Language Trainers Blog

Source: reuters.com

If you’re anything like me, you may have been enjoying the recent action from the Winter Olympics, hosted in Vancouver. The American and Canadian teams have been cleaning up most of the medals, with 37 (9 gold) and 26 (14 gold) respectively. The opening ceremony was as flashy and impressive as ever, but apparently has enraged residents of Quebec, who thought that the Olympic anthem “I Believe”, originally performed entirely in English by Canadian teen singer Nikki Yanofsky, did not represent or give appropriate consideration to the Francophone population of Quebec.

Thus for the closing ceremony, a mixed English/French rendition of the anthem – re-titled “I Believe / J’imagine” and performed by both Yanofsky and Annie Villeneuve, a performer from Quebec – was recorded at the last minute, and is set to be performed during the Olympics closing ceremony tonight.

From the original article:

But after a firestorm of criticism from Quebec that the opening ceremony for the Vancouver Games paid too little attention to French-speaking Quebec, the CTV-led broadcast consortium assembled Yanofsky, Villeneuve and a backing chorus early Saturday morning at 2 a.m. at a deserted Olympic Cauldron, just west of the International Broadcast Center, for a reshoot.

There have been quite a few last minute changes made by the Olympic Organization Committee to reflect the multilingual nature of Canada, though this looks to be the most major (and probably final) change for the Winter Olympics this year. What a fantastic couple of weeks it has been!

Lebanon is a very small yet multi-cultural country on the border of the Mediterranean and Middle East, and prides itself on the multi-lingual nature of its residents. A common Lebanese greeting (now a popular T-shirt and bumper sticker slogan) goes “Hi, kifak? Ça va?” (“Hi, how’s it going? OK?”) – a mixture of English, Arabic and French in just four words.

It seems that most of the young people in the cities, however, have dropped the local Arabic dialect in daily conversation almost entirely, relying instead on English and French. These Western languages are considered to be far more ‘cool’ by the majority of Lebanese youths than the traditional Arabic, which is looked down upon as being distinctly out of fashion. There are many reasons for this, though perhaps one of the chief concerns is that the vast majority of Arabic literature does not address or appeal to today’s youth.

Leila Barakat, the World Book Capital programme manager, says “we must support and encourage Arabic literature for young adults, which is today underdeveloped”.

According to various sources and surveys, there were a worryingly large proportion of Lebanese university students who were unable even to recite the Arabic alphabet. If Arabic is spoken, a lot of the time it is a very light, informal “Facebook Arabic”, far removed from the formal version of the language taught in schools, and often punctuated with numbers (2s, 3s and 7s) to mark phonemes that do not exist in the Roman alphabet.

As a result, an organization has been set up to try to preserve Arabic amongst the country’s teenagers – “Fael Ummer”. This organization has recently decided to impose an annual day of celebration on March the 1st to celebrate the Arabic language – an attempt, they claim, to “preserve the heritage of the Arab nation in the face of globalisation”.

However, this is not to say that having a second language is not still considered a great advantage to the Lebanese – Fael Ummer are simply trying to preserve the traditional dialect of the country. In my mind a noble act, but I believe that this organization is certainly going to have its work cut out to promote Arabic throughout the younger generation.

Source: kttc.com

Another baby-related post today – it has been found by a team of psychological scientists at the University of British Colombia in Canada that babies born from bilingual families seem more likely to have more of a penchant for picking up spoken languages later on.

Quite how they found the correlation between babies’ “sucking reflexes” and their stimulus for languages, I don’t really understand… but since they’re wearing white lab coats, I am tempted to believe them.

From the article:

A team of psychological scientists at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in France, watched the sucking reflexes of newborns born to either monolingual English-speaking women, or women who spoke both English and Tagalog, a language native to the Philippines.

The researchers explained that increased sucking behavior indicates newborns’ interest in a particular stimulus, including spoken language.

The team found that babies born to monolingual mothers exhibited increased sucking behaviors when they heard English, but not Tagalog, while infants born to the bilingual mothers showed interest, regardless of which of the two languages was being spoken.

I’ve always wished that I had been brought up bilingual!

Another annoyance post today – this time concerning the phrase “beg the question”. This is now such a common error that you can see it everywhere – television, newspapers, advertisements – the whole nine yards.

