Following the somewhat mixed reaction to the introduction of Cockney cash machines in London, the company behind the idea is now thinking of expanding.
Bank Machine is apparently thinking of putting 250 cash machines in Glasgow and Edinburgh, with Scots as a language option. Instead of money, users would be offered “bawbees” and a mini statement would become a “wee statement”.
Dr Christine Robinson, director of the Scottish Language Dictionaries in Edinburgh, said: “We’d be delighted to see it happen and would be happy to help with the translations. Scots is, at present, completely invisible in the public space.
“Furthermore, there are still a large number of Scots who, because they were criticised for their speech at school, think they are speaking slang or bad English when they are actually speaking perfectly good Scots.” (Source: Deadline)
It would be brilliant if this reinvigorated languages around the UK – as I’ve noted previously, there are many more languages in the country than English.
I recently took a look at the Rosetta Stone and the Rosetta Project, and now there is the Rosetta Foundation.
Based in Ireland, the Foundation aims
to make information accessible to people independent of their social status, their linguistic and cultural background and their geographical location through the development and the deployment of an intelligent translation and localisation environment. (Source: The Rosetta Foundation)
More specifically, the Foundation wants to make ‘life critical’ information available in native languages. As the chief executive of the service provider Welocalize said:
“This initiative could help extend the benefits of the translation industry to the people that most need it. Individuals all over the world are deprived of critical information in their native language that could potentially save their lives. We believe that in order to grow and meet global content demands, we must collaborate to innovate.” (Source: IWR)
The project is being jointly run by The University of Limerick (Ireland), the Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL) as well as the service provider, and backed by the Irish government.
Hopefully it will be as successful as a smaller-scale service run in the UK, which offers translations to questions and answers for medical staff. SignTranslate provides short video clips of questions, and also links to live interpreters for more complex translations. This means that there is no lengthy wait for an interpreter, helping to save lives and lessen distress for patients.
Thankfully I’ve never needed to go to hospital in a country where I don’t speak the language, but this project gives me hope that if I do, I will be able to communicate my needs effectively.
Just a couple of posts ago I was talking about the Rosetta Project, which aims to help preserve and promote languages to maintain diversity.
Well, how about this for diversity? An enterprising ATM operator company is giving people the option to conduct their transactions… in Cockney rhyming slang. Can you Adam and Eve it?
Ron Delnevo, managing director of Bank Machine, said: “We wanted to introduce something fun and of local interest to our London machines.
“Whilst we expect some residents will visit the machine to just have a ‘butcher’s’ (look), most will be genuinely pleased as this is the first time a financial services provider will have recognised the Cockney language in such a manner.”
(Source: Yahoo News)
The option is sadly only available at five ATMs in East London for just three months – we can only hope that it catches on. If you can’t get to London, test your Cockney knowledge here.
Sad news reported in the Mirror today – apparently modern technology will be the death of some brilliant English adages.
Researchers from onepoll.com say due to texts and emails, phrases such as “mad as a hatter” and “as right as rain” are falling out of use. Young people are more used to using abbreviated words and shortened sentences to fit in to Twitter updates (140 characters) and Facebook status posts.
A spokesman for the firm said: “It is a shame that these more colloquial, historical and poetic expressions are dying out in favour of shortened, more directed and less ambiguous terms.
“However, it isn’t much of a surprise when you consider that television and the internet has taken the place of family conversations in the evening.
“And now that kids are increasingly using communication technologies that previous generations could not have dreamed about, such as mobile phones, social networking and Twitter; this disappearance of verbal ties to the past can only be expected to increase.”
(Source: The Telegraph)
Language inevitably evolves, so it’s not surprising that three quarters of those polled believe phrases such as “mind your Ps and Qs” are dying out. Some of the richness of the English language may be lost though, so please comment and let me know your favourite adage!
That is, according to the Global Language Monitor, the amount we have now surpassed for the English language.
The one millionth word was Web 2.0. , which isn’t actually a word, but a phrase containing a noun. Look a little further and you’ll find that this million includes both words and phrases. Which makes financial tsunami more acceptable as their 1,000,001st ‘word’ I suppose.
The former editor-in-chief of the Britannica encyclopaedia is unimpressed with this count, as are the linguists over at Language Log. And as the OED points out, there is no accurate way to count how many words there are in a language.
So, what’s the point of the count? Well, I think the fact it draws attention to the complexity and ever-changing face of the English language is fantastic. It’s prompted many journalists to write articles about the language, and perhaps exposes people to new words. I, for one, would never have known of the existence of the word quendy-trendy (apparently British youth slang) if it weren’t for the Monitor. Thanks guys.
