Languages in Canada

According to the 2011 census in Canada, more than 200 languages are currently spoken in Canada. As well as English and French, increasing numbers of people speak Chinese, Punjabi, Arabic, Persian, Spanish and Tagalog, with the numbers of Tagalog speakers growing most in recent years.

Some 20% of the population, 6.6 million people, speak a language other than English or French at home. The majority speak an immigrant language, while 213,000 speak an aboriginal language, and 25,000 use sign language. In comparison, 58% of the population (19.2 million) speak only English at home, while 18.2% (6 million) only speak French. The proportion of people in Quebec who only speak French has decline somewhat to 72.8%. In Quebec the number of people bilingual in French and English has increased slightly, while elsewhere it has decreased slightly.

Most of the immigrant languages are spoken in the major cities, so if you’re learning or planning to learn Punjabi, you’ll find plenty of people to practise with in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. In Montreal and Ottawa there are plenty of Arabic and Spanish speakers; there are concentrations of Tagalog speakers in Calgary and Edmonton, and quite a few Italian speakers in Montreal, and there are lots of people who speak Chinese languages in all these cities, except Montreal.

To be in the perfume

Yesterday I discovered that one way to say that you’re familiar with something in French is être au parfum, or literally “to be in the perfume of”. Anyone know why perfume is involved in this expression?

English equivalents include ‘to be in the know’, ‘to be clued up’, ‘to be on the ball’, ‘to be in the loop’ – can you think of any others?

Another way to say this in French is être au courant (‘to be in the current’).

Some related expressions in other languages.

A related expression in French is mettre au parfum (‘to put in the perfume’), which means to provide all the necessary information, to put sb in the know.

Les mots de la semaine

– l’indication (f) = clue = arwydd, cliw = arouez
– l’indice (m) = clue (in investigation) = arwydd, cliw = merk rumm
– la définition = clue (in crosswords) = arwydd, cliw
– être au parfum = to be clued up = bod yn gyfarwydd â
– la nageoire = fin (of fish) = asgell = angell
– l’aileron = fin (of shark, dophin) = asgell = angell
– maître nageur (euse) / surveillant de plage = lifeguard = achubwr bywydau = mestr neuñver saveteer
– la marionnette (à gaine) = (hand/glove) puppet = pyped (llaw/maneg) = margodenn
– le pôle Nord = the North Pole = Pegwn/Pôl y Gogledd = penn-ahel an Norzh
– la rougeur / l’éruption (f) = rash = brech = ruzded / brec’h
– la boussole = compass (for navigation) = cwmpawd = nadoz-vor
– le compas = compass (for drawing circles) = cwmpas = kelc’hier, kompaz

Sentence bank

I’ve decided to learn some more Breton and have found a very useful website – the Breizh-Llydaw Sentence Bank (y Cronfa Frawddegau Breizh-Llydaw / Ar gevredigezh Kembre-Breizh) – a bilingual corpus of sentences in Breton and Welsh from the magazine Breizh-Llydaw. I can understand the Welsh sentences and can more or less work out the meanings of the Breton words from the context. I think I’ll use it to learn Breton vocabulary and grammar in context.

Does anybody know of any similar bilingual corpuses for other languages?

Related tools include Geriaoueg, a Breton, French, Welsh, English, Icelandic, Catalan, Spanish dictionary; and morphological analysers for Breton and Welsh.

Linguistic landscape

Last Saturday I went to a study day about the Isle of Man put on by the Centre for North-West Regional Studies at Lancaster University. One of the talks was about the Manx language and used quotes from my dissertation – it was great to be recognised like that, and the speaker was quite surprised when I introduced myself to him afterwards.

As well as touching on the decline and revival of the language, he also looked at the linguistic landscape of Manx – i.e. the ways Manx is appears on signs and on printed material. What he demonstrated was that Manx translations are often smaller than the English ones, and/or in a different font. The most common fonts are in the Irish uncial style, or An Cló Gaelach. This gives the impression that Manx is less important than English, he suggested.

Here are some examples:

Some bilingual Manx signs

There are more examples on Flickr.

He compared the Manx signs with bilingual signs in Wales, on which both languages are usually the same size and font, and with the Welsh usually first.

Some bilingual Welsh signs

He also mentioned that in Quebec the French is usually twice as big as the English, or other language, on signs.

If you live in an area where there are bilingual or multilingual signs, what is the linguistic landscape like?

