Simon Ager

In this episode I talk to a friend of mine, Ruth Fischer, about her experiences of learning and using languages. Ruth grew up in Wales speaking English at home, and learnt Welsh, French and German at school. She spent a year in Switzerland as an au-pair, which was good for her German and French, and has learnt bits and pieces of a few other languages, including Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. You c...

In this episode I talk about Volapük, an international auxilliary language created in the late 19th century by Johann Martin Schleyer, a German priest. I look at the history of the language and its structure and vocabulary, and also talk a bit about Schleyer himself. You can find notes on this episode, and leave your comments at: https://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=830

This is a silly little ditty I wrote in July 2019. This version features me singing, and playing the ukulele, kazoo, swanee whistle and shaky egg. I added a bit of reverb in the kazoo / whistle / egg interludes. The chords I use are D, G and A. Here are the words: I'm a tall tale teller with a tall tale to tell And I will tell you it now, and tell it right well He's a tall tale teller with a tall...

In this episode I talk about the Czech language. I give an overview of the language itself, talk about my efforts to learn it. You can find notes on this epsiode, and leave comments, at:https://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=808

This is a song I wrote on the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead in July 2019. I wanted to write a sea shanty, but what emerged was more of a sky shanty. I wrote the words on the ferry, then came up with a tune and tweaked the words in August 2019. This recording features me singing and playing the piano, cavaquinho, guitar and ukulele. Here are the words: Sail Across the Sky On a mighty fine day in th...

In this episode I discuss numbers, counting, and some of the other ways to refer to numbers and amounts in English – there are a lot more than you probably realise. You can also hear it, and find notes and links at: https://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=791

This is a tune I wrote on the piano in August 2019 for no particular reason. The title comes from seeing my neighbours cats playing around in the hedge in my garden. You can find the score for this piece at: https://musescore.com/user/16918231/scores/5667004

In this episode I talk about some of the benefits and advantages of learning minority and lesser-studied languages, focusing particularly on the Irish and other Celtic languages. I talk about my own experiences with these languages, and the benefits they have brought me. There's no point in learning small languages, is there? They're spoken by relatively few people and maybe only in one country or...

In this episode I talk about language families – what they are, and how they develop, and I introduce some major and minor language families. You can find notes on this episode at: https://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=746

This is a song I wrote in June 2019. I come up with a new song every month to share at the singer-songwriter group I go to, and this is my June song. It came to me one Monday morning, hence the name, and the image shows some of the words I scribbled down that day. In this recording I accompany myself on the guitar with just two chords - Am and Dm. In the instrumental bit I play the tune in three d...

This is a silly little ditty I wrote in early 2019 for no particular reason. Accompaniment is on the tenor and baritone ukuleles, kazoo, swanee whistle and shaky egg. Here are the words: It's sensible to be silly sometimes It's okay to be odd It's cool to be quite quirky and wierd Cause none of us are perfect Chorus None of us are perfect None of us are perfect We're all flawed in our own unique w...

This is a tune I wrote in June 2019 for no particular reason. This arrangement is for tin whistle, low whistle or flute, cavaquinho, guitar and bass. You can see the dots at: https://musescore.com/user/16918231/scores/5630146

This is a song about a weeble, written and sung by Rosie Waite, a friend of mine. I added accompaniment on ukuleles, swanee whistle and shaky egg. I found the weeble image online, and added the spots. The owl call you hear is a tawny owl, and comes from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BSljsYe0To The words are as follows: I walked along the shore one night asleep in deep repose And there with the...

In this episode I talk about pidgins and creoles - what are they, how they develop, what they sound like, how they are structed, and so on. You can find notes and leave comments at: http://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=711(opens in a new tab)

This is a silly little ditty I started writing back in 2016, forgot about, then rediscovered and finished in 2019. This recording was made by me in June 2019 and features soprano and baritone ukuleles, kazoo, shaky egg and swanee whistle. Here are the words; I am a gnu, I live in a shoe I dream about teapots and play the kazoo Chorus Dardledumdue, dardledumdue Dardledum, dardldum, dardledumdue I a...

In this episode of the Radio Omniglot Podcast I bring you news from the 2019 Polyglot Gathering, an annual get-together of polyglots and language lovers from all over the world. You can hear this, find notes and comment on it at: http://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=686

The first section of this piece, Whitewater / Dŵr Gwyn, came to me while noodling around on the piano in D minor back in 2017. After that I decided to write several more parts to go with it - Down RIver / I Lawr Yr Afon and The Falls / Y Rhëydr. I've already recorded the first two sections separately, but decided to do a new recording of all the sections together, including the third section, The...

In this episode we have a little natter about slang - what it is, where it comes from, and how it's used. You can also hear it at, and find notes on this episode at: http://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=657

This is a tune I wrote in 2015 arranged for recorders(descant, treble, tenor and bass). I changed the end of the tune slightly as well to make it easier to play. You can see the score at: https://musescore.com/user/16918231/scores/5558691

In this episode I talk about grammar - what it is, where it comes from, how it develops, and how knowledge of grammar can help you to learn languages. You can find notes on this episode at: http://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=631

I wrote this song between February and April of 2019 after many years of letting it brew in my mind. It's written from the perspective of the words of an endangered language that has never been written down, and has only a few elderly speakers. There are hundreds of such languages out there. See: http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/ http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/ I got the idea from a lectu...

In this episode I talk about the international language, or la lingva internacia, otherwise known as Esperanto. I look into it's history and development, and discuss the language itself. You can find notes and more information at: http://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=589

This is a version of Mwmpwy Porthaethwy / Menai Bridge Fancy, a tune I wrote in March 2019, arranged for four recorders (descant, treble, tenor and bass). I came up with this arrangement in October/November 2021. https://musescore.com/user/16918231/scores/5516535?share=copy_link

I composed this tune on the piano and harp in March 2019 while noodling in G Minor. The name came from a discussion at a folk session in Bangor about a tune called Mwmpwy Portheinion / Port Eynon, a traditional Welsh folk tune: http://tunelines.com/tunes/Mwmpwy_Portheinon/52/ I misheard the name and thought it was Mwmpwy Portaethwy, and we said someone should write a tune with that name. So here i...

Most people know, or at least have some idea what an alphabet is, but many people might not be so familiar with abjads, abugidas, syllabaries and other writing systems. In this episode I explain what these words mean, and how these writing systems work. I also talk a bit about the history of writing. Find out more at: http://www.omniglot.com/radio/?p=550