Episode Details

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:

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