Language Trainers Blog

Source: nytimes.com

Though it is a familiar and staple word in France and French language classrooms alike, the word “mademoiselle” (the English equivalent of “miss”), has come under intense fire recently in France from 2 prominent French feminist organizations, who for months have been campaigning to have the word removed from official documents. Their complaint lies in the word’s implications: “mademoiselle” – in contrast with “madame” – indicates the marital status of the female in question, whereas the male form, “monsieur”, gives away no such information. A spokeswoman for one of the feminist groups, Magali de Haas, said that the term “harkens to notions of female subjugation”.

From the New York Times article:

In a memo addressed to state administrators across France, Prime Minister François Fillon ordered the honorific — akin to “damsel” and the equivalent of “miss” — banished from official forms and registries. The use of “mademoiselle,” he wrote, made reference “without justification nor necessity” to a woman’s “matrimonial situation,” whereas “monsieur” has long signified simply “sir.”

The choice of mademoiselle, madame or monsieur appears most everywhere one gives one’s name in France: opening a bank account, shopping on the Internet or paying taxes, for instance.

Mr. Fillon’s order, signed on Tuesday, came after an advocacy campaign of several months by two French feminist organizations, “Osez le féminisme!” (“Dare to be feminist!”) and Les Chiennes de Garde (The Watchdogs). The government minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, whose portfolio includes questions of “social cohesion,” pleaded the groups’ case with Mr. Fillon.

“You’ve never wondered why we don’t call a single man ‘mondamoiseau,’ or even ‘young male virgin?’ ” the feminist groups ask on a joint Web site. “Not surprising: this sort of distinction is reserved for women.”

The pressure has had the desired result: the term “mademoiselle” will no longer be seen on official documents and registries, for example when applying to open a bank account or for a driver’s license. Feminists hope that the striking of “mademoiselle” from official languge will encourage private organizations to adopt the same position, and thus allow the term to fall from popular usage entirely.

Not all women share the same opinion of the word – just as there is a difference between “miss” and “madam” in English, the difference between “mademoiselle” and “madame” is often used as one of politeness when appealing to a woman’s age – “mademoiselle” is used for younger women, and is often seen as a compliment for those who consider themselves in the middle ground of the two terms. Just as there was debate surrounding “Miss” and “Mrs” several decades ago in the English speaking word, resulting in the more neutral “Ms” honorific, there are people on both sides of the argument.

Source: bbc.co.uk/news

A polyglot is somebody who speaks several languages (from the Greek poly = many, glotta = tongue). However, a new breed of hyper-polyglots has risen: people who were not happy with just a few languages, and have spent their lives learning to speak as many languages as possible.

The hyper-polyglot in the BBC News article, Ray Gillion, speaks 18 (!) languages, and his wife speaks 6. We’re not talking about him just dipping into that many langauges, he can speak all of those languages at a fluent or near fluent level. Yes, it’s OK to feel jealous at his achievements, because they have been matched by very few other people.

The key to Gillion’s success has been his love of languages, and the fact that no matter how many he studies, he still finds the process of learning just as fascinating as he always has. For his work he has travelled around Europe and the world, picking up languages as he goes.

Further explanation of how hyper-polyglots are able to do what they do can be found in the article:

So what enables hyperpolyglots to seemingly pick up a new language at the push of a button?

Erard says it is hard to explain, but whatever an individual’s biographical reasons are, he believes there is something that distinguishes hyperpolyglots neurologically.

“They have a neurological hardware that responds to the world, that’s fed by the world, that is suited to a pattern that is recognition-heavy, sound-heavy and memory-heavy – that is very structured, and also very sociable.

“They have an ability to switch between languages very easily, and that involves cognitive skills which are often heritable,” he adds.

But Gillon says he has no idea what the secret to his success is.

He says some “blocks” – Germanic, Slavic, Latin – make it “easier to go with the flow, and language becomes intuitive”. He agrees that by the third or fourth language, it also gets easier to assimilate vocabulary and grammar much more quickly.

“Etymology is a sport for me. I enjoy looking up the origin of words and seeing which particular invasion was responsible for bringing that word into our vocabulary. I am immersed in it for my work and it will continue to intrigue me for every day of my life.”

But he concludes: “I can’t explain it – if I could, I would bottle and sell it.”

This image serves to demonstrate the importance of understanding the idiomatic differences between languages – in English, the verb go has many uses and facets of meaning, but in some languages the role it plays is far more limited. In some Middle Eastern languages, for example, it usually means to leave, rather than being more of a general usage verb.

So it was, then, that protesters in an anti-America rally in Pakistan were actually giving the USA an unintentionally positive message…

“Go America go” would usually be interpreted in English as a motivational cheer, rather than an order to leave. This is one example of a cultural or linguistic misunderstanding of vocabulary can actually lead to the opposite idea being implied than what was intended.

This can be very easy to do. Here’s another example of a similar misunderstanding, this time in Chinese: the verbs ‘to buy’ and ‘to sell’ not only have very similar Chinese characters (买 and 卖, respectively), but also have almost the exact same pronunciation, with only a tonal difference to tell the two apart (mǎi and mài, respectively).

