Language learning and accents

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Jeff Foster.

Without a doubt, I am a language enthusiast. My goal is to become fluent in 3 languages by the time I graduate from high school. Those languages are Spanish, Italian, and Russian, in addition to English obviously. Using my Spanish class in school as a base of vocabulary and grammar structure, with Skype and other texts to enhance my overall knowledge. Combining all of these things has allowed me to gather a pretty good knowledge of the language. For Italian, I selected Rosetta Stone and I am thoroughly disappointed with it. While it does give you a good feel for accent, pronunciation, and very basic sentence structure, it lacks grammar, vocabulary, etc. For Russian, I am currently using Teach Yourself Russian, a book for learning Cyrillic and a few words.

Anyway, looking ahead to the future I would love to learn as many languages as possible, namely German, Scottish Gaelic, and possibly Arabic. I’ve had particular trouble with the accents. According to this article, accents can be acquired in a variety of ways. For example, my school advisor, after living in England for one year, many years ago, still carries a strong British accent. Many people make fun of him, saying that he fakes the accent.

What is your opinion? Is it possible for someone to somehow retain an accent, even long after leaving the country?

Gesture and speech

By Simon

I went to an interesting seminar yesterday which discussed the use of gestures in bilinguals and monolinguals. Research in Canada and China found that bilinguals tend to gesture more overall than monolinguals, and that they gesture more in their less dominant language. It was also found that gestures were most frequent when people were trying to remember words – the tip of the tongue phenomenon – and that participants in the study who were told to keep their hands still found it harder to recall words.

Here’s an abstract of the talk (Word doc).

Do you gesture more in some languages than in others?

Do you use more gestures when trying to retrieve words?

Puzzles

By Simon

This mysterious writing is the signature on a painting that the owner believes to be one or two hundred years old.

Mysterious writing on painting

This writing appears on an old “Ibrik” Armenian copper coffee pot and the owner believes it to be a date.

Inscription from Armenian coffee pot

Benefits of learning Latin

By Simon

Studying Latin can improve you SAT scores and can help you get into a good college, according to an article I found today.

Increasing numbers of students in the USA are studying Latin for a variety of reasons – to increase their chances of being accepted by a good college, to help with their English, and due to an interest in Roman culture and history. Learning Latin also helps you stand out from others who study more mainstream subjects.

Students of Latin apparently become more dedicated to their schoolwork, especially when preparing for the National Latin Exam, anbd they study and help each other more. They also show increased emotional consideration for their teachers and fellow students, as well as greater cultural awareness and sensitivity.

Mr. Passenger is Informed

By Simon

Today we have a guest post by Paul Sawers, a Communications Executive at Lingo24.

As one of the few mono-linguists working for a very multi-lingual translation company (Lingo24 – even the programmers can speak at least two languages…), I certainly don’t think I’m in any less of a position to comment on some of the linguistic lapses that seem to be everywhere in society.

Indeed, whilst my rudimentary French and Spanish is probably enough to get me a room for a night in a Paris or Madrid hotel, my language skills pale in comparison to the Account Managers, Project Managers, IT specialists and marketing personnel I work with on a daily basis. And all this before we even begin to discuss all the trusted translators we work with.

But alas, whilst it has always been an ambition of mine to become proficient enough in Spanish so I can at least hold a decent conversation with a native Spaniard, it isn’t necessary for my job. I simply manage the English-language side of our communications.

Having been immersed in the translation industry for the best part of 6 months now, I certainly feel as though I’ve learned a lot about the industry. From simple things like the difference between a translator and an interpreter, to the importance of using qualified linguists rather than laypeople that just happen to be fluent in another language.

These may be things that many people take for granted, but for someone who has never worked in the languages industry, these are things I’d never really considered before.

But at any rate, the purpose of this post isn’t to dwell on life in a translation agency, it’s really more about how it’s made me more aware of other languages in general.

Lingo24 is regularly asked why someone should use a professional translation service when there is a plethora of software and free online translation tools widely available. Well, there are many examples which help to illustrate why machine translation tools perhaps aren’t the most reliable route to go down.

