Category: Language

More on code switching

By Simon

When I lived in Taiwan I was in a multilingual environment. The main languages I encountered there were Mandarin, Taiwanese and English. Sometimes I came across speakers of Japanese, Korean, Hakka or Spanish as well.

As a student I had friends from many countries and we tended to communicate amongst ourselves in Mandarin. In some cases this was the only language we had in common. With other students from English-speaking countries I generally spoke English, unless we were with people who spoke little or no English.

At work I spoke a mixture of Mandarin and English, with occasional bits of Taiwanese thrown for good measure. With colleagues who spoke both Mandarin and English fluently, I spoke a mixture of the two languages switching between them frequently, though some conversations were mainly in Mandarin, and others mostly in English.

Quite often when we were all be talking in Mandarin, I found myself talking Mandarin to the other Western colleagues, which felt a bit strange. When our boss was with us we all spoke English because his knowledge of Mandarin and Taiwanese was minimal, but I think some of my Taiwanese colleagues with limited English found this awkward.

I’ve heard that some people in Taiwan who speak Mandarin sometimes play the dumb foreigner and pretend they don’t. Apparently it can be quite an effective way of dealing with problems as locals don’t expect you to understand how things work and may be more helpful. Have you tried this?

Code switching

By Simon

Today we have a guest post from Dr. J.K. Palmer in Santiago, Chile.

I’m an English dominant Spanish and English bilingual (well not technically bilingual as I didn’t grow up with Spanish, but I am a C2 on CEFR framework and teach at university level in Spanish). Living in Chile I normally speak Spanish, but I have noticed three cases of when I speak in English here, even to native Spanish speakers:

(1) I have a relationship with someone I work with which I prefer to do in English. He’s a Spanish dominant bilingual, and can be a bit, hmm, tricky, so speaking English means that I am able to manage it better

(2) With two of my best friends I VERY occasionally speak English. One is a fairly balanced bilingual, the other raised in an English speaking school here, but is strongly Spanish dominant. I occasionally say things in English to make sure that I have said it exactly right (i.e. personal stuff, rather than “difficult” stuff). I could communicate the information perfectly in Spanish, but I am still not sure of the connotations that the way I say it might have.

(3) I will VERY rarely use English as a weapon on monolingual Spanish speakers if they are being obstructive and it will save me time. I just moved house and the guard in one of the buildings I had to get some documents from didn’t want me to go in even though the notary was expecting me, so I just ignored everything he said in Spanish and only spoke to him in English. I got the documents much faster that way. I feel mildly guilty about this use, but he was very rude to me, so I don’t feel that guilty as of course I couldn’t say anything back to him.

Any other experiences of this sort of “political” use of multiple languages?

Word of the day – clustfeinio

By Simon

I came across the word clustfeinio yesterday while reading a novel in Welsh. At first I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, apart from having something to do with ears, clustiau. From the context though I was able to guess its meaning:

Wy’n clustfeinio am bob gwich a sgrech.
I’m [verbing] to every squeak and shriek.

From its position in the sentence, you can tell that clustfeinio is a verb. Can you guess what it means? The character who says this sentence is lying in bed trying to get to sleep.

Related words include:

clust – ear
clustdlws – ear-ring (lit. “ear brooch/jewel”)
clusten – (ear) lobe
clustew / clustrwm – hard of hearing (lit. “fat ear” / “heavy ear”)
clustfyddar – deaf
clustiog – eared
clustog – pillow, cushion
clustowlad – buffer-state (lit. “pillow state”)

Korean in Mongolia

By Simon

According to an article I came across today, increasing numbers of Mongolians are enrolling in Korean language classes in the hope that they will get jobs in Korea and save enough money to buy a house when they return to Mongolia. This is the so-called ‘Korean dream’. Such classes are available at all levels of education from primary schools to universities.

Already a quite a large number of Mongolians – around 33,000 – live and work in South Korea, and it seems many of the compatriots would like to follow in their footsteps. Many Mongolians also go to study in Korea, attracted in part by the relatively low study costs.

I wonder if the Mongolian find it easier to learn Korean, a language which has a similar structure to Mongolian, than other languages such as English, Russian or Chinese. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that Japanese people find Turkish easier to learn than English because of its similar structure.

Lingosmile

By Simon

Lingosmile is a new wiki-style site I heard about recently which aims to provide a free and easy way to produce translations collaboratively. The idea is that anybody can join in and translate material into their language, edit existing translations and/or add recordings. Translations on the site are divided in sections such as language learning, sciences, art & culture, fiction, song lyrics and so on, and anyone can start a new project within these sections.

The site is still in beta and I don’t think it’s been officially launched yet, but it looks like it has potential to become a useful language learning resource.

Fluency and literacy

By Simon

Is it possible to achieve spoken fluency in a second language without being able to read it?

This question was sent in by Ian McGilloway and comes, in part, from a discussion he had on holiday where the local staff at a diving company in a small fishing village on an island spoke pretty good English with English accents but could barely read and write. He wondered how far they could take their range of language and if they would plateau out without the extra input from reading.

He thinks it possible to speak a second/foreign language fluently without being literate in it, but it would be considerably easier if you could read it. Largely because the range of vocabulary you’d be exposed to would be far greater. In particular, with languages which have different registers that depend on the social status of people in the group and so on.

In some cases language learners might learn to read a language only in transliteration if it’s written with a different alphabet or other writing system. This is especially true for Chinese and Japanese. They can achieve spoken fluency in such languages, I think, but might miss out on some literary aspects.

Have you learnt to speak any languages without learning to read them?

Or conversely have you learnt to read any languages without learning to speak them?

Language museum in london

By Simon

According to Reuters, plans are afoot to establish a language museum in London, which is apparently the most multilingual city in the world with over 350 languages spoken. The idea is the get the museum up and running to coincide with the 2012 London Olympics.

The museum would aim to get people more interested in languages – both their own and foreign ones – using serious scholarship and high-tech gadgets such as a machine that shows you what happens in your brain while you’re speaking.

A similar museum – the National Museum of Language is due to open in College Park, Maryland in the USA later this year. Another – Linguamón – Casa de les Llengües (House of Languages) – is planned for Barcelona.

Word of the day – 成語

By Simon

成語 [成语] (chéngyǔ) are Chinese idioms usually consisting of four characters. They tend to pack a lot of meaning into those four characters and many have a story, myth or moral behind them from Classical Chinese literature, in which they were used extensively. If you’re not familiar with the stories, it will be very difficult or impossible to work out what the idioms mean. They’re still quite commonly used in modern written and spoken Chinese, and there are between 5,000 and 20,000 of them.

Here are a few examples:

一日千秋 (yírìqiānqiū) = “one day, a thousand autumns” – implies rapid changes; one day equals a thousand years

一日千里 (yírìqiānlǐ) = “one day, a thousand miles.”- implies rapid progress; travelling a thousand miles in a day

一日三秋 (yírìsānqiū) = “one day, three autumns.” – when you’re missing someone very much, one day can feel as long as three years.

From Wikipedia

A good place to find out more about chengyu is this site, which explains a number of them in Chinese and English. Another useful chengyu site is this one, which contains a dictionary of 13,000 of them with explanations in Chinese.

These idioms are also used in Japanese and are called 四字熟語 (yojijukugo) – four character idioms. They come mainly from Classical Chinese and have the same or similar meanings to the Chinese ones. A dictionary of Japanese four characters idioms, with explanations in Japanese, can be found here, while this site explains some of them in English.