The German language is full of Anglicisms – that is, words or phrases that come straight from English and insert themselves into German. In German it’s known as an Anglizismus, and the habit of incorporating English words into German is called Denglisch (a portmanteau of “Deutsch” and “Englisch”).

Examples include the words “crash” and “reboot” when talking about computers, and these words decline and conjugate like other German words (e.g. “Ich musste den Computer rebooten, weil die Software gecrasht ist” means “I had to reboot the computer because the software crashed”).)

Sometimes the meaning of the original word is changed slightly, for example Germans call their cellphone a “handy”, a TV show host a “showmaster”, and a photoshoot a “shooting”.

While it’s considered a pretty serious swear word in English, the first syllable of this particular word does not have the same stigma attached to it in Germany, so rather than being a coarse term used only in certain situations, the Germans have embraced the word. According to the head of the panel of linguists responsible for making sh*tstorm the Anglicism of the year, Anatol Stefanowitsch, the word is totally acceptable to use in public.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s suddenly become a polite term in English…

Source: youtube.com

A couple of weeks ago a video went viral on the internet featuring a 14-year-old girl, later found to be named Alyssa Kramer, whose unique talent is to be able to take any word and say it backwards within seconds. The video quickly gained popularity and at the time of writing has around 2.7 million views. Here’s the video, for those of you who might not have seen it yet:

The big question is, how is she able to do this? Alyssa claims that she’s always been able to do it. You can tell from her replies that she is not doing it entirely phonetically (like the effect you would get if you played a recording backwards), but rather reconstructing the word backwards in her head and then reading that as a new word, applying standard English pronunciation rules.

This is most clearly shown when she reverses the word “garage”, saying “egarag” exactly as you would expect that word to be pronounced if you saw it spelled that way, not pronouncing the second g as a soft g like in the original word.

It’s certainly an interesting talent to have, though of course almost entirely useless. However, that isn’t stopping Alyssa from making the most of her internet celebrity: she has her own YouTube channel dedicated to her skill: Alyssa Talking Back, and has also appeared on the Today Show. However, judging from the views and subscriptions, it seems that like many viral video stars, her celebrity has been very short-lived.

British comedian David Mitchell, best known for his role in cult British TV show Peep Show as well as being a frequent guest on panel quiz shows, is also famous for his wit and bile-fuelled rants about society in general. His “David Mitchell’s Soap Box” series has gained quite a bit of fame on YouTube.

Though he seems like the kind of person who would have only distaste for American culture, he is actually pretty forgiving of the intricacies of American English and the liberties Americans have taken with the Brits’ precious language. However, there are some that (in my opinion quite justifiably) fuel his ire, namely “I could care less”, and “hold down the fort”. Take a look at the video for yourself:

I actually made the exact same point (as have many other bloggers) about “could care less” in a previous post. Please, let’s all band together and eradicate this pointless, nonsensical warped phrase from the English language!

Source: bbc.co.uk/news

The original definition of an internet troll is somebody who purposefully posts something inflammatory or purposefully incorrect online in order to gain the attention and ire of fellow internet users. However, these days it is used in a general way to describe anybody who posts malicious or offensive on the internet. Trolls tend to target places that are easy to sabotage or have a large audience that are otherwise sympathetic, like Wikipedia, or Facebook memorial and tribute pages for deceased people. Due to the anonymity of the internet it is very difficult to locate and prosecute offenders.

This has sparked linguistic experts at the university of Central Lancashire in England to begin development on an automated system to track and identify certain word patterns and vocabulary often used by these malicious users. From the article:

Claire Hardaker, lecturer in linguistics and English language at UCLAN, said: “Everyone has a unique way of writing, of putting certain words together, which is subconscious.

“Many teenagers say they are able to identify who sent a text to them – just by the style of writing and word habits or the way the words are written.

“Someone might be pretending to be someone else, but by analysing the way they write online, we can determine a probable, age, gender – even a probable region from where they come from.

“In its simplest form, people use different words for things – for example a bread roll. Some people would say a tea cake, some people would say a barm – it is these sort of elements that help to narrow down a search.”

It is proving hard for authorities to trace so-called trolls and there have only be two people in England successfully prosecuted.

In related news, next Tuesday is Safer Internet Day, an annual event with the purpose of encouraging people to be safer online. Remember: don’t feed the trolls.

Source: visual.ly

Here’s a great infographic about the speed of languages, that is: how fast languages are spoken. Why do some languages like Spanish and Japanese sound like they’re going by so fast, whereas others like Chinese seem more slow and pronounced?

A study was performed to find out why this is, and as it turns out, it’s more about the language density rather than the actual syllables per second. The ‘language density’ is a measurement of how much information each language can fit into a single syllable (using Vietnamese as a standard). As it happens, the slower languages tend to have a much higher information density, and the faster languages have less information transmitted per syllable; so it all evens itself out.

Check out the full size infographic here, or click on the thumbnail below.