Radio Omniglot

Omniglot News (29/03/26)

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Here’s the latest news from the world of Omniglot.

New language pages:

  • Liangmai (Lianglad), a Zemeic language spoken in Manipur and Nagaland in northeast India.
  • Besermyan (бесерман көл), a Permic language spoken in northern Udmurtia in the Russian Federation.
  • Mbe (M̀bè), a Southern Bantoid language spoken in southeastern Nigeria.
  • Yipma (Yɨ’ayagaala), a Trans-New Guinea language spoken in Morobe Province in eastern Papua New Guinea.

    • New constructed script: Pallawa Hasti, an alternative way to write Indonesian, Malay and other languages created by Reza Sumanda, and based on the Pallawa script.

    New numbers pages:

    • Northern Tepehuán (Ódami), an Uto-Aztecan language spoken in northern Mexico.
    • Nancowry (Mūöt), a Nicobarese language spoken in the Central Nicobar Islands, part of the Indian Union territory of the Anadaman and Nicobar Islands.
    • Waorani (Wao Terero), a language isolate spoken mainly in eastern Ecuador, and also in Peru.

      • New phrases page: Liangmai (Lianglad).

      New family words page: Liangmai (Lianglad).

      New Tower of Babel translation: Mbe (M̀bè).

      This week on the Omniglot blog there’s a new post entitled Bread Vans, in which we investigate the Chinese word 面包车 (van, minibus – lit. ‘bread cart / vehicle’), and related words in Chinese and other languages, and there’s the usual language quiz. See if you guess what language this is:

      http://www.omniglot.com/soundfiles/blog/quiz290326.mp3

      Here’s a clue: this language is spoken in Guyana.

      The mystery language in last week’s language quiz was Caijia (Menni), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Guizhou province in southern China.

      Incidentally, Thursday of this week (26th March) marks the 20th anniversary of the Omniglot blog. I started the blog on 26th March 2006 with three separate posts, a welcome to the blog post, a post about language and memory and a post about the Spanish word ringorrango, which means a flourish or frill. At first, I tried to post as often as possible, but soon settled to a couple of posts per week, which I’ve continued with ever since. There are currently 3,964 posts on the Omniglot blog (and 567 on the Radio Omniglot blog).

      In celebration of the 20th anniversary / blogiversary of the Omniglot blog, this week’s Adventure in Etymology is all about Bloggery and other blog-related words.

      It’s also available on Instagram and TikTok.

      On the Celtiadur blog this week there’s a new post entitled Swallowing about words for to swallow and related things in Celtic languages.

      For more Omniglot News, see:

      https://www.omniglot.com/news/
      https://www.facebook.com/groups/omniglot/
      https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100046466483286

      You can also listen to this podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn and Podchaser.

      If you would like to support this podcast, you can make a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or contribute to Omniglot in other ways.




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      Radio OmniglotBy Simon Ager
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