Language Museum

Closed captioning (subtitles) have recently been introduced to some videos on YouTube, which could potentially be a great language learning resource. The service is in beta mode at the moment – and apparently it needs a lot of work. From Dvice.com:

Engadget first spotted how weird Apple’s iPad launch video got when the feature was activated — sometimes the text is so different from what’s being said that you wonder if Google is just having a laugh. “A high-res color display” becomes “a high risk going to split,” and when one of the designers says he doesn’t have to change himself to use the iPad, the captions make it sound like he very clearly does. If you were relying on these captions, it would be a very different commercial.

The captioning is machine-generated, so it seems the software has a ways to go before this becomes a reliable means of translation!

There’s been a lot of debate recently about language learning in schools in the UK. The government has shifted the focus of language teaching to primary schools, with high school students not required to learn a second language at GCSE level.

Interestingly, it seems that teaching a second non-English language may not be the only issue for the government. Surveys have revealed that in some parts of the country, pupils are attending school with little or no English.

A Government study found last year that some 240 different languages are spoken by schoolchildren in the home across Britain as a whole, with one-in-seven primary school pupils not speaking English as a first language across the UK.

There are 10 schools in the UK where no child speaks English as a first language, the figures show.

Staff and pupils at Fairlight Primary School in Brighton resorted to learning sign language to communicate, with children speaking 26 different languages at home in 2008. (Source: Telegraph)

A survey in Reading, England, has found that 150 languages and dialects are spoken by pupils in its area, including the Indian language of Telugu and the Ghanaian dialect of Akan. This incredible diversity is making it difficult to provide for all pupils. I wonder if, rather than seeing it as a negative thing, their knowledge could be used to help others – child to child language exchange perhaps?

Last week I posted about how bilingualism can apparently be promoted even before babies are born. Introducing a second language at a young age seems to be a very popular idea – a mother in Scotland has won an international prize for teaching French to babies.

Fiona Moffat and her company, Lingobaby, aim to introduce a second language at a young age, and run sessions for children from birth to five years old.

“There are no expectations that they come out with French words, but often you can hear babies of about 15-16 months say bits of words like ‘bonjour’, ‘merci’ and ‘au revoir’,” she said.

Ms Moffatt said there were “huge” benefits to babies and toddlers learning foreign languages.

“If children are exposed to the sounds of a language before the age of nine months, they’re much more likely to pick the sounds out at a later age,” she said.

“We’ve also had a lot of comments from parents who are coming to classes that it just makes language learning normal.” (Source: BBC News)

I wonder exactly how much of the language these children actually pick up, or whether it’s more about laying down some foundations for learning in later years?

Language exchanges can be a good way of improving your abilities, especially your confidence in speaking and listening. With new technology and the power of the internet, you can talk to people from other countries online, thus ‘exchanging’ languages, hopefully to the improvement of both parties.

Living in the country of the language you are learning is a step further than this. Traditionally, language exchanges were only a few weeks long on either side. Now however, it seems the trend is for “extreme” language exchanges, with children spending up to six months with their host family.

According to The Independent, children aged 9 to 14 are taking part in these exchanges, living in their host country with a local family and attending the local school for up to six months. With almost no language ability before travelling, the children become fluent by the end of their stay.

It’s often been noted that children pick up new languages faster than adults, so for those of us who are slightly older than 14, I’d probably recommend taking a couple of classes in your home country to see if you like the language before you commit to something this intense!

The language exchange discussed in the article was arranged by En Famille International, who are always looking for English-speaking families. This may also be a way to get involved in language exchange, if you’re interested and have children!

If you’re at court, you would expect the lawyers to be fully conversant and confidently expressing themselves, much as you see in the many American TV shows dedicated to courtroom drama.

A report published in 2008 showed that trainee barristers didn’t think much of their fellow students linguistic abilities, however.
The Bar Standards Board is now introducing a test that aims to get prospective barristers to prove their fluency in English, the Financial Times reports.

The [2008] report highlighted deficiencies among both native and non-native speakers, including an “inability to speak fluently, with close attention to grammar, vocabulary and syntax, and an inability to write clear, correct and well-structured English prose”.

The diagnosis is a far cry from the renowned articulacy of legendary advocates such as the fictional Rumpole or the real-life Sir Edward Marshall Hall, whose persuasiveness helped win acquittals for defendants in a series of sensational murder cases during the late Victorian and Edwardian era.

Instead, the islands of inarticulacy among trainee barristers now seem to have grown so large that, as one person put it to the profession’s own investigators: “The problem is not the course, nor the staff, but the students.” (Source: Financial Times)

This is definitely one of the professions where excellent linguistic abilities are needed, so hopefully these measures will help safeguard the profession and the system.

There’s been a lot of debate in the UK recently over what language skills should be taught to children, and when.

Since learning a second language stopped being compulsory in secondary school, there appears to have been a decline in the amount of students taking up a language, with a knock-on effect on university courses, and perhaps the economy.

So could Latin be the solution?