I’m no sci-fi geek, but I’ll admit I did enjoy the recent Star Trek movie. Off the back of the movie comes something for uber sci-fi geeks and dedicated linguists: the Klingon dictionary for the iPhone.
Originally invented for the Star Trek TV series, the Klingon language is called
tlhIngan Hol, and even has its own language institute. It is one of the more successful invented languages, along with Esperanto and Elvish. It appears to be much more complex than either of those languages, however:
Marc Okrand is a student of various Native American languages, which are notoriously difficult for speakers of Indo-European languages to learn, and in creating Klingon he borrowed rare and unfamiliar grammatical and syntactical rules, along with tongue-twisting sound combinations, from those and other little-known world languages. Klingon verbs have 29 different prefixes to indicate subject and object agreement, Klingon sentences have a highly unorthodox word order (object-verb-subject), and Klingon vocabulary can be almost endlessly agglutinated, meaning that long phrases can be stuck together into single words. (The supposed Klingon proverb “If it is in your way, knock it down,” is expressed in just two words: “Dubotchugh yIpummoH.”) Okrent says her reaction to Klingon, as an accredited linguist, was that “it was completely believable as a language, but somehow very, very odd.”
Read the rest of the article on invented languages here. And if you’ve never heard Klingon being spoken, check out this young linguist.
(*That’s “we are Klingons!” for all you non-speakers.)
I’ve posted before about dictionaries and the huge amount of work that goes into them. Now, you can get involved yourself in a new type of dictionary making – in online video form.
Wordia.com is “the world’s first democratically compiled, multimedia online dictionary” and is made up of videos uploaded by everyone from your average Joe on the street to the illustrator Quentin Blake. The danger is obvious – how do you know the definition offered is true and accurate? Wordia solves this by having the definition of the word from the Collins dictionary in text below the video.
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Probably my favourite of the videos I’ve viewed so far is the vaguely hysterical one from Nikki Grahame, a former Big Brother UK contestant (above). Although won’t help you too much if you want to know the proper definition of the word invention, it is amusingly overwrought.
Currently the site is asking for videos on words related to Refugee Week 2009, which runs from 15 -21 June. Entries include musings from The Archbishop of Canterbury on refuge and Baaba Maal (community). Upload your own video giving a definition of one of the selected words for the week, and you could win a Simple Acts journal.
Whilst it’s just getting off the ground at the moment, wordia.com could really develop into an interesting tool for language learning, especially if it goes global and definitions from different languages are added. Watch this space.
Learning via a podcast is modern technology’s version of a language tape or CD. Advantages include portable learning – you can listen to a podcast whenever or wherever you like – and the range of podcasts available, a lot of them free.
This range has a downside, however. One of the great things about podcasts is that anyone with the right equipment can make one. But it’s also the big pitfall as the quality is not guaranteed.
You also need the ability to download and play the podcasts, which means investing in an MP3 player and some time at a computer. If you’re not tech-savvy, this could be a problem.
Another consideration is the need to actively listen. It’s too easy to put on headphones, hit play and drift off listening to the soothing tones of that lovely-sounding Frenchman. But you’re not going to learn by osmosis! So it may be beneficial to keep a notebook to go with the podcast and jot down times of sections you would like to go over again, as well as notes on what you understand and don’t.
Some good basic language podcasts for travellers can be found here. They’re free, and also include the script of the podcast in English although unfortunately only available for iPods at the moment. For listings of podcasts for various languages, check out this site.
Wendy from Nottingham has been following a Spanish podcast in preparation for her upcoming trip to South America:
It was difficult to find a suitable podcast as I wanted a Latin American Spanish one rather than a European one. Once I found this though, my skills have definitely improved! It’s great for speaking and listening practice, but I’m using a book also as I’d like to be able to recognise and read some of the basics also.
New proposals in the UK include teaching blogs and Twitter to primary school children.
The Guardian reports:
children [are] to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain “fluency” in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.
As expected, there are a variety of views on this change, with some decrying the notion and calling for more emphasis on traditional reading and writing skills, with others pleased that modern technologies are finally being given a place in schools. But what effect will it have on language?
Personally I’d be worried about the use of spellchecking “alongside” how to spell. If a child does not know how to spell the word already, how would they select it from the options presented by a spellchecker?
Interestingly, the Telegraph reports that higher up the education scale a new Master’s degree is being offered in almost exactly the same thing. Birmingham City University is offering a new MA in Social Media which will teach how to set up blogs and consider the uses of social media (such as Twitter). Does this mean future primary school leavers will be able to skip most of their schooling and advance straight on to master’s level?
