Month: March 2007

Teaching Mandarin

By Simon

With the recent increase in the number of people studying Mandarin, I’ve been wondering where all the teachers are coming from. Most are probably from China, but there are some non-Chinese teachers of the language.

In the UK there are only a handful of training courses for those wanting to teach Mandarin:

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London runs a one-year part-time course that leads to a Certificate in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.

The University of Exeter offers a PGCE* in Modern Foreign Languages with Mandarin – a one-year full-time course. Interestingly, students on this course have to have some competence in a European language such as French or German because “there is normally insufficient timetable space on school-based work for an exclusively Mandarin programme.”

At the University of Sheffield you can do PGCE courses in Mandarin with a specialisms in French, German or Spanish – as at Exeter, you can’t specialise solely in Mandarin.

Goldsmiths College offers a PGCE in ‘Community Languages’ (Arabic, Mandarin, Chinese, Panjabi and Urdu).

*PGCE = Post Graduate Certificate of Education, one of the main teacher qualifications in the UK

Do you know of any similar courses and qualifications in other countries?

Only joking!

By Simon

Yesterday I stumbled upon a page containing jokes in Irish and was pleased to find that I could understand them and that I ‘got’ the jokes. Understanding humour in other languages can be quite difficult, especially when puns and plays on words are involved. When you can ‘get’ jokes in a foreign language, you know that you’ve reached quite a high level.

Here are some humour-related Irish words:

scéal grinn (funny story), cúis gháire (cause for laughter) = joke
cleas = dodge, fiddle, hoax, lark, ploy, practical joke, prank, stunt, trick
bob = hoax, practical joke, prank, trick
cleas a imirt ar, bob a bhualadh ar = to play a joke on
cleas suarach = dirty trick
ag magadh atá tú! = you’re joking!
gáire a bhaint as duine = to make somebody laugh

Do you know any sites with jokes in other languages?

Lexicelt

By Simon

Ddoe mi ddes i o hyd i wefan gydag enw lexicelt. Gwefan defnyddiol iawn ar gyfer y rhai sy’n dysgu’r Wyddeleg trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg, neu sy’n dysgu Cymraeg trwy gyfrwng y Wyddeleg. Ar a gwefan hon, mae geiriadur Cymraeg <> Gwyddeleg, a llyfryn ymadroddion yn cynnwys brawddegau, geirfa ddefnyddiol a ffeiliau sain. Yn ogystal â hynny, mae gwybodaeth am hanes a diwylliant Iwerddon, gwybodaeth i deithwyr, a manylion am y Wyddeleg ar y We.

Inné, tháinig mé ar suíomh idirlín le ainm lexicelt. Suíomh idirlín an úsáideach atá ann don té atá ag foghlaim Breatnais trí mheán na Gaeilge, nó don té atá ag foghlaim Gaeilge trí mheán na Breatnaise. Air an suíomh idirlín seo, tá foclóir Gaeilge <> Breatnaise, agus leabhrán frásaí. Sa leabhrán frásaí tá abairtí, foclóir úsáideach agus comhaid fuaime. Chomh maith leis sin, tá eolas ann faoi stair agus faoi chultúr na Breataine Bige, eolas do thaistealaithe, agus sonraí faoin Bhreatnais ar an Ghréasán.

Yesterday I found a very useful website called lexicelt which contains a Welsh <> Irish dictionary, a collection of phrases for every occasion with sound files for both languages. In addition, there is information about the history and culture of Ireland and Wales, information for travellers, and links to Welsh and Irish online resources. The site is in Welsh and Irish.

Oes llawer o bobl yng Nghymru sy’n dysgu Gwyddeleg?

Do many people in Wales learn Irish?

An bhfuil go leor daoine in Éirinn ag foghlaim na Breatnaise?

Do many people in Ireland learn Welsh?

