A great article in the New York Times reveals that young women are linguistic trendsetters.
The use of “like” and uptalk (“pronouncing statements as if they are questions?”) is often seen as a sign of stupidity or immaturity, with women being compared to “Valley Girls”, like Alicia Silverstone’s character in Clueless. Linguists have refuted this however, saying that girls and young women popularise vocal trends and slang, and use embellishments in more sophisticated ways than previously thought.
“If women do something like uptalk or vocal fry, it’s immediately interpreted as insecure, emotional or even stupid,” said Carmen Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. “The truth is this: Young women take linguistic features and use them as power tools for building relationships.”
The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation.
“It’s generally pretty well known that if you identify a sound change in progress, then young people will be leading old people,” said Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, “and women tend to be maybe half a generation ahead of males on average.” (Source: New York Times)
Take a look at the rest of the article – it’s fascinating. And women, never again feel ashamed of using these social cues!
Last month I posted about a new book by Michael Erard called Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners.
Erard defines a hyperpolyglot as someone who speaks eleven languages or more, and he can add Oxford University student Alex Rawlings to the list. Alex is only twenty, but can speak eleven languages: English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian.
He started learning as a child because his mother spoke three languages with him – English, French and Greek. Alex’s love of languages has grown from there. You can hear him talk about his language acquisition progression in this video from BBC News.
I’m sure this has been around for a while, but I’ve only just seen it. I’m especially guilty of using “I’m was a bit disappointed..” when I’m really annoyed! Us Brits are too polite for our own good sometimes…
This year marks the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth (7th February 1812), with lots of events, films and new books about the man released to celebrate it.
One of the new books is The Dickens Dictionary by John Sutherland. Subtitled “An A-Z of England’s Greatest Novelist”, the book is written by a recently retired Professor from the University of London.
Martin Chilton from The Telegraph wrote about a few things he learned from the book, all of which are very interesting:
There are more than 16,000 characters in the works of Dickens.
Considering he wrote upwards of 20 novels and short stories, this is an amazing number!
The word umbrella is mentioned 55 times in Martin Chuzzlewit.
Dickens suffered from nightmares following a visit to London Zoo as a boy. It was the horror of seeing snakes eating birds and guinea-pigs.
What’s your favourite Dickens fact?
This story’s been around for a few weeks, but it’s worth posting because it’s so darn cute!
A three year old girl called Lily Robinson wrote to Sainsbury’s last year to ask why tiger bread is called tiger bread, and suggested it be renamed giraffe bread. Lily is right – the bread does look more giraffe-like than tiger-esque!
Sainsbury’s wrote back and have decided to rename the bread:
“In response to overwhelming customer feedback that our tiger bread has more resemblance to a giraffe, from today we will be changing our tiger bread to giraffe bread and seeing how that goes,” the supermarket said.
Tiger bread is typically a bloomer loaf with a pattern baked into the top. Rice paste is brushed on to the surface before baking, forming the pattern as it dries and cracks while it bakes. (Source: BBC News)
I wonder what else we could get supermarkets to rename?
There’s not much sympathy to be had for banks or the people that work in them at the moment.
But language lovers will spare a thought for the loss of the lingua franca of the trading floor. Described as a mix of “Cockney rhyming slang, market banter and expressions picked up from horse racing bookmakers”, the slang is in danger of dying out because of the switch to electronic trading.
The language used by traders evolved because they spoke in person or over the telephone – it’s apparently not quite the same asking your computer screen for some “Bill and Ben” (Japanese yen). Other factors also come into play:
Many traders nowadays are recruited as university graduates with top marks from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and M.I.T., whereas 30 years ago aspiring youngsters with few, if any, academic qualifications often started as back office clerks and worked their way up to the trading floor.
Young London lads blessed with quick wits, common sense and ability to juggle numbers were often prized above those with academic laurels and went on to make fortunes as City traders.
“They were the ‘barrow boys’ coming off the market stalls. It was more working class and with that came the language of the street,” said one trader, who used to work alongside some dealers who also owned fruit and vegetable and flower stalls.
“In the early days of dealing rooms it was the City institutions and especially the British banks where you heard it. Now dealing rooms might be a bit more international and slang is dying off a bit.” (Source: Reuters)
There’s a good review over at The Economist of a new book on hyperpolyglots – Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners by Michael Erard.
A hyperpolyglot is someone who speaks a lot of languages, although there is debate over how many ‘a lot’ constitutes. The term was apparently coined by the linguist Richard Hudson, and derives from the word ‘polyglot’, meaning someone who can speak multiple languages.
Erard defines a hyperpolyglot as someone who speaks eleven languages or more. Yet whilst many have claimed to be hyperpolyglots, hard evidence is more elusive.
Ziad Fazah, raised in Lebanon and now living in Brazil, once held the Guinness world record for 58 languages. But when surprised on a Chilean television show by native speakers, he utterly flubbed questions in Finnish, Mandarin, Farsi and Russian (including “What day is it today?” in Russian), a failure that lives in infamy on YouTube. Perhaps he was a fraud; perhaps he simply had a miserable day. Hyperpolyglots must warm up or “prime” their weaker languages, with a few hours’ or days’ practice, to use them comfortably. Switching quickly between more than around six or seven is near-impossible even for the most gifted. (Source: The Economist)
The book certainly looks interesting, and Erard makes a discovery familiar to many language learners – Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna, birth date 1774, used flash cards.
Like many others, I’m probably guilty of overusing the word “awesome”. It’s a good thing I don’t live in LA (although I would love the sunshine), because one man is on a mission to ban the word.
British-born but LA based poet and journalist John Tottenham has launched CPSOA – the Campaign to Stamp Out Awesome. His headquarters is a bookstore which he is trying to turn into an “awesome-free zone”. Tottenham argues that the word has been so overused it has been rendered meaningless.
Tottenham already is looking toward other cliches to conquer.
“Other words will be addressed once we get rid of awesome,” Tottenham promises. “‘It’s all good.’ That’s definitely crying out to be done.” (Source: LA Times)
Do you see the problem with awesome? Or is Tottenham just a grouch?
Wait – that should be madame.
A town in France has banned the word “mademoiselle” (the French word for “miss”), instead saying that all women should be addressed as “madame”.
In Cesson-Sevigne, official documents no longer say “mademoiselle” as it is argued that women should not be defined by their marital status. But when women face bigger issues, why does this matter?
Professor of applied linguistics Dr Penelope Gardner-Chloros, of Birkbeck University, says that a society’s language – and how it chooses its terms of address – can reflect deeply ingrained attitudes.
“[Language] it is a sensitive indicator of the distinctions that a society makes – so if it is important to know if a woman is married or not, then it will be indicated in language,” she explains.
“‘Mademoiselle’ was a courteous title and there was even a male equivalent – ‘Mondamoiseau’, though it was very rarely used,” and later fell out of use completely. (The word “damoiseau” can be translated as “squire”.) (Source: BBC News)
Ever wanted to visit China but fear the language barrier? You’re in luck!
In one of the oddest pieces of news I’ve seen in a while, it’s reported in China’s People’s Daily that a Beijing suburb is to build a European style town where no one will be allowed to speak Chinese. To be built within 5 years, the town will have an English castle and create “the illusion of being abroad”.
The local mayor, Wang Haichen, said one courtyard has been turned into a boutique hotel, and promised to transform Miyun County into an international tourism and leisure attraction.
We shall have to wait and see how successful this is!
