Bangkok Danish

By Simon

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

By Simon

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?

By Simon

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

By Simon

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!

Bilingual toys

By Simon

According to an article in The Boston Globe, there has been a significant increase in the sale of bilingual toys in the USA. These are toys the speak words and phrases and sing songs, and which are designed to help young children to learn languages. The most popular language combination is English and Spanish, which doesn’t come as much surprise given that there are nearly 48 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States. There are also toys that speak Chinese, Russian, Korean, Greek, Hebrew and various other languages.

A related article gives more details and mentions that toy manufacturers are bringing out bilingual phones, globes, dolls, books and laptops. A market niche toy companies didn’t expect was the parents of children adopted from other countries, who are keen on toys that speak the languages of their children as this helps ‘bridge the gap between the two countries’.

If kids get an early start with learning languages, and see it as something enjoyable, this bodes well for their future.

Do any of you know if there are any bilingual or multilingual computer games?

The language of flowers

By Simon

A Chinese contact I talked to today mentioned that he gave his girlfriend 11 red roses yesterday. I asked whether the number of roses had any significance, and he told that it stand for “一心一意” (one heart, one desire). This got me think about the meanings attached to different flowers.

I found a site about ‘the language of flowers‘, which explains the meanings of a variety of flowers. Apparently during the Victorian age (1837-1901), a knowledge of floriography, as it was called, was as important to people as being ‘well dressed’. It wasn’t just the variety of flower that carried a meaning, but the number, colour and arrangement, and also the way they were presented – giving a flower with the right hand signified ‘yes’, while giving one with the left hand signified ‘no’, for example.

Here are a few examples: red roses signified love, respect and/or beauty; yellow roses joy, jealousy, friendship (one yellow rose with 11 red ones meant love & passion); orange roses fascination; and deep red roses bashfulness or shame. A single cherry blossom stood for education; a white chrysanthemum for truth; lupine for imagination; and a shamrock for lightheartedness.

Tut tut

By Simon

The click sounds I mentioned yesterday are only found in a small number of languages spoken in southern Africa. Somewhat similar sounds, known as interjections, are used in others languages, though not as in the role of consonants. Instead they convey various extra information about the speaker’s mood or opinion.

For example, in English you might tut or tsk when you’re irritated by something. Whistles can be used to indicate appreciation or surprise, among other things, and the sucking of air through the teeth is often a sign that more money than was originally expected is likely to change hands, especially when employed by a car mechanic or a builder. Ah ha! can be used to show that you’ve understood something; huh!? for incomprehension; ow! when you hurt yourself; oh! for surprise; um when you’re not sure what to say; and oh for disappointment, as in “oh well, never mind (put the kettle on/have a nice cup of tea)” – very British expression that one!

What interjections in your language, and how are they used?

Click click

By Simon

On the radio this morning they told an interesting, language-related story about David Attenborough, the famous maker of natural history programmes. Apparently he filmed people speaking one of the ‘click’ languages for a programme called The Tribal Eye, which examined sculpture, weaving, metal casting, and other artistic activities in tribal societies around the world. After working on the sound track for quite a while, the sound engineer proudly announced that he had managed to clean up all the strange clicking sounds in the background – he didn’t realise that they were an integral part of the language.

There are some sample recordings of click languages here.

Do any of you speak or have you studied a language that includes click consonants?