According to this report, the language has been popular in pilot schools in Cambridgeshire, and the project has just been expanded. Latin is seen as a good way of introducing children to language learning, especially of the Romance languages, of which Latin is the root. It also provides an interesting way to look at history and civilization, says the head of the project.

Others argue that children would be better off learning a language that they can use in more practical ways. Spanish, for example, is the world’s number 2 language in terms of number of speakers, so would arguably be far more helpful for children travelling and eventually going into business.

Whatever the debate, it’s good to see that someone is pushing for language learning for British schoolchildren. I learned some French and German at school but have continually been put to shame by my European counterparts who can speak fluent English!

*That’s “the dog ate my homework” by the way.

Recently I posted about the pros and cons of machine translation versus human translation.

It seems computers are also helping people to communicate in other ways – a new study shows they may be more effective at lip reading than humans.

Researchers compared the accuracy of an automated lip-reading machine to that of 19 people who had lip-reading training. The study found that the automated system recognized 80 percent of words, compared to 32 percent for human lip readers.

The machines were also able to read lips on simplistic representations of facial shape, whereas human lip-readers required a video of actual people speaking.

“This pilot study is the first time an automated lip-reading system has been benchmarked against human lip-readers, and the results are perhaps surprising,” said study author Sarah Hilder. (Source: US News)

This could be of major benefit to lip reading learners, and lead to new and improved methods of learning. A difficult to learn skill, lip reading will become more essential as people live longer. Any skill that helps people communicate is valuable – can you lip read?

There’s an interesting article in Time magazine today about some research that shows dyslexia may show itself differently for speakers of different languages.

The word ‘dyslexia’ comes from Greek and means ‘difficulty with words’. Dyslexia is defined by the British Dyslexia Association as “a specific learning disability which mainly affects the development of literacy and language related skills”. Around 1 in 10 children in the UK has dyslexia, to varying degrees of severity, and seems to affect boys more than girls.

It is thought that dyslexia is the result of a phonological disorder, meaning that dyslexics struggle to separate and keep track of specific, individual sounds. In English language learning, where “sounding out” words is important, this is problematic.

Yet, whereas in English readers can use letters to sound words out, pronunciation of specific characters in Chinese languages is dependent on rote memorization, the researchers point out. And knowing which character’s pronunciation to pull up is dependent on a complete understanding of the intricate combination of strokes included in each character. In the analysis of 12 Chinese children with dyslexia, researchers found that, in addition to struggling with phonological processing exercises, the children also had trouble with exercises in which they were asked to judge the dimensions of images, as compared with non-dyslexic children. What’s more, while performing visual identification tasks, brain scans revealed that dyslexics had less activity in the part of the brain associated with visuospatial processing, as compared with non-dyslexics.

Read the full article here.

I came across a great article on BBC News today about a school in London that encourages children with a second language to teach their fellow students.

When a new student joins the school, they are encouraged to use the language they speak at home and teach it to others through the school’s “language of the month” scheme. Students of all ages are taught basics of the language such as good morning, thank you, and numbers up to ten. Through the project, the school has “collected” around 50 languages, from Tamil to Swahili.

Founder of the scheme and ethnic minority achievement teacher Joe Debono said: “It started simply as a common courtesy, but as we went on we found that children who have their language valued are more open then to learning English than if we just let them hide their language away.
“The children doing the language of the month are treated like little movie stars
and that’s the way they get to see themselves.”

The scheme seems like a fantastic way to celebrate diversity and recognise the importance of speaking a second language, something that is becoming especially important as there are less children taking languages at secondary school level in the UK. It was deemed no longer compulsory after the age of 14 in 2004, and since then, the number of students taking a second language has dropped.

This appears to have had a knock-on effect at university level, with reports that language departments will close and language courses dropped because of declining numbers of student applications. Campaigners are now saying the shortage of language graduates will “hold Britain back as it tries to emerge from recession”.

Kathryn Board, the chief executive of Cilt [National Centre of Languages], said: “English is one of the great global languages but it will only take us so far. Our engagement with the non-English speaking world will remain superficial and one-sided unless we develop our capacity in other languages.”

(Source: Times Online)

Let’s hope the government initiative to make language teaching compulsory in primary schools will help future generations to keep learning languages and continue to be treated like “little movie stars”.

If like me you get a confused look on your face whenever you hear financial terms like sub-prime, recession and inflation adjusted, help is finally at hand.

You’ve probably heard of the Financial Times and (again, like me) thought “too complicated!”, but the international business newspaper is helping out those of us without an MBA with its newly launched financial lexicon.

The Lexicon allows visitors to search for specific terms and definitions, or simply navigate through the always growing list. Terms used across all Financial Times websites offer highlighted keywords and terms which will link directly to the glossary, allowing users to learn about words instantly that are used in their articles. Alternatively, when a user searches for a term in the Lexicon, it will display a list of articles where that term has been recently used. (Source: World Business News)

Just one problem: now when someone asks your opinion on the sub-prime mortgage crisis, you have no excuse for not having one!