Last year, there was the restaurant in China that, whilst obviously trying to make its shop-front more appealing to the English-speaking world for the Summer Olympics, decided to use an online translation tool: ‘Translate Server Error’ was the resulting message, designed to ‘entice’ anglophiles through its doors.

Mr Passenger is informed

And whenever I’m abroad now, I’m always on the lookout for dodgy translations. On a recent trip to South America, I was staying in a hotel in Arica, a small town in northern Chile.

There was a sign on the door of our hotel room which was designed to inform English-speakers of the check-out time and breakfast details.

I had to take a photograph of the sign, as it did make me laugh. Being referred to as ‘Mr. Passenger’, and the ‘demurrage’ finishing at ‘12 of the half-day’, certainly brightened my morning. But as easy as it is to mock online translation tools – which were evidently used on this occasion – what would the alternative have been?

My Spanish wasn’t great. And their English was roughly about the same. But they were considerate enough to take the time to provide a sign which DID get the message across, and saved me a great deal of time in terms of thumbing through my trusted Lonely Planet phrase book.

So, I guess my point is, there is a time and a place for online translation tools. And this situation clearly fitted the bill. But it also helps to confirm that for any business that is serious about its communications, machine translation tools perhaps aren’t quite up to the task.

Southwest script

By Simon

The longest running text in the undeciphered Southwest script of Iberia was discovered recently in southern Portugal, according to an article I found today.

Inscription in the Southwest script

The script dates back to about 800-500 BC and quite a few fragments of texts have been found. Some experts believe the texts were written by pre-Roman tribes such as the Tartessians, Conii or Cynetes, others think the Celts wrote them. The script appears to be an adaptation of the Phoenician and Greek alphabets and symbols representing syllables, consonants and vowels have been identified. However as the language in question is unknown, the script has resisted all attempts to decipher it.

When is a language extinct?

By Simon

The recent publication of UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger has generated quite a few new stories and discussion.

The Atlas has a list of 2,500 endangered languages ranked according to five different levels: unsafe (607), definitely endangered (632), severely endangered (502), critically endangered (538) and extinct (200). Of these languages, 199 have fewer than 10 speakers, and 178 have between 10 and 50 speakers. The Atlas is apparently available online, although I can only find information about endangered languages in Africa.

Among the extinct languages it mentions Manx and Cornish, which has stirred up a lot of comment, especially among those who speak these languages and are learning them. For example, the website iomtoday.co.im tells us that the ‘Manx language is very much alive’ and there are articles on Manx and Cornish on the BBC site.

The comments on the iomtoday site are interesting and seem to agree that Manx is nobody’s first language, which I believe is true. One commenter points out that Manx is dead because “there are no longer any monoglot Manx speakers, or even speakers with Manx as a first language”. I’m not sure why it’s essential for there to be monoglot speakers of a language for it to be considered living. There are very few, if any, monoglot speakers of Welsh, Irish or Scottish Gaelic over the age of 5 or so, but there are plenty of people who speak them as their first language.

My dissertation will be a study of the revival of Manx, and this will give me a better idea of the current state of the language.

Speech perception

By Simon

According to a report on EurekaAlert, speech perception is not based solely on hearing, but also on sight and even touch. All these senses blend together to enable us to perceive what others say.

We use clues from the movement of the lips, teeth, tongue and other facial features to help use to decipher speech. If you watch a video of someone articulating one sound, e.g. “ba”, combined with a recording of them saying a different sound, e.g. “ka”, you will probably perceive the sound they are articulating, rather than the one on the recording, or something in between the two sounds, such as “da”. This is known as the McGurk Effect. This happens even if you know what sounds are different and concentrate on the audio.

Here’s an example:

According to the research, the McGurk Effect is evidence that the senses are inextricably integrated, and that the brain perceives the acoustic and visual signals of speech as part of a single system. Other studies have found that this link is established even before young children are able to perceive individual phonemes.