the rest of the tourists.

Money money money

Money is what makes the world go around... Most of us don´t have enough of it, and even if we had lots of it, it just never seems to be enough! But I guess it is like Dr. Phil says: money problems can´t be solved with money for they are a result of a behavioral problem. Or something to that effect.

Let´s see what this all-important thing is called in some of the languages of the Mercury Dictionary:

Money raha (Finnish) raha (Estonian) pengar (Swedish) penge (Danish) Geld (German) argent (French) dinero (Spanish) denaro/soldi (Italian) χρήματα/λεφτά (Greek) kane (Japanese)

Now that the European union has a common currency, euros and cents, it would be interesting to go and spend some in another European member country. Alas, many of us don´t have enough of it. Marks, francs or dineros - there just isn´t enough of it... But, what about DOLLARS?!

Swahili is everywhere!

Karibu! The importance of Swahili seems to be growing these days. There are quite a few Swahili words in common use. Words like safari (journey), jenga (to build) and simba (lion). Or Hakuna matata (don´t worry)! The last two of course from the 1994 movie Lion King.

A good site to find out more about Swahili is www.yale.edu/swahili It contains a large dictionary and looking for words there makes you realize how popular this language really is. There is a lot of good information in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language And you can always look at Mercury Dictionary where we have monthly Swahili lessons. The January theme is weekdays.

By the way, karibu means welcome!

Kiss & bajs - ENG & SWE

Living in two different cultures is interesting but also a bit confusing at times.
My two sons had been to daycare in Stockholm, and learned quite a lot of Swedish. At least all the relevant words and phrases for a two and a three-year old. Words like kiss (pee in English) and bajs (that of course means boo!) that together formed the hilarious phrase kiss & bajs, uttered over and over again. So they of course would continue to play with these words that had induced so much laughter at kindergarten. Only in America the reaction was as expected a bit different. Usually it made people confused. But by and by my sons forgot their Swedish - which they didn´t talk with anyone - and kiss became the one word that the surrounding world understood it to be.

Thistles and burs - ENG & FIN

This is a good enough lesson in the Finnish language as any:
Living in Florida, my firstborn was learning more and more English. It is a natural process of course, especially with a small child, to learn the local language. Still I couldn´t help feeling kind of proud of him as he one day pointed at my coat hanging in the open closet, and said: Takki, I see!
Well, at this point you have to know that takki is Finnish for coat. But I soon realized that he wasn´t saying anything of the kind. You see, the coat was full of burs. I must have stood too near the thistles at the bus stop. So my coat was full of burs and, you guessed right: burs, or more exactly the plural indefinite form of burs, is takiaisia in Finnish! He of course would pronounce it in a childlike way with double k and the Helsinki way of saying one long - ii in the end instead of what would take a longer time to pronounce, -ia! Got it?

The birth of a dictionary

It started as a small project at Helsinki University. A Norwegian glossary for the next class. Finnish or Swedish being the other language. I added Danish for myself, for that would come next in my studies in Nordic languages. Icelandic would be after that, so I put in that too. And I added English for the fun of it. By and by I started adding some other languages - you never know when they would come in handy. Soon I had a bunch of files in ten languages. Then thirteen.

And then I started thinking that I couldn´t and shouldn´t keep all this for myself - I should share it! Four more languages were incorporated in what now started to look like a budding dictionary. Something for each continent!
Needless to say, I have a thing for languages. My first thought usually is: how do you say this in x-ish? Can´t help studying the local language at the airport or border station, or listening to a foreign melody with increasing curiosity. I am clearly lost in languages, and I hope you will be too, cruising in the Mercury Dictionary at www.jovestone.fi/dictionary. Lost in the richness of idioms, and just the everyday usage of language. The dictionary is mercurial in nature, changing all the time, always expanding, always making more room for human expression. You have to see it to know it!

The online pages are down at the moment.
The blog will soon be providing the dictionary by other means.

Updated 26.8.2009