Les mots de la semaine

– la côte = rib = asen = kostenn
– la cage thoracique = rib cage = cawell asennau = kest ar brusk
– le couple = rib (of boat) = asen = koubl
– la coque = hull = corff llong = korf ar vag
– l’armature (f) = frame(work), bone, underwiring = ffrâm, fframwaith = frammadur
– prouver, avérer = prove = profi = prou(v)iñ, donet
– le sous-bock, le rond à bière = beermat = mat cwrw
– le bock = beer glass, glass of beer = gwydr cwrw = bok
– dénonciateur, corbeau = whistle-blower = chwythwr chwiban = disklêrier
– ringard, old school = cheesy, naff = sathredig, ystrydebol, ffuantus = kaoc’h kazh
– le pied = leg (table, chair) = coes
– le dossier = back (chair) = cefn – kein
– le siège = seat (chair) = sêt = sez
– le réduction, la rabais = discount = disgownt = rabat, diskar

De cette semaine le mots de la semaine seront en français, anglais, gallois et breton.

From this week the words of the week will be in French, English, Welsh and Breton.

O’r wythnos ‘ma byddan eiriau yr wythnos yn Ffrangeg, Saesneg, Cymraeg a Llydaweg.

Language is shaped by brain’s desire for clarity and ease

According to an experiment by researchers at the University of Rochester and Georgetown University, changes emerge in languages to ensure that they can communicate meaning as precisely and concisely as possible. If languages contain too much redundancy or complexity, they tend to change to achieve a balance between effort and clarity. This may be a reason why similar structures are found in many languages.

The researchers used artificial languages they created to test their ideas and taught them to monoglot English-speaking students. They showed the students images, animations and recordings, and asked them to use the artificial languages to describe what they saw or heard. The languages used suffixes to mark the subject and object of a sentence, and the students tended to use the suffixes to clarify the meaning where it was unclear or ambiguous more than when the meaning was obvious.

One researcher said that “”Language acquisition can repair changes in languages to insure they don’t undermine communication,” and that “new generations can perhaps be seen as renewing language, rather than corrupting it”.

Another researcher commented that contractions, abbreviations and other aspects of informal speech are ways of making language more efficient, though are only used if it’s possible to infer the meaning from the context.

Lazy language learning

I’ve realised that I’m a lazy language learner. I don’t spend every spare moment studying and practising languages, and don’t usually try to learn as much of a language as possible in a short time. When I go for a walk I like to be in the moment sensing what there is to sense, rather than listening to language lessons or podcasts, though I do do that occasionally. I also like to just think and daydream at times.

If I’m planning a trip to another country, or expect to meet people who speak a different language, I’ll learn some of it before then. For example, I spent two months learning Italian before going on holiday to Italy. I was able to have very basic conversations and could understand and read the language to some extent, but was nowhere near fluent. Otherwise I generally learn languages out of interest, and because I feel a connection to them, to where they’re spoken and/or to people who speak them. I spend a lot of time listening to online radio, podcasts, audiobooks and other audio material, reading texts aloud, learning songs and poems, and sometimes writing blog posts and having conversations in speech or writing. I’m usually in no hurry and try to absorb the languages as much as possible, and look up words and grammatical constructions I can’t work out from context. If I find some aspects of learning tedious, I try a different approach. After quite a few years I might get to the stage where I can understand and read almost everything, and speak and write a language fairly well, though my listening and reading tend to better than my speaking, which doesn’t bother me at all.

I’m interested in all languages and in the process of language learning and acquisition, however if I don’t feel any particular connection with of a language and had no plans to visit places where it’s spoken, I don’t usually get very far with it. I’ve learnt a few languages to try out language courses and chose ones I hadn’t studied before, and soon gave up on them for these reasons.

When I’m learning classical pieces on the guitar I find some parts of them more difficult than others. One approach I use is to play those parts over and over until they are embedded in my muscle memory, though this can be somewhat tedious. Another approach I use is to play them slowly note by note observing where my fingers are and where they need to be and anticipating each position in my mind. In this way I find out which particular bits I need to focus on the most. When playing a whole piece I tend to worry about the tricky bits and expect to get them wrong, which I often do, though when I manage not to think about them, they sometimes go smoothly.

This step-by-step approach might work with some aspects of languages. For example, if you’re finding particular words difficult to pronounce, you could try breaking them down into phonemes and working out where the problem is. Then you could concentrate on getting the problematic sound(s) right.