Language Museum

Listening to the radio in the car earlier, I heard about a show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival called Bilingual Comedian.

The show is by Becky Donohue, and in it she apparently “attempts to ‘teach’ the audience and herself Spanish using nothing but ‘borrowed’ language tapes”. The show is based on the genius Eddie Izzard’s ‘Bring Bilingual’ (see video).

Coincidentally, I also read an article today about comics from overseas performing at the festival. The article explores the idea that comedy is different in different languages – for example a joke that works in Italian because it uses Italian wordplay would not have the same effect in English.

Being able to laugh and joke in a different language seems to be quite difficult to achieve – not only do you need to know the language, you need to know the cultural background. If you enjoy comedy, make it part of your language learning by finding comedy routines in your target language and listening until you can understand – or at least raise a chuckle.

Angelina Jolie recently proclaimed her love for the Russian language, but language learning isn’t just for A-list movie stars – as footballers from Manchester City recently showed.

Whilst Jolie learned Russian for her new movie, Salt, the footballers picked up some Arabic for the launch of a website in the United Arab Emirates. The Sun reports they had varying degrees of success, with the club’s Arabic media executive saying “I was surprised how fast some of the players picked it up. Adebayor was especially good.”

The footballers and Jolie had a common purpose for their learning – it was required for their work. And whilst they might not be fluent in the languages, they definitely made an effort.

Angelina also pinpoints one of the reasons for her success – practice!

I just had to practice over and over and over and I was told that I was getting it wrong a bunch of times and I had to keep practicing. (Source: US Weekly)

A while ago I posted about Latin and the short course run by the National Archives.

A reader kindly sent me this link to a page with “50 fun and educational websites keeping Latin alive”. Included are link to games and quizzes, texts to practice reading, Latin courses, dictionaries and lists, and religious sites.

Hopefully you’ll find the link useful if you’re learning Latin. Enjoy!

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!

With the debate continuing over whether Scots is a language or a dialect, its use is being encouraged in Scottish schools.

A new website was launched for teachers to help them support children who speak Scots and encourage their learning, and it seems that in some schools, this is having a positive effect.

In the past three years, the growing use of Scots in one Scottish primary school has helped transform the education of children who are traditionally hard to engage.

Nearly 30% of children at Nethermains Primary School in Denny, near Falkirk, are on free school meals – a key indicator of poverty – twice the Scottish average.

Children from such backgrounds can often struggle at school because of the difficulties they are dealing with at home.

However, the introduction of Scots three years ago by headteacher Mary Connelly has seen a radical change in the attitudes of some pupils.

“At the time, the class was predominantly made up of boys and they were not engaging with reading at all,” she said. “We introduced Scots books and encouraged the use of Scots and a lot of these boys became hooked on reading.

“It is a language they speak at home and are comfortable with and to allow them to use it at school has sparked their enthusiasm and had a tremendous impact on their confidence.” (Source: Herald Scotland)

If Scots can be used to encourage children to read and in interested in school, this can’t be a bad thing. And perhaps their bilingualism will lead to multilingualism in the future.

Britain is trying to change the language rules for candidates seeking civil service jobs in the European Union, according to an article in the Telegraph.

Whilst currently candidates are expected to take admissions exams in a second language, Britain is seeking to have this changed so pre-selection tests can be taken in the first language.

With the declining number of students taking a foreign language at school, along with closures of university language departments, it is perhaps not a surprise that British candidates are put off by the second language requirement.

As I’ve mentioned previously, the EU has 23 official languages. Surely the focus should be on encouraging British people to learn the languages of our neighbours, rather than changing the rules to ensure they don’t need to?

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)

A little fun for the afternoon – a quiz on synonyms from the Guardian.

Synonyms are words with identical or very similar meanings. If you’re writing an essay or letter and you’ve used a word too many times, the synonym option on your word processing package can be very useful. Some writers take the quest for different words a little too far though – a carrot as a “popular orange vegetable” is an example from the Guardian’s Mind Your Language blog.

Some useful resources on synonyms are Synonyms.net (self-described as “the world’s most comprehensive synonyms resource”), which offers synonyms in English only, and Thesaurus, with synonyms in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

Latin. Cogito ergo sum. Carpe Diem. Semper Fidelis.

You may know a couple of these phrases and be able to trot them out at an appropriate moment. But for the most part, Latin seems a little, well, irrelevant.

If you’re learning a Romance language though (Spanish, French, etc), Latin is not irrelevant. It is the basis of these languages. Many words in the English language are also based on Latin. So a little understanding of it may be of use. If you’re not learning these languages but are interested in history, law, classics and a number of other areas, Latin can also be helpful.

This short course from the National Archives is a beginners guide to Latin used in documents from 1086 to 1733, when Latin was the official language of documents written in England. No previous knowledge is required and interestingly, you can learn from historical documents such as the Domesday Book. So in the process of picking up some Latin, you will also learn some history. It’s only 12 tutorials long, so why not give it a go?

I came across a new site that looks useful and thought I’d share. Called RhinoSpike, the site offers users the chance to record audio in their native language and upload it for others, but also request recordings in a wide variety of languages.

It can be difficult to find interesting audio content in the language you are studying, and RhinoSpike offers a solution to this – you can request the speaker to record any text you wish, from your favourite book to a conversation (probably best to make sure the book’s not too long though!).

The best thing about the site is it’s free. All the content is contributed by users of the site and the community is encouraged – if you contribute recordings you will move up the queue for the recordings you request. As the site says, “Give and you shall receive!”