Türk İşaret Dili (Turkish Sign language)

Turkish Sign Language (TİD) dates back to the Ottoman period. Between the 16th and 18th centuries there was apparently a large group of deaf people in the Ottoman palace who helped officials in secret gatherings and carried out various other official and diplomatic tasks.

The first school for the deaf in Turkey, the Yildiz Deaf School in Istanbul, was set up in 1902. A second deaf school was later opened in Izmir. These schools taught both sign language and Turkish.

In 1953 the Turkish Ministry of Education banned the teaching of sign language in deaf schools in order to promote oral education, a policy promoted by a German academic, who believed that teaching sign language would slow down the learning of spoken language. Since then deaf children in Turkey have learnt sign language from their peers. As a result, there is considerable variation in individual signs and grammar throughout Turkey.

According to an article on Today’s Zaman, there are plans to unify sign language in Turkey. The Prime Ministry Administration on Disabled People and the Turkish Language Institute, Turkish Scientific and Technical Council (TÜBİTAK) are going to undertake a two-year research project to set up a unified national Turkish Sign Language System which will be taught in deaf schools.

You can see an example of Turkish Sign Language in action here

Take a note, Bubbles

According to a recent post on Language Log, chimpanzees in the wild have been observed make pencil-like tools. They take sticks, tear off any branches, peel the bark off, and then sharpen one end. They then use the stick to make mark on large flat leaves. In one cases, a female chimp made marks on a leaf, showed it to a male, who looked at it briefly, then rushed off on some errand. Researchers have, as yet, been unable to examine the symbols because the chimps eat usually them.

Perhaps writing has been around a lot longer than we realise.

Language exports

The other day I read in an article on the University of Notre Dame website that 51 universities outside Ireland teach Irish and that 29 of them are in the USA. Some of those studying Irish in the USA have Irish roots; others came to the language through an interest in Irish culture. The other countries where Irish language is taught include the UK, France, Canada and Germany. Does anyone know in which other countries it’s taught?

These factoids got me thinking about how languages are exported and promoted outside their original homelands. The most successful language export is obviously English, which has spread to every continent. Other successful language exports include French, German, Spanish, Italian, and increasingly Chinese and Japanese.

What about ‘smaller’ languages like Irish and Welsh? Well, Irish seems to be almost more popular outside Ireland than it is in Ireland. In the USA, Welsh is taught by Cymdeithas Madog, an organization that describes itself as being “dedicated to helping North Americans learn, use and enjoy the Welsh language.” There are quite a few other Welsh societies, some of which teach the language, in the USA and Canada. I understand that Welsh is taught at at least one university in Moscow, and there’s a small Welsh colony in Chubut province of Argentina that’s home to several thousand Welsh speakers.

Does anyone know of any other courses in Welsh or other Celtic languages outside their homelands?

Useful phrases

I’m just putting together a new phrases page – a collection of translations of the phrase “Could you write it/that down please?”. You can see what I’ve done so far here. Corrections and additional translations are very welcome.

Are there any other phrases you’d like to see in the phrases section?

Do you think that the current way the phrases section is constructed is useful? Or would you prefer to have phrases listed by language?

Bangkok Danish

According to an article I came across today, language classes in Danish and Swedish are proving popular among quite a few Thai women in Bangkok. Most of these are women have Danish or Swedish husbands or boyfriends and want to be able to communicate better with them. Others are hoping to work with Scandinavian companies or study abroad.

They are being taught, for free, by an teacher of English originally from Denmark who also speaks Thai. His aim is to help Thai people planning to move to Denmark or other countries in Scandinavia to integrate and feel comfortable when they arrive. Language plays a major part in this, but understanding the culture is important as well.

Anecdotal evidence from my friends and acquaintances suggests that it’s often women who learn their partner’s language rather than the other way round. In some cases, the man would like to learn his partner’s language, but usually finds various reasons not to. Does anyone know of any studies about this phenomenon?

Green with envy

Today I discovered quite a good online translator that translates between a number of different languages from Arabic to Russian. I’ve been using it to get an English translation of the Arabic text I’m adding to a website to ensure that the text is going in the right places. This is necessary where the translation is inadequately labelled, or doesn’t follow the original English text.

When translating between Arabic and English, the results are often a bit strange, probably due to the very different structure of the two languages, but they give you the gist of the text. Here’s an example of a sentence in Arabic, with the English translation from the online translator, and the original English text:

كمجمع يجعل من أشد وأكفأ المنافعين لها منذ وقت طويل (The Green).

Online translation: The pool makes it more efficient Almenavaina time since fold l (The Green).

Original version: A campus to make many of its longer-established rivals turn green.

Here are Chinese and Russian translations of the same sentence with online translations into English.

這是一個令很多這所大學的長期競爭者眼紅的校園 [这是一个令很多这所大学的长期竞争者眼红的校园]
This is a campus which command very many this universities’ long-term competitors is jealous

является предметом зависти для многих более старых университетов-конкурентов
Is a subject of envy for many older universities-competitors

In English jealousy is associated with the colour green – the ‘rivals turn green’ with envy. The equivalent expression in Chinese is 令…眼紅 – ‘makes … (their) eyes red’. What colour is jealousy in other languages?

Another useful site I found today is an online spell checker for English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & Ukranian.

‘Ōlelo Hawai’i ‘oe?

According to a couple of articles (here and here) I found today, a new PhD program focusing on the Hawaiian language and culture has recently been set up at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. This is apparently the first doctorate in the United States in a Native language. Five students are undertaking research into Hawaiian and indigenous language and culture revitalization. One the things they’re working on is to come up with Hawaiian versions of scientific and technological terms, such as World Wide Web – Punaewele puni honua (network around the world) and photosynthesis – ka’ama’ai (acting through light to produce food).

When people are bilingual in a ‘large’ language like English and a ‘small’ one like Hawaiian, they might be tempted to simply use English words to fill in any gaps in their Hawaiian vocabulary, rather than coining new Hawaiian words. The new terms being created by the PhD students should help with this problem.

Did you know that wiki, as in Wikipedia comes from the Hawaiian word wiki-wiki, which means quick?

Distractions

My plan to stick to one language for two days at a time is going quite well so far. Previously I usually only listened to one or two different programmes at a time on online radio stations. Listening to one station all day is interesting as you get to hear a greater variety of programmes and voices.

Yesterday I even listened to a bit of Manx on the website of the Manx band, King Chiaulee. There’s a recording of an interview with the band from Energy FM on the Goodies page and the presenter talks in Manx and English.

Quite often during the day one of my language exchange partners contacts me and wants to chat. While it’s great to practice speaking and writing Mandarin, Japanese and Spanish, or occasionally other languages, it tends to distract me from the Celtic languages I’m trying to concentrate on.

It’s hard work being a polyglot!