Language cross-training

By Simon

The other day I come across the interesting idea of language cross-training (I don’t remember where though, unfortunately). The writer suggested that when learning a language, it can sometimes be beneficial to have a break to learn a bit of another language. The aim isn’t necessarily to become fluent in the second language, but the process of studying that language can help to keep your brain flexible as you grapple with different sounds, grammatical structures and word order. For example, while learning Spanish you could take a break and learn some Turkish. When you go back to the Spanish it will probably seem easier.

Have you tried this technique? Does it work?

What language is this?

By Simon

Here’s another challenge for you – can you identify the following language and/or translate this phrase into English?

kalunáa baw sai pa̖a dàek

Some clues: this is a real language and is normally written with its own unique alphabet. The accent marks indicate tones. The phrase is something you might say in a restaurant.

What would you like to see on this blog?

By Simon

This blog has been online for nearly four months, which is apparently the average life of a website, and I’ve been wondering whether you have any ideas or suggestions for what you’d like to see here. I haven’t run out of ideas myself, but thought asking you would be a good plan.

If any of you would like to post something here, for example details of your language learning advantures, language-related news items, stories, poems, songs, etc., please contact me at the usual address.

Pueblo Inglés

By Simon

Yesterday one of my colleagues sent me a link to the Pueblo Inglés, or English Village, which sounds like is a very interesting idea. The English Village is a small, remote hamlet called Valdelavilla in the province of Soria, about four hours north of Madrid. Spanish people can go there to practice and improve their English. Native English speakers from all over the world can stay there for free in return for talking English all day to the Spanish people. English is the only language permitted there.

The organisation that runs the program in Valdelavilla, Vaughan Village, also runs similiar programs in a few other parts of Spain and Italy.

There are a number of English Villages in Korea, though they operate along slightly different lines as they pay English teachers to provide the teaching and conversation practice for the Korean students.

Does anyone know whether there are similar programs for English speakers learning other languages?

Word of the day – mimesis

By Simon

mimesis, noun = the imitative representation of nature or human behaviour; any disease that shows symptoms of another disease; a condition in a hysterical patient that mimics an organic disease; representation of another person’s alleged words in a speech.

Origin: from the Greek μιμεισθαι (mimeisthai) – to imitate.

Related words include mime, mimic, mimicry and mimetic.

I came across this word in a post on No-sword about the crazy-sounding Japanese sport of Sports Chanbara (スポーツチャンバラ). When discussing the origin of the word chanbara, which is an abbreviation of chanchan barabara (チャンチャンバラバラ), No-sword says the the chanchan part “is mimesis for the sound of swords clashing”. I hadn’t seen this word before so had to look it up in the dictionary, and I like the sound of it. This is also an example of onomatopeia, something that’s quite common in Japanese.

Snowclones

By Simon

Snowclones are adaptable templates for clichés popular with journalists and writers. For example, X is the new Y, A doesn’t know the meaning of B, and C is D’s middle name. Just replace the letters with words and you have a cliché you can use in quite a wide range of circumstances.

Wikipedia defines a snowclone as: “a neologism used to describe a type of formula-based cliché which uses an old idiom in a new context”

Here are a few examples:

grey is the new black
coders are from Mars, designers are from Venus
the only good language is a dead language
the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines
the internet is the best thing since sliced bread
the word surrender is not in my dictionary

There are many more templates on Answers.com

The term snowclone was coined by Glen Whitman, an Associate Professor of Economics, California State University, Northridge, on 15th January 2004. There’s more discussion of this topic on Language Log.

Textbook language

By Simon

Yesterday I was discussing language learning with a friend and he mentioned that when he was in Japan studying Japanese, it was fairly easy to understand the other students, but very difficult to understand the Japanese themselves.

If you learn a language from a textbook and/or in a class, it’s often quite a surprise to discover that native speakers of your target language don’t speak textbook: they don’t necessarily give model answers to your questions, or speak in complete sentences, and they tend to use a lot of words you haven’t heard before, including slang. Most of your fellow students, and other people who have learnt the language as a second/foreign language, speak textbook, so they are usually easier to understand than native speakers.

Some textbooks claim to teach you the slang and other more colloquial aspects of language, but they tend to become out-of-date quite quickly because language is constantly changing.

In order to learn the language that native speakers use, you have to spend as much time as possible listening and speaking to them.

What language is this?

By Simon

Here’s a challenge for you – can you identify the following language and translate it into English?

Nangeguaqavoq sitkasigpai

A few clues – it appears in a book by an author with an alliterative name. The title of the book includes a reference to a certain biblical garden. The people who speak this language live in places where it’s cold most of the time.

Good luck!

Dictionaries – what are they for?

By Simon

Many people see dictionaries as major sources of authority on language-related matters. If a word is not in the dictionary, then it can’t possibly exist, even if you hear it every day in the conversations of others. Dictionaries are there to tell us what words ‘really mean’, and how they ‘should’ be used and pronounced. These types of attitudes could be called prescriptive.

There is however another view of the function of dictionaries: that they should provide a description that is as objective as possible of a particular language, including information about pronunciation, meanings, etymology and usage.

While composing this, I starting wondering whether anybody has ever compiled an oral dictionary, i.e. a dictionary of spoken language consisting of recordings of words, definitions and examples of usage. Such a dictionary would be very interesting, and particularly useful for language students.

This post was inspired by one of the books I’m reading at the moment: Proper English – Myths and Misunderstandings about Language, by Ronald Wardhaugh.

Language X is better for activity Y, or is it?

By Simon

The seems to be a common belief that some languages are better suited to certain types of activities than others. For example, Emperor Charles V apparently said “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my dog.”

Some people believe that certain languages are not suitable for such things as literature, romance, poetry, pop music or stand-up comedy. Which languages they view in this way might depend on their own linguistic background, nationality and ethnicity. Such beliefs aren’t necessarily about the languages themselves but rather about the people who speak them.

In theory, every language has the same expressive potential, i.e. what you can say in one language can be said in any other language. In practise, some languages lack the vocabulary to talk about certain things, though there’s no reason why the necessary words couldn’t be coined or borrowed if people felt the need to discuss such matters. For example, in the fields of computing and related technologies, English is the dominant language. Speakers of other languages tend to borrow and/or adapt English words to talk about such things, or coin words from the native stock.

If you speak more than one language, do you use each of your languages to talk about different things or to talk to different people, like Charles V?