Language Trainers Blog

Source: bbc.co.uk/news

While human rights are not widely acclaimed as one of the focal points of China’s government, recently there has been something of an uproar about the latest version of one of China’s most prominent dictionaries: a glaring omission that tacitly denounces homosexuality.

The word in question is 同志 (tóngzhì). On the surface, it means “comrade”, and has been used for years as a familiar form of address between Chinese people – particularly between fellow members of the Communist party. However, just as ‘gay’ means ‘happy’ in English (yet the word has been re-appropriated for describing homosexuals), 同志 is used as a colloquial term for a gay friend or lover. While the new version of the dictionary includes many new terms introduced into the language in recent times – slang included – the definition for 同志 is notably lacking its very common secondary usage. Unsurprisingly, this has caused something of a furore among gay rights activists.

From the article:

Some gay rights campaigners are up in arms.

One of them, whose name was given as “Nan Feng”, told China’s official news agency Xinhua it was unacceptable that the “gay” meaning of “tongzhi” was excluded from the dictionary just because of the compilers’ own preferences and values.

“Tongzhi is the most commonly used, non-offensive term used by our circle to refer to homosexuals,” Nan Feng was quoted as saying.

“We hope the compilers can view the word from an impartial standpoint.”

The standard word for “homosexual” in Chinese is “tongxinglian”, which translates literally as “same-sex love”. But many gay Chinese are said to view it as too clinical.

“Tongzhi” literally means “same will”.

While few countries are exempt from occasionally being compared with George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, to me this was immediately reminiscent of the protagonist Winston’s comrade at the Ministry of Truth, Syme.

Syme was notable in that he was instrumental in collating the latest revisions of the Newspeak dictionary, and in doing so destroyed thousands upon thousands of words. The idea behind the greatly simplified and reduced language was that it would eventually control thought – if people didn’t have the words to describe a particular thought or idea that was contrary to the government’s wishes, eventually they would stop having these thoughts.

Today, the term Newspeak is sometimes used to describe any attempt to restrict language that is ‘disapproved’ by a ruling government or other powerful figure.

However, Newspeak is happening closer to home than you’d think – the state of Tennessee recently passed a law making it illegal to say the words “gay” or “homosexual” in elementary and middle school, in order to stamp out anybody who would imply that there is any other ‘correct’ sexuality other than heterosexuality.

Source: dailywritingtips.com

English is a language famous for borrowing words from other tongues to bolster its own vocabulary, but often, due to a process called semantic shift or semantic change, such words end up changing their meaning from the original word, or mean something much more or less specific than the original word implied. English not only borrows words, but also accepts new meanings as they come into common usage – even if that common usage would otherwise be deemed ‘incorrect’ (e.g. the word ‘literally’ recently had its dictionary definition altered to accommodate the unenlightened people who use the term when they should be using ‘figuratively’).

French is a language English has borrowed heavily from over the centuries, and this article has a nice list of 20 words English has lifted from our cheese-loving trans-Atlantic neighbors, such as ennui, détente, panache, riposte, and savant. Adding them to your vocabulary might make you seem a tad pretentious to some, but at least you’ll be safe in the knowledge you’ll be using them correctly!

Source: greatist.com/happiness

A common complaint among would-be language learners is that they’re too old. Most people know that children pick up languages as easily as anything, their young minds absorbing every nugget of information without them even having to try.

However, this does not mean that adults can’t learn a new language and become just as proficient in it than a child who was raised speaking that same language. Adolescence is certainly not the cut-off point for gaining fluency in another language, as this article on greatist.com states:

[...] the results of this latest research, led by Michael Ullmann and Kara Morgan-Short, leave some hope for us geezers out of high school. The study compared two groups of people (average age mid-20s) learning an artificial language: one through explicit training, similar to standard classroom methods, and the other through implicit training, similar to immersion. After six months, the groups performed equally on proficiency tests. But brain scans revealed something surprising: The group that learned through immersion-like training showed brain activity similar to native speakers, while the group stuck translating “see spot run” didn’t. According to Morgan-Short, these results mean that the immersion group might be able to use the language better in stressful situations (Dónde esta el baño?!) and retain the language better than the explicitly-trained group.

To me these results were incredibly interesting for two distinct reasons. First off, they suggest that it is in fact possible for adults to attain native-like proficiency in a foreign language. And second, they’re evidence that language immersion, or being in a place where people speak only the language you’re learning, may be the absolute most effective way for adults to learn a new language.

Immersion learning has long been considered the best way to learn a language, and it seems this study reflects that fact. I live in China, and have found that the westerners who speak the best Mandarin are often the ones who have found Chinese girlfriends or boyfriends and have the best motivation to be able to communicate clearly on everyday topics.

For adults, the language learning ship has not sailed. This isn’t to say that it’s not hard work to learn a language later on in life, but the excuse of “I’m too old” – well, that won’t fly any more.

I thoroughly recommend reading the full article here.

Source: pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3

This survey is a joint venture between 3 linguistics professors, 1 at Yale and 2 from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The idea is to learn more about “north American” accents – that is, the accents of people who grew up in the USA and Canada. Differences in regional accents and dialects are influenced by a number of factors, and this survey is a great way to collect enough data to study how and where these differences manifest themselves.

So, who can participate? Well, basically any native English speaker from the US or Canada. From the site:

We’d like recordings from anyone who has grown up speaking English in the US or Canada. We would like to get information about as many different types of North American English as possible. The more diverse our participants, the more representative it will be of the ways Americans speak. There are no right or wrong answers in this survey. We’re interested in all the different varieties of English on this continent!

If you’d like to get involved, the survey basically consists of you answering some basic questions about yourself (age, gender, ethnicity etc.), then recording yourself reading a list of around 80 English words. It takes around 5 minutes total, and all you need is a microphone connected to your computer and Flash installed.

So far they’ve had around 2,500 responses, but they still want a few thousand more participants, so get involved! You can go straight to the survey page here.

The preliminary results for the survey thus far can be found here.

Source: bookblog.net/gender

Yes, it’s a bit of a novelty, but it’s surprising how well it works. The Gender Genie is a simple site set up from an algorithm that was developed by Moshe Koppel of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon of Illinois Institute of Technology.

The idea is that it analyzes the language used by an author, and uses vocabulary and syntax to detect the probably gender of the author. Certain ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ keywords are parsed, and it uses those as flags to work out whether the author is male or female.

It works best with longer passages (500+ words), but it still works remarkably well with short excerpts. 4 out of 5 of my blog entries that I copy-pasted from this site came out as male – I must have been feeling a bit girly on the day I wrote the 5th…

Try it out for yourself!

Backslang is an unusual form of slang in which words are reversed phonemically (i.e. by sound), in order to make it harder for people to understand what the speakers are saying. There is a theory that backslang originated between market sellers in Victorian England, who wanted to have private conversations with their assistants or fellow sellers in order to trick customers into paying more money for poorer quality goods. In this way, backslang is fairly similar to Cockney rhyming slang which was purportedly invented so criminals could discuss illicit matters while evading the attention of the police.

The word “yob” – meaning a loutish or uncultured young male – though primarily used in British English, is an example of backslang (“boy” reversed). Most backslang, however, hasn’t entered standard English. A few more examples of backslang are words like “dello” (“old”), “erif” (“fire”), “elsop” (“police”) and “retchtub” (“butcher”).

Backslang is also apparently used in prisons in order to hide their conversations from guards.