Language Museum

Reading the latest issue of Lonely Planet magazine, I came across a short piece on the Esperanto Trail in Poland.

Ludwig Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, was born in the city of Bialystok, northeast Poland, and the newly launched Esperanto Trail visits aspects of his life including his birthplace. Some train timetables at Bialystok station are even written in Esperanto.

The trail is part of the wider Culture Trail, which includes Bialystock Esperanto Centre. Bialystock is a place where many different languages and cultures meet, and this may have influenced Zamenhof’s dream to create a ‘universal’ language.

This dream was never fulfilled – as evidenced by the Trail’s signage, which is in Polish, Esperanto and English.

William, Robert, Henry, Alice. All good, solid English names.

Actually, the names have their origins in the Norman invasion of England. The Battle of 1066 and William the Conqueror will be familiar, but not many realise the impact of the invasion on the English language – names introduced over 1,000 years ago are still popular today.

As these French-speaking, wine-drinking, castle-building conquerors swiftly took over England and intermarried with Anglo-Saxon women, it was not just newborns named in their honour.

“The ruling elite set the fashion and soon William was the most common male name in England, even among peasants. A lot of people changed their names because they wanted to pass in polite society – they didn’t want to be mistaken for a peasant, marked out with an Anglo-Saxon name.”

Look at baby name league tables today, and the Old English name of Harold languishes far below the French-derived Henry in popularity. William, meanwhile, was the second most popular name for boys 200 years ago, the most popular 100 years ago and has held its place in the top 10 in England and Wales since 2000. (Source: BBC News)

The use of surnames also has origins in the invasion:

It soon became necessary to distinguish between all these Williams and Roberts, and so the Norman tradition of surnames was adopted. As well as family names derived from one’s occupation, surnames with the prefix Fitz date from Norman times.

“Fitz comes from the French ‘fils’, meaning ‘son of’. So Fitzsimmons once meant ‘son of Simon’ and Fitzgerald ‘son of Gerald,” says Prof Bartlett, whose own first name Robert is solidly Norman in origin.

What are the origins of your name?

Classic children’s books by author Enid Blyton are getting a linguistic makeover to appeal to the new generation, according to a report at thebookseller.com

Whilst the publisher of the Famous Five series puts annual sales at over half a million, research has shown that parents are put off buying their children these books because of the ‘dated’ language.

Hodder said that the changes will affect the dialogue in the stories with the narrative left “largely untouched”. Publishing director Anne McNeil said: “Very subtle changes have been made to remove the barriers that stood between readers and the story.” In the original text, for example, Dick says: “She must be jolly lonely all by herself” which has been updated to read: “She must get lonely all by herself.” “Mother and father” become “mum and dad” and “school tunic” becomes ‘uniform’.”

McNeil said that the changes were not intended to make the Famous Five books “modern” but to place them in a “timeless” age. She said: “We have not introduced any slang or colloquial language that would place the characters in today’s world.” (Source: The Bookseller.com)

Although this is not the first time the books have been updated, the move has still provoked anger from the public. Personally, I think the update is taking away some of the character of the books. I read them as a child in the eighties and nineties, and they were pleasant escapism – the language used did not affect my enjoyment of the story.

What do you think?

The Guardian (and I’m sure other news outlets) reported yesterday that Stephen Fry is to make a new TV series on languages.

To be shown on the BBC2, Planet Word is a five-part series on language although apparently “it’s a bit of a secret”.

Says Fry:

“Language is my real passion. So, I’m going to Beijing to interview the man who invented Pinyin, a phonetic version of the Chinese language. He’s 105 years old … if he dies on me I’m going to be so annoyed.”

“I haven’t seen a good documentary about language, where it comes from, how we speak it, the variations of it, whether languages are dying, whether we are better at speaking than we were. There are so many questions.” (Source: The Guardian)

It will be interesting to see what he comes up with. Watch this space!

This is a heart warming language story if ever I saw one – a milkman in Blackburn has learned Gujarati to communicate better with his customers.

The 69 year-old white, English-born John Mather (aka Jimmy) picked up the language from his customers whilst doing his rounds. This seems an especially hard task given that Gujarati is so different from English, with few non-Indians learning it.

