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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5556 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 1 21 March 2010 at 3:10pm | IP Logged |
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I notice that the topic of slang and idiomatic expressions comes up every now and again on the forum and is fondly discussed, and so I started thinking about these type of expressions and how they interrelate within different languages. Whilst looking up some funny Irish phrases I used to hear about the house as a kid, I came across this interesting website. It's basically a dictionary of Irish slang and idioms, like so many others out there really, but the cool thing here is that it's based on geographical regions with a little flag designating the main county of origin for a word or phrase.
As slang and idiomatic expressions are often amongst the clearest distinguishing factors between the language spoken in neighbouring regions, I thought this would be a fun concept for other countries too. Personally, these unique phrases give a little further insight into where my family may have lived and moved over the years, and in some small way also suggest or lead me to learn about some of the interesting historical influences from other languages over the centuries in the area and the linguistic variation between different cultures and communities within the country as a whole. As a student of Irish, I'm particularly interested to see how the idiomatic use of Hiberno-English (i.e. the English spoken in Ireland) varies between those areas of Ireland associated with different dialects of Irish for example. To me it seems that this is like a giant linguistic evolutionary weather map, constantly changing and competing over time with new warm and cold weather fronts popping up here and fading away there (with the occasional storm too no doubt). To use a meteorological term, these competing weather fronts are somewhat like isobars (imaginary lines connecting points of equal atmospheric pressure), and it is at these meeting planes that many of the really interesting developments and phenomena in a language occur. If anyone knows of similar websites in their native language or the language they're studying, or anything fun and graphical along the lines of my linguistic "weather map" analogy, I'd be delighted to learn more. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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