Breed your way to linguistic security

By Simon

There was an interesting discussion on Radio Cymru’s phone-in discussion programme, Taro’r Post, today. They were talking about comments made by a former major of Aberystwyth, Sion Jobbins, who is urging Welsh speakers to have more children in order to secure the future of the language. He’s not proposing that all families have a large number of children, but wants policies on sustainable population.

Some callers on to programme were in favour of the idea, but pointed out that children are expensive so they would need to be sure of receiving significant financial incentives and support before considering have more of them. Others argued that more places in Welsh-medium schools are needed.

Last week I heard a similar discussion about the Hebrides, where one problem is that many young people, especially young women, leave the islands to study and work on the mainland. Few return, except perhaps many years later when they retire. Many more would return if suitable jobs were available. As a result, fewer and fewer children are being born on the islands and there was talk of finding ways to encourage young families to stay and raise their children there. One proposal is to give grants to people to set up businesses. Here’s a report with more details.

Word of the day – iqqanaijaaqajjaagunniiqtutit

By Simon

Today’s word appears in an article on CBC Canada News which discusses a new policy that will require all senior government officials in Nunavut to speak Inuktitut by 2008. The language requirement will eventually be extended to other staff as well. The word iqqanaijaaqajjaagunniiqtutit roughly translates as ‘you won’t have any work anymore’ – the fate that apparently awaits those who fail to learn the language.

Nunavut is a huge, sparsely populated territory in the far north of Canada where the majority of the inhabitants are Inuit. The majority of the population – some 85% – speak Inuktitut as their first language and some speak no other language. In this light, the policy makes a lot of sense. In Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, Mark Abley mentions that many of the officials in Nunavut spoke only English when he visited the territory, and that much of the administration of the region was undertaking in English. This new policy should help to raise the status of Inuktitut.

How many speak Mandarin?

By Simon

Whenever Mandarin or Chinese are mentioned in the news reports and other articles – something that seems to be happening frequently recently – the number of speakers is often mentioned and is usually given as over one billion. The assumption that the vast majority of people in China speak Mandarin is very common both outside and inside China.

According to a survey undertaken by the Xinhua news agency however, ‘only’ half of the population of China, some 690 million people, actually do speak Mandarin. Urban dwellers are more likely to be Mandarin speakers than those who live in rural areas, and while approximately three quarters of those under 30 speak the language, only a third of those over 60 do.

Other varieties of Chinese (dialects/regionalects/topolects/Sinitic languages) are spoken by 86% of the population, which suggests that many people are bilingual in their local ‘dialect(s)’ and Mandarin. Non-Chinese languages are spoken by about 5% of population who belong to China’s 55 officially recognised ‘National Minorities’.

The other main concentrations of Mandarin speakers are in Taiwan, where about 20 million – the majority of the population – speak the language, and in Singapore, where about 1.5 million speak Mandarin, and the government is attempting to encourage more to do so. There’s another million or so speakers of Mandarin in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand and Mongolia, according to Ethnologue, and about 175,00 in the USA, according to the MLA.

That gives us a total of 712,675,000 speakers of Mandarin. A huge number, but not quite a billion.

Languages in primary schools

By Simon

There was some discussion on the radio this morning about a plan to make the teaching of foreign languages compulsory in primary schools in England. A review of languages policy has been undertaken by Lord Dearing and Dr Lid King, National Director for Languages at the Department for Education and Skills. They are recommending that languages become a compulsory part of the curriculum for children between of 7 and 14, that language courses are made ‘more engaging’, and that there is more investment in the training and support of teachers. A summary of recommendations can be found here.

Apparently languages are already taught in 70% of primary schools. In secondary schools, the number taking languages after the age of 14 fell dramatically after they were made optional and the government wants to try to reverse this trend.

Only a few obstacles will stand in the way of this plan: the lack of language teachers, trying to fit language lessons into an already over-stuffed curriculum, and the possible negativity or indifference about languages among the kids and their parents.

At what age are languages introduced in your country?