Mr Mather is modest about his achievement though, saying:

“It was not very difficult to learn it,” he says. “I just remembered what they told me, kept it in my memory and repeated it when I saw them. I don’t know how long it took me to learn. I’ve known the language for about 30 years and once you pick up words you remember them.

“I’ve got a very good memory, once I’ve been somewhere I never forget it, it’s the same with language.”
…
“I think my Gujarati is alright,” he says. “It gets me by. I’ve made friends with it and that’s the most important thing. I’ve also had loads of wedding invitations (from the Asian community).

“I’ll keep going as long as I can and my Bengali’s not so bad so I’m having a go at that.” (Source: BBC News)

It seems Mr Mather can give a few tips to language learners: learn a language you will use regularly, talk to native speakers and make friends with the language!

My last post was about the boost that Scots is getting in schools, but at the opposite end of the country the Cockney dialect is in danger of dying out.

New research has shown that the dialect is becoming a victim of emigration (of native speakers to the Home Counties) and immigration (as multicultural London English takes over).

“In much of the East End of London, the cockney dialect that we hear now spoken by older people will have disappeared within a generation,” said researcher Paul Kerswill, who is a professor of sociolinguistics at Lancaster University.

“People in their 40s will be the last generation to speak it and it will be gone within 30 years.” (Source: Herald Sun)

Professor Kerswill’s research will be published next year. In the meantime, we could consider the question of whether the Cockney dialect is on a par with Scots – are both valuable to British culture and worth saving?

Think dictionaries are just for homo sapiens?

Think again.

Researchers from St Andrews University have been hard at work creating a kind of ape dictionary. Orangutans at Durrell Wildlife Trust in Jersey have been the subjects of the research, and have apparently been very useful.

The senior keeper at Durrell, Gordon Hunt, told BBC Jersey the research had proved very helpful as it confirmed what they had already seen happening.

Gordon said: “We see anecdotal stuff every day but it is difficult for us to convince people that they are actually talking to each other.

“This is the start of the ape dictionary, what researchers do is confirm what is seen in a scientific manner.

“We see a lot of actions, a lot of gestures and we are anthropomorphising those into what we think they are
“Researchers are statistically analysing these and coming up with pretty much the same theory.” (Source: BBC News)

You may soon be seeing a new OED (Orangutan English Dictionary) next to the original (Oxford English Dictionary)!

England haven’t yet been kicked out of the World Cup (despite the shameful draw with the USA) so to celebrate, why not learn some more South African slang?

Last week I brought you such gems as ‘chips! Chips!’ – now it’s time for some more useful terms:

BLIKSEM (BLUK-SEM): If you’re in a pub and you accidentally spill a beer belonging to a man with a thick neck, he may say: “Do you want me to bliksem you?” Don’t respond. Just run. Run for your life. It’s the Afrikaans word for hit or strike or punch.

That could definitely come in handy.

DINGES (DING-US): An indeterminate, nondescript thing or term for an object whose name you’ve momentarily forgotten. Like this: “Please pass me my dinges there.” “What?” “My dinges. I want to blow it.” “You mean your vuvuzela?” “Yes, my vuvuzela.”

Dinges seems to me like the South African version of ‘thing’ or ‘thingy’ in English. As in: “Please pass me my thing there.” “What?” “My thingy. I want to blow it.” “You mean your vuvuzela?” “Yes, my vuvuzela.”

ROBOT: When you’re asking for directions and someone says: “Left at the third robot,” it is not because our streets are overrun with menacing cyborgs made by Japanese scientists. No. A robot is simply our word for traffic light.

(Source: Times Live)

Over at the LanguageHat blog I saw a post about a live translation event taking place as part of the London Review Bookshop’s World Literature Weekend.

The challenge has been set by the francophone novelist Alain Mabanckou – two translators will offer up their translation of his short text, and then discuss and debate the differences with the author and each other. The idea is to bring out aspects of the text that aren’t normally paid attention to as well as paying attention to the process of translation itself.

Audience members will receive a copy of the French text as well as the two English translations to help them follow along.

The event is being held at the British Museum in London on Saturday 19th June. Definitely looks well worth attending!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a book by Daniel Everett called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes.

Coincidentally I just came across a post on the Omniglot blog sharing a video in which Everett talks about the Pirahã language, amongst other things. It’s called Endangered Languages and Lost Knowledge, and can be found below as well as here. Enjoy!