Language Museum Blog

Following last week’s news of a decline in the number of students studying some languages at A-Level, the Telegraph have put together a list of their top 10 “best languages to study” for graduate jobs.

The full list:
1. German
2. French
3. Spanish
4. Mandarin
5. Polish
6. Arabic
7. Cantonese
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. Portuguese

The list is somewhat surprising, given that students are choosing not to study German, French and Spanish in favour of Japanese and Mandarin.

The survey asked UK firm managers what languages are useful for their business. Given that Germany’s the only country defying the depression in the eurozone, I’m not surprised it tops the list.

What do you think is the “best” language to study?

This week was A-Level results week, where thousands of young people found out what their immediate future holds.

It appears that fewer young people are choosing languages to be part of their future, with reports saying that the number of British teenagers choosing a European language A-Level has fallen.

The number of students taking German has fallen below 5,000, with entries in French down to around 12,500. Interesting, languages such as Polish, Arabic and Japanese have seen a slight rise in the number of candidates. It seems that languages traditionally studied in British schools are proving less popular with young people.

Andrew Hall, chief executive of the AQA exam board, said the drop in the number of people taking A-levels in traditional modern foreign languages was a real worry. “We have the euro economy in crisis – I think modern foreign languages are in the same place,” he said.

There was no magic bullet to fix the problem, Hall said, but he welcomed the government’s move this year to introduce modern languages in primary schools.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the OCR exam board, said universities had made it clear they wanted students with qualifications in science and maths. “I’m not sure the message has been as strong around languages, so they could assist in this approach,” he said. (Source: The Guardian)

Twitter is now available in languages written right-to-left, including Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu.

Work began earlier this year via their Translation Center, which crowd-sources translations to make Twitter available to people around the world. Almost half a million people contribute to the Center, and have so far made 28 languages available.

Around 13,000 volunteers worked on the project to make right-to-left language available. Twitter had to create new tools to ensure Tweets, retweets and hashtags work properly for users who may send tweets with both right-to-left and left-to-right content.

To suggest a new language for Twitter, you can file a language request.

The world’s newest nation, South Sudan, has adopted English as its official language.

South Sudan was created after a referendum earlier this year, splitting off from the mainly Arabic speaking Sudan. Leaders hope that choosing English will make South Sudan a modern country and see it as a “tool for development”.

“With English,” the news director of South Sudan Radio, Rehan Abdelnebi, told me haltingly, “we can become one nation. We can iron out our tribal differences and communicate with the rest of the world.” (Source: BBC News)

There are issues, however. Around 150 different languages are spoken in the country, with most people having grown up speaking a form of Arabic. Few people speak English, and a large proportion of the population are illiterate.

Let’s hope that South Sudan can become a successful and peaceful country, with or without English.

The Globe Theatre will be staging all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays in a different language in 2012.

Part of the wider celebrations in the UK to mark the 2012 London Olympics, the plays will help mark the Cultural Olympiad. Theatre companies from around the world will be asked to participate, and confirmed productions include King Lear in Aboriginal languages, The Tempest in Arabic, Julius Caesar in Italian and The Taming of the Shrew in Urdu as well as a performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost in British sign language.

The artistic director of the Globe, Dominic Dromgoole said:

“It has long been recognised that Shakespeare, as well as a great playwright, has become an international language and has proved one of the most life-affirming and barrier-transcending ways that people can speak to one another.

“His plays have been translated into every major living language and there is a long tradition of Shakespeare performances around the world in people’s own vernacular.

“During the course of these six weeks, the Globe will create an international Shakespeare community in the heart of London.” (Source: Telegraph)

What a fantastic project!

Last November I posted about the internet regulator Icann approving the use of different alphabets, ending the dominance of Latin-based alphabets such as English. The new web addresses were expected in 2010, and at the start of May the new domains became available for use!

Previously web addresses could be written partly in different scripts, but the ‘country code’ (e.g. co.uk) had to be written in a Latin script. The change means that the entire address can be written in, for example, Arabic, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates the first to do so.

Unfortunately, not all computer users will be able to use the new domain names immediately as they may not have the correct fonts installed.

“You may see a mangled string of letters and numbers, and perhaps some percent signs or a couple of “xn--“s mixed into the address bar,” said Mr Davies. “Or it may not work at all.”…

“Computers never come with the complete set of fonts that will allow it to show every possible IDN [internationalised domain names] in the world.

“Often this is fixed by downloading additional language packs for the missing languages, or specifically finding and installing fonts that support the wanted languages.” (Source: BBC News)

The country codes:
Egypt: مصر (Egypt)
Saudi Arabia: السعودية (AlSaudiah)
United Arab Emirates: امارات (Emarat)

Source: Icann

First, a confession. I did not think that anyone still spoke Aramaic, the language scholars say was spoken by Jesus. Sure, I’d heard that the controversial movie The Passion of the Christ was mostly in Aramaic, but it never connected in my brain that anyone would still actually speak it.

This article, however, proved me wrong. The world’s oldest living tongue, Aramaic is listed by Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as an endangered language and as such efforts are being made to preserve and promote it.

With similarities to both Arabic and Hebrew, Aramaic is spoken mostly in the Middle East, principally in a few villages north of Damascus, Syria, in the form of Western Neo-Aramaic. The Syrian government has set up the Aramaic Language Academy in one of the villages to assist in the continuation of the language.

Linguistic experts say that Syria is doing well in fostering this part of its heritage. “Aramaic is actually pretty healthy in Maaloula,” said Professor Geoffrey Kahn, who teaches semitic philology at Cambridge University. “It’s the eastern Aramaic dialects in Turkey, Iraq and Iran that are really endangered.”

Listen to the Lord’s Prayer being spoken in Aramaic here. And for more articles on Aramaic, see here.