Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
One of the seminars I went to this week was on innovation in London English. One interesting point noticed by the researchers was the range of quotatives being used. Quotatives are words and expressions used to introduce reported speech, including “I said” and “she went”.
The most common quotative among young Londoners is “be like”, as in “I was like”, “he was like”, etc. This expression is used with reported speech, and also with sounds and facial expressions indicating different moods and attitudes. There are apparently equivalents of it in many other languages.
A new quotative they found being used in London was “This is me” / “This was me”. I haven’t heard this being used anywhere, have you?
How do you introduce reported speech?
The subject of children playing school came up today in a lecture in the context of how children acquire literacy. The study we were discussing focused on literacy in monolingual English families and polyglot Bangladeshi families in a poor area of London. The researchers found that in the Bangladeshi families it was almost always the older siblings helped their younger siblings with reading, while in the monolingual English families, it was often the parents who helped with reading.
The Bangladeshi children saw reading as something very serious and they all went to classes almost every day after school to learn to read Bengali and Arabic, while the English children saw reading outside school as a fun activity that they enjoyed doing, but didn’t take seriously.
When playing school the Bangladeshi children took it seriously, were strict and imitated their teachers both from their day schools and their evening classes. This involved the younger children reading aloud until they came to a word they didn’t know, which the older children would tell them. The older children also corrected their mistakes. As the younger children became more confident in their reading skills, the older ones gradually removed this supportive scaffolding. This is a technique used in their Bengali and Arabic classes, but quite different to the methods used in the day schools, where the teachers will often simply repeat the words the children have read rather than helping with the next ones.
For the English kids the emphasis when playing school was on the play rather than the school, and it was more popular with the girls than the boys.
Did you play school when you were a kid? Do your children do this? How seriously did you/do they take it?
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
Today we have a guest post by Jeff Foster.
Without a doubt, I am a language enthusiast. My goal is to become fluent in 3 languages by the time I graduate from high school. Those languages are Spanish, Italian, and Russian, in addition to English obviously. Using my Spanish class in school as a base of vocabulary and grammar structure, with Skype and other texts to enhance my overall knowledge. Combining all of these things has allowed me to gather a pretty good knowledge of the language. For Italian, I selected Rosetta Stone and I am thoroughly disappointed with it. While it does give you a good feel for accent, pronunciation, and very basic sentence structure, it lacks grammar, vocabulary, etc. For Russian, I am currently using Teach Yourself Russian, a book for learning Cyrillic and a few words.
Anyway, looking ahead to the future I would love to learn as many languages as possible, namely German, Scottish Gaelic, and possibly Arabic. I’ve had particular trouble with the accents. According to this article, accents can be acquired in a variety of ways. For example, my school advisor, after living in England for one year, many years ago, still carries a strong British accent. Many people make fun of him, saying that he fakes the accent.
What is your opinion? Is it possible for someone to somehow retain an accent, even long after leaving the country?
I went to an interesting seminar yesterday which discussed the use of gestures in bilinguals and monolinguals. Research in Canada and China found that bilinguals tend to gesture more overall than monolinguals, and that they gesture more in their less dominant language. It was also found that gestures were most frequent when people were trying to remember words – the tip of the tongue phenomenon – and that participants in the study who were told to keep their hands still found it harder to recall words.
Here’s an abstract of the talk (Word doc).
Do you gesture more in some languages than in others?
Do you use more gestures when trying to retrieve words?
Studying Latin can improve you SAT scores and can help you get into a good college, according to an article I found today.
Increasing numbers of students in the USA are studying Latin for a variety of reasons – to increase their chances of being accepted by a good college, to help with their English, and due to an interest in Roman culture and history. Learning Latin also helps you stand out from others who study more mainstream subjects.
Students of Latin apparently become more dedicated to their schoolwork, especially when preparing for the National Latin Exam, anbd they study and help each other more. They also show increased emotional consideration for their teachers and fellow students, as well as greater cultural awareness and sensitivity.
Today we have a guest post by Paul Sawers, a Communications Executive at Lingo24.
As one of the few mono-linguists working for a very multi-lingual translation company (Lingo24 – even the programmers can speak at least two languages…), I certainly don’t think I’m in any less of a position to comment on some of the linguistic lapses that seem to be everywhere in society.
Indeed, whilst my rudimentary French and Spanish is probably enough to get me a room for a night in a Paris or Madrid hotel, my language skills pale in comparison to the Account Managers, Project Managers, IT specialists and marketing personnel I work with on a daily basis. And all this before we even begin to discuss all the trusted translators we work with.
But alas, whilst it has always been an ambition of mine to become proficient enough in Spanish so I can at least hold a decent conversation with a native Spaniard, it isn’t necessary for my job. I simply manage the English-language side of our communications.
Having been immersed in the translation industry for the best part of 6 months now, I certainly feel as though I’ve learned a lot about the industry. From simple things like the difference between a translator and an interpreter, to the importance of using qualified linguists rather than laypeople that just happen to be fluent in another language.
These may be things that many people take for granted, but for someone who has never worked in the languages industry, these are things I’d never really considered before.
But at any rate, the purpose of this post isn’t to dwell on life in a translation agency, it’s really more about how it’s made me more aware of other languages in general.
Lingo24 is regularly asked why someone should use a professional translation service when there is a plethora of software and free online translation tools widely available. Well, there are many examples which help to illustrate why machine translation tools perhaps aren’t the most reliable route to go down.
Last year, there was the restaurant in China that, whilst obviously trying to make its shop-front more appealing to the English-speaking world for the Summer Olympics, decided to use an online translation tool: ‘Translate Server Error’ was the resulting message, designed to ‘entice’ anglophiles through its doors.
And whenever I’m abroad now, I’m always on the lookout for dodgy translations. On a recent trip to South America, I was staying in a hotel in Arica, a small town in northern Chile.
There was a sign on the door of our hotel room which was designed to inform English-speakers of the check-out time and breakfast details.
I had to take a photograph of the sign, as it did make me laugh. Being referred to as ‘Mr. Passenger’, and the ‘demurrage’ finishing at ‘12 of the half-day’, certainly brightened my morning. But as easy as it is to mock online translation tools – which were evidently used on this occasion – what would the alternative have been?
My Spanish wasn’t great. And their English was roughly about the same. But they were considerate enough to take the time to provide a sign which DID get the message across, and saved me a great deal of time in terms of thumbing through my trusted Lonely Planet phrase book.
So, I guess my point is, there is a time and a place for online translation tools. And this situation clearly fitted the bill. But it also helps to confirm that for any business that is serious about its communications, machine translation tools perhaps aren’t quite up to the task.
The longest running text in the undeciphered Southwest script of Iberia was discovered recently in southern Portugal, according to an article I found today.
The script dates back to about 800-500 BC and quite a few fragments of texts have been found. Some experts believe the texts were written by pre-Roman tribes such as the Tartessians, Conii or Cynetes, others think the Celts wrote them. The script appears to be an adaptation of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets and symbols representing syllables, consonants and vowels have been identified. However as the language in question is unknown, the script has resisted all attempts to decipher it.