Language Museum Blog

A confession: I never played with Lego as a child. I believe it was only when my younger brother was born that it even entered our house.

And it seems that I missed out not just on building brightly coloured models, but a whole section of highly creative language.

This fun article explores the diverse nomenclature of Lego pieces:

This language of Lego isn’t just something our family has invented; every Lego-building family must have its own vocabulary. And the words they use (mostly invented by the children, not the adults) are likely to be different every time. But how different? And what sort of words? (Source: The Morning News)

The table at the end of the article is particularly awesome. What names have you heard for Lego pieces? There could be a rigorous academic study in this – linguists, it’s over to you!

Having spent a lot of time overseas listening to different versions of English, I’m always amused to note the differences and similarities to British English.

At the beach recently with an American friend, we discovered that we each had a different pronunciation for the floating device in the water known as a buoy. Whilst he said something like boo-ee, I laughed and responded boy.

I was delighted then, to receive a link to the style guide of The Economist, a weekly British publication concerned with international news and politics. The link led me to a very amusing section on Americanisms. Here’s a sample:

Try not to verb nouns or to adjective them. So do not access files, haemorrhage red ink (haemorrhage is a noun), let one event impact another, author books (still less co-author them), critique style sheets, host parties, pressure colleagues (press will do), progress reports, trial programmes or loan money. Gunned down means shot. And though it is sometimes necessary to use nouns as adjectives, there is no need to call an attempted coup a coup attempt or the Californian legislature the California legislature. Vilest of all is the habit of throwing together several nouns into one ghastly adjectival reticule: Texas millionaire real-estate developer and failed thrift entrepreneur Hiram Turnipseed…

I recommend reading the rest of the entry. Anyone got other Americanisms to add?

I wear spectacles, but they’re nowhere near as hi-tech (or useful) as these glasses invented by NEC.

The company says it is planning to launch spectacles that can aid real-time translation, allowing chat between users to flow freely. Whilst they’re not exactly like specs (they won’t help you see better); they more resemble a headset with a microphone, and this is how they work:

…the microphone on the headset picks up the voices of both people in a conversation, pipes it through translation software and voice-to-text systems and then sends the translation back to the headset.

At the same time as a user hears a translation, they would also get text subtitles beamed onto the retina. (Source: BBC News)

I’m not so sure about having “subtitles beamed onto [my] retina” (sounds painful!) but this definitely sounds like a useful tool. (https://baycities.com) I can imagine as a language learner you could use it to connect with native language speakers all over the world, turning the translation on and off as and when you want to use it. Sadly, we’ll have to wait til 2011 to find out how useful it really is!

Recently I tried to use the spelling alphabet (Alfa, Bravo, Charlie) when I needed to spell something here in Spain (haven’t completely grasped the Spanish alphabet yet). To my surprise, I found out it is not as universal as I thought.

In fact, there are different countries have their own spelling alphabets, as this site (although old) shows. Spain’s spelling alphabet begins Antonio, Barcelona, Carmen, for example.

The alphabet I was using is known as the NATO phonetic alphabet, or the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet. It’s been adopted by many military and civilian organisations around the world, including the Federal Aviation Administration and International Telecommunication Union, which I suppose is why I assumed people would know it here. It’s also been used for art, and a comment on language.

Looking at the various alphabets, it seems that most are based on names, particularly of people. The names appear specific to each country (Désirè for example), which would not be useful for an international alphabet. I particularly like the older English alphabets, which include gems such as Xantippe (British A), Monkey, Nuts (British Royal Air Force from 1924-1942) and Xerxes (British Royal Navy – 1917).

Do you know a spelling alphabet? What words are used?

With no previous knowledge of Spanish before I moved to the Canary Islands recently, I have found myself relying on other people for translations and information.

As someone who is very independent and capable, I’ve found it quite difficult to depend on others. A recent article brought my situation in to perspective, however. Whilst I am only in Spain for a few months, there are people who move to a new country permanently without speaking the language – and sometimes have to rely on children to translate their everyday needs.

The first woman in this article, Dolores Pedro, has learned two additional languages in order to fit in to her community – first Spanish and now English. Her son says translating for his parents is not hard, as he “speak[s] three languages”.

There is some debate about the effect this responsibility has on children, however, especially when it comes to medical issues.

Whippo said the hospital tries to discourage using children as translators because the child may not have the vocabulary in both languages to fully explain the situation in English and another language. Also, she said, medical information can be a heavy burden on a child. (Source: Garden City Telegram)

A doctor in Tennessee, USA, also wrote an opinion piece earlier this year putting himself in a child translators shoes. He concluded that “children often lack the vocabulary and the psychological and emotional maturity required to communicate health information.” (Source: Education Week)

Luckily, I have no need to rely on children to communicate for me. Much like the woman in the article, I’ve made the conscious decision to learn the local language and improve quickly, so I can depend less on others.