In basic terms, to beg the question does not mean the same as to “raise the question”. For example:

“I don’t like strawberries; which begs the question, why do I love strawberry Pop Tarts?”

This is quite simply wrong, no matter how many times you have heard the phrase being used in this sense. You should be raising the question here.

“Begging the question” actually refers to a type of logical fallacy, also known as petitio principii (Latin: “assuming the initial point”). Begging the question is a fallacy in which you make a claim, but have no evidence as to whether this claim is true or false other than the statement itself. For example:

“I don’t trust her, because she’s untrustworthy.”

Describing her as ‘untrustworthy’ does not actually explain why you don’t trust her, as they both mean the same thing. This is an example of somebody begging the question, thus creating a logical fallacy.

This, perhaps, raises the question: why is this error so often made? It seems to have slipped under the radar a long time ago, and now the incorrect meaning has simply been introduced into modern usage.

You can find out more at begthequestion.info, who give the following statement as to why they feel the error should be corrected:

While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous “modern” usage. This is why we fight.

As a bit of a pedant myself, I completely agree. So remember, don’t beg questions – raise them.

Source: latimes.com

When I’m trying to learn a new language, I’ll often use flashcards. For me, it isn’t just the flashcard itself, but the process of making the flashcards that makes them such a great learning aid. I find that I learn best when I go over everything several times, and writing out vocabulary – especially if the language uses a different alphabet or writing system, like Japanese – really helps hammer the words into my brain.

However, they didn’t prove to be such a great aid for 22 year old Pamona College physics major Nicholas George, who is studying Arabic to aid his hopes to become a US diplomat in the Middle East someday. As he boarded a flight from Philadelphia to California he figured he’d take some of his English-Arabic flashcards on board with him, to help him brush up on his vocabulary during the flight.

Sadly, since Arabic newspapers are rife with this kind of vocabulary these days, George’s flashcards included cards for words such as “terrorism” and “bomb”. This alone was enough to provoke so much suspicion from the TSA that he was handcuffed and was detained for 4 hours, and the offending flashcards were confiscated. He was asked if he was a member of a terrorist or pro-Islamic organization during his detention, to which he replied no, and was later released without an apology.

George is now suing the TSA.

I feel the TSA acts like it has a blank check as long as what it does is in the name of fighting terrorism. Of course, the TSA’s job is to keep us safe – but they have to follow the Constitution and respect rights.

[If the flashcards triggered such deep suspicion] then we’ve got a real 1st Amendment issue here. I have a right to study Arabic.

- Nicholas George, Pamona College student

Personally, I think this is ridiculous. George also admits that the stamps in his passport from Jordan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan (from an overseas semester last year) as well as a book in his carryon that was “critical of US foreign policy” may also have added to the suspicion – but to me this is just another tale of airport authority paranoia.

Happily, this is pretty much the only circumstances I can think of whereby learning a language could land you in this much trouble…

Two friends of mine had a child together a couple of years ago, and I’m happy to say they’re still going strong. The boy, however, was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to speaking – he hit two years old a few months back, but had still barely said anything more than ‘dada’ and ‘momma’. This of course led to a certain degree of frustration and concern when trying to find out why he was crying when he was upset or unhappy, since he was unable to communicate at all.

A little worried, my friends did some research online and through their doctor, and found that this is a more common phenomenon than you’d expect – many (perfectly normal) children do not speak their first words until 15 or 16 months. While there is no hard and fast solution to get their kid talking earlier, they were recommended to try to teach him the basics of Infant Sign Language – basic terms such as “thirsty”, “hungry”, “blanket”, “pacifier”, etc.

Many daycare centers and preschools now cater to Infant Sign Language to facilitate easier communication – some starting as early as six weeks old. Contrary to what many believe, teaching your children sign language before they can speak will not delay speech even further, but in fact helps to further speech development – baby signers were found usually to start talking earlier than non-signers. Children who are able to communicate their thoughts like this – even at a rudimentary level – are also far less prone to outbursts, since they are able to communicate their needs before they can actually pronounce them.

