Benefits of bilingualism

By Simon

According to a report on ScienceDaily, speaking two languages may help stave off dementia by up four years compared to people who are monolingual. Being bilingual, along with physical activity, education and social engagement help to build “cognitive reserve”, which includes enhanced neural plasticity (the ability of nerve cells in the brain to change their function and to make new connections), compensatory use of alternative brain regions, and enriched brain blood supply, all of which are thought to delay the onset of dementia.

The study, which is published in the February 2007 issue of Neuropsychologia, compared the records of 184 patients at a clinic in Toronto, Canada. About half the patients studied were bilingual while the rest were monolingual. The researchers found that the mean age of onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group was 71.4 years, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years.

A similar study carried out a few years ago at York University in the UK demonstrated similar results.

Attitudes to languages

By Simon

I came across an interesting article today which discusses, among other things, attitudes to Irish in Ireland. The writer is a native speaker of Irish from Connemara who bemoans the feelings of inferiority about their language felt by many people in the Gaeltachtaí (the areas where Irish is, in theory, the main language).

Here are a few extracts:

In Ireland Irish is more of an emotional question than a linguistic one. The sound of Irish seems to be lodged in the sub-conscious mind of our people. That might explain why discussions about Irish are more of an emotional nature than about the intricacies of the language itself.

Never is there as much emotion expressed in relation to the other languages they failed to learn at school or didn’t enjoy. And even less knowledge about them. The sounds that I made as a child are still ringing in our ears and pounding in our hearts waiting to be released.

I’ve witnessed many people in the Galltacht expressing the belief that Gaeltacht people have a real sense of pride about their language and would prefer to keep the ‘blow-ins’ out. This may be true of some but the truth is that a feeling of inferiority is rampant among native Irish speakers and has been for centuries.

English is felt to be the ‘better’ language by many in the Gaeltacht.

The effect of losing our language is a subtle shift in our harmony with ourselves. It will not make headlines but its survival is necessary for our fundamental feeling of belonging and our understanding of who we really are.

Similar sentiments and attitudes are unfortunately true for many other minority languages, and indeed ‘non-standard’ dialects. The situation isn’t entirely gloomy in Ireland though – many pupils at the increasingly popular gaelscoileanna (schools that teach everything through the medium of Irish), seem to be proud to speak Irish.

Kacab genals

By Simon

During the mid-19th century, London’s costermongers (sellers of fruit and veg) and butchers invented a form of slang known as back slang or kacab genals in order to talk amongst themselves without their customers understanding. They reversed words and pronounced them as far as possible according to their spelling. Extra vowels were inserted where necessary, and initial h’s were often pronounced ch /tʃ/ (tS) or sh /ʃ/ (S), as in dee-aitch for head, esroch for horse, eemosh for home, and vatch for have. The only back slang word that passed into common usage was yob, which original just meant boy and had no negative connotations.

Back slang is still used to some extent, according to a report on Word of Mouth on the BBC, which is where I got the inspiration for this post. More details of back slang can be found here and here.

A variant of back slang is Pig Latin or Igpay Atinlay, which usually involves moving the initial consonant or consonant cluster from the beginning of a word to the end and adding ay, or just adding ay if a word starts with a vowels. For example, Ymay overcrafthay isway ullfay ofway eelsway.

Verlan is a form of back slang used in France that reverses the syllables rather than the letters. For example, flic (cop) = keuf, mec (man) = keum, and bizarre (weird) = zarb/zarbi. The name Verlan comes from l’envers (inverse).

Mobile novels

By Simon

Recently the first Mobile Phone Novel Awards were held in Japan. The winner was a woman from Osaka, whose novel concerns a love affair between a schoolgirl and a gigolo. You can see a Japanese version of the report here. The Japanese have apparently been reading novels and manga on their phones for a few years, though this is the first time I’ve heard of this phenomenon. Some of the authors of these novels apparently write them entirely or partly on their phones as well, which must lead to very sore thumbs!

I think such novels are quite popular in China, but do you know if they have caught on elsewhere?

Have any of you read a mobile novel like this? Are they written in a different style to printed books?

Dictionaries

By Simon

When learning a language, many people use bilingual dictionaries. These are very useful, but once you get passed the basics, it’s a good idea to invest in a monolingual dictionary in your target language. When you look up words in bilingual dictionaries, you rely on your native language to understand what they mean. In a monolingual dictionary you have to rely entirely on the language you’re learning. This helps you to pick a lot of new vocabulary.

The only problem with monolingual dictionaries is finding places to buy them. There are monolingual dictionaries online, for example I just found a good Spanish dictionary here, but finding printed ones is not quite so easy. Any suggestions where to look?

Inca writing?

By Simon

Photo of khipu

I found an interesting article about the ongoing attempts to unravel the mysteries of the Inca Khipu on Wired News yesterday, thanks to Luigi of the Silverhorde. The Inca are thought to have used bundles of knotted strings known as Khipu or quipu for record keeping, though nobody knows for sure how to ‘read’ them.

In 1923, an anthropologist called Leland Locke realised that some of the khipu were like files – each knot represented a different number, arranged in a decimal system, and each bundle probably held census data or listed the contents of storehouses. However, some of the khipu followed different patterns and Locke thought these might have a ceremonial or other function.

In 1990, Gary Urton, an anthropologist at Harvard and one of the world’s leading Inca scholars, spotted several details that convinced him the khipu contained much more than tallies of llama sales. He set up a database of khipu and assembled a team of anthropologists, mathematicians and cryptographers to work on deciphering the knots. They have already spotted quite a few repeated patterns and hope to have some results from their efforts later this year.

If the Khipu turn out to be a method of recording language, which seems quite possible, what will it be called? It isn’t really writing as such. Any suggestions?

Coals to Newcastle and missed boats

By Simon

Taking or carrying coals to Newcastle is an idiomatic expression that means doing something that is completely unnnecessary, pointless or superfluous. The German equivalent of this is Eulen nach Athen bringen/tragen – to take/bring owls to Athens. Are there similar expressions in other languages?

Newcastle-upon-Tyne used to be a major coal mining area and the UK’s first coal exporting port, and was first associated with pointless activities in Thomas Fuller’s 1661 The history of the worthies of England: in which he wrote, “To carry Coals to Newcastle, that is to do what was done before; or to busy one’s self in a needless imployment.”

An idiomatic way of saying that you’ve missed something such as an opportunity or an event, is ‘I’ve missed the boat’ or ‘that ship has sailed’. In German, the equivalent is der Zug ist abgefahren – the train has departed. A similar expression is used in Swedish – tåget har gått – the train has left. What about in other languages?

By the way, a good place to find information about English idioms is: www.phrases.org.uk

Useful websites

By Simon

Here are a couple of useful language-related websites I came across today:

BePolyglot
Provides a systematic way to learn four Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. It contains a detailed comparison of the grammars of these languages, highlights similarities and differences in vocabularly and shows how to convert words between languages.

It’s intended for those who want to improve their knowledge of one or more Romance languages, as well as for anyone interested in comparative linguistics and Romance languages. To access the full content of the site, you have to subscribe, which costs $4.95 per month or $19.90 per year.

Does anyone know of similar sites for other language families?

Kanji Converter
This site converts Japanese kanji into hiragana, katakana and/or romaji. It also gives information about the words in English.

I usually know or can guess what Japanese kanji mean and know how to pronounce them in Mandarin, but don’t always know how to pronounce them in Japanese, so this site is very useful for me.