We are a sociable species, so it makes sense to allow communication as early as possible during a child’s development – it not only helps in ways mentioned above, but it will also serve to reinforce the infant’s vocabulary, as well as stimulating the basic need for socializing and communicating.

So, while the thought of a baby gesturing in sign language is perhaps a little strange to some of us, it certainly seems to have its advantages!

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the death of George Orwell (1903-1950), a British writer most famous for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four.

Orwell wasn’t just a novelist, however – he wrote hundreds of essays, articles and studies during his lifetime, in addition to the six novels he penned. His focus in writing was often on his ardent passion against totalitarianism and social injustices, and part of this focus involved clarity of language – that is to say, transmitting your message in as few words as is necessary, so that it can be understood by as many people as possible. He coined several neologisms (‘new words’) in his writings, many of which are still in use today, such as “Big Brother” – and in fact, we sometimes even use the term “Orwellian” to describe something as harmful to a free society.

Even though Orwell’s love for the clarity of language was well-founded, Nineteen Eighty Four sees the totalitarian government adopt a new, obfuscating form of language – Newspeak – which does away with all synonyms (words that mean the same as another word) and antonyms (words that mean the opposite) to create a vocabulary of simple dichotomies – good and ungood, pleasure and pain, etc..

The effect of this Newspeak is that it forcefully removes from the English language all ideas of freedom and rebellion against the state. If you can’t say something, it makes it a lot harder to think it – which brings the government one step closer towards controlling the thoughts of its populace, thus demonstrating the total dominance of the ruling regime.

Whilst Orwell of course never condones Newspeak in reality (though it was a brilliantly effective literary device), he also was never fond of the opposite extreme. In one of his most prominent essays – Politics and the English Language, he draws up six rules of good writing, which we nowadays perhaps might deem as common sense:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short word will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Use the active rather than passive voice.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

It’s fair to say that Orwell will mostly be remembered for the political statements made through his writing, but it is slightly less known just how much of an effect he had on the English language itself!

Source: allgov.com

This is kinda sad… a whole language dies along with the last survivor of a tribe from the Andaman Islands.

Her name was Boa Sr, and was the last remaining member of the Bo tribe, and was the last speaker of an ancient tongue – the Bo language has been around for over 65,000 years! It’s amazing to think – with her, a whole language is wiped out. Sadly, her final years were mostly spent feeling isolated, since she had nobody else to talk to in her native language. The only other indigenous tribe in that region are the Sentilinese, who are aggressive to all outsiders, and famously fired arrows at an Indian helicopters sent in to relieve the victims of the tsunami on 12/26/04.

There are many endangered languages in the world, though it is hard to say exactly how many. It’s difficult to work out precisely how many languages are spoken throughout the world today – Unesco have an interactive map where you can see just how many known languages are deemed ‘critically endangered’ – it’s a lot higher than you’d think.

Source: The Times (UK)

This sounds pretty cool to me. I got the opportunity to play around with a friend’s Nexus One cellphone the other day, and one of the best features was that at any point there was a keyboard on the screen, I could choose to press a little microphone button and speak what I wanted to type. It wasn’t exactly foolproof, but it seemed like an excellent integration of speech-to-text.

However, Google are now claiming that soon they will have finished developing speech-to-speech translation software for mobile devices; which will enable users to speak what they want to translate into the handset and have a live translation, anywhere.

We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.

Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on. If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently.

- Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services

Since they seem to have a pretty good footing in the speech-to-text translation, but it could still be better. I’m looking forward to when we have universal translation with the whole Babelfish-on-your-phone setting, but I wonder how it will affect language learning in general – will people still want to learn German for a vacation to Germany if they can just use their phones to get directions, order in a restaurant, and deal with pretty much any other situation?

Probably not. But even early implementations of this software will be a great failsafe if you need direct translation, then and there. Google does it again…

Source: tvnz.co.nz

In the cuter side of today’s news, I found an article about Mei Lan – a three year old American-born giant panda – who is arriving in China this week. Since Mei Lan has only ever heard English before, zookeepers at the Chengdu Panda Centre (Sichuan province) are advertising for a Chinese tutor to familiarize the panda with the language and “teach her basic phrases”.

I’m not sure exactly how this is going to help Mei Lan, but I suppose learning a second language is never a disadvantage!