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?

Many of us have learned a language at one time or another. For most, uninteresting compulsory classes at school meant the language was easily forgotten once exams were over.

It may be that the language has not completely disappeared though. A new study has found that participants who had learned a language as a child could remember phonemes – the smallest sounds in a language, and could quickly relearn vocabulary.

The findings, published in Psychological Science, suggest being exposed as young children to foreign languages, even if they do not continue to speak them, can have a lasting impact on speech perception.

“Even if the language is forgotten — or feels this way — after many years of disuse, leftover traces of the early exposure can manifest themselves as an improved ability to relearn the language,” the study authors said in a statement. (Source: Times of the Internet)

Anecdotally, I can say that having studied French for four years at school, I can still recall some vocabulary and full sentences, despite not having really used it for over a decade (this is a hindrance in my current attempt to learn Spanish!).

It’s bad news for lazy learners though – there’s no excuse now for not taking up that language you ‘forgot’!

I seem to reasonably often post about languages that are becoming extinct, so I found this programme on the BBC of some interest.

Generally, I tend to think of the death of languages as a bad thing because of the associated loss of culture and heritage. This show presents alternative views, for example explaining that some tribes want the next generation to learn the most dominant language in their area so they can progress and get a good education.

With 6% of the world’s languages spoken by 94% of the population, there are arguments that the loss of some languages is the result of natural selection.

One linguist, Professor Salikoko Mufwene, of the University of Chicago, has argued that the social and economic conditions among some groups of speakers “have changed to points of no return”.

As cultures evolve, he argues, groups often naturally shift their language use. Asking them to hold onto languages they no longer want is more for the linguists’ sake than for the communities themselves.

There will continue to be debate about this issue, and it’s interesting to see what the commenters say about the story. One poster is for a single global language:

The utility of a single global language, spoken by everyone as their mother tongue, would surely outweigh any loss of cultural heritage. The proliferation of Scots Gaelic bilingual signs in areas without Gaelic speakers (Aberdeenshire?!) is eccentric to say the least. Let languages die their natural deaths -there are plenty left.
Danny McShane, Aberdeen

While another feels:

When a language disappears, the knowledge and thought that has been stored in the language through generations of use, disappears with it. With the growth of powerful and widespread world languages, such as English, Chinese and Spanish, it will be necessary to take steps to protect linguistic diversity, in order to ensure the survival of smaller languages.
Shouvik Datta, Orpington, Kent, United Kingdom

What are your thoughts? Is a single global language a good idea? Would it help promote peace and understanding? Or is linguistic diversity essential to human culture?

OK, that sounds a little ominous, but it’s not the end of the world as we know it (yet).

Whilst learning a language, there are many resources we can use. A good resource should be accurate and reliable. That’s why you need to be careful when using translation websites.

Google Translate for example, currently has around 50 languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish. Google uses something called statistical machine translation, which is useful for getting the general idea of documents, but may not be completely accurate.

Pros and cons: Google’s computerized approach means it can translate tons of content — and fast. But computers aren’t quite up to speed with ever-evolving modern speech, so reports of translation errors are fairly common.

On the plus side, the service has been vastly improved in the last five years, Och said. Also, Google lets people spot translation errors, suggest new wordings and translate its interface into languages Google’s computers don’t speak just yet. (Source: CNN.com)

Sites such as Babelfish and freetranslation.com offer a similar service to Google Translate, and again are machine powered. Freetranslation.com also offers human translation, but at a cost. So when translating a specific phrase, it’s a good idea to double check the translation – perhaps try cross-translating it into the original language.

The popular social networking site Facebook, however, has a different method. Through crowdsourcing, they are translating their site into different languages using human knowledge.

Pros and cons: People are good at knowing idioms and slang, so Facebook tends to get these right, but there are limited numbers of multi-lingual volunteers who want to spend time helping Facebook translate things.

Also, Facebook’s site is available in many languages, but its human translators don’t touch wall posts, photo comments and other user-submitted items, which is a big con if you want to have friends who don’t share a common language with you. People who use Facebook Connect to translate their sites can choose which text they want users to help translate, according to Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich.

What are your experiences of using Google Translate, Facebook and other machine translators? Do you find them more or less helpful than human translation?

Recently I moved temporarily to Spain and, with no previous knowledge of the language, have been attempting to learn Spanish.

Whilst I’ve had some success picking up individual words, and can already read some simple Spanish, speaking is my real ‘problem’ area.
My biggest fear is getting words wrong – I dislike being incorrect. This fear is very unhelpful in language acquisition, as you learn from your mistakes!

And as a recent study shows, conversing is essential to language development. A UCLA study found that activities that got children talking were more conducive to language acquisition than other methods.

Each day, children hear an average of some 13,000 words spoken to them by adults and participate in about 400 conversational turns with adults. More conversations mean more opportunities for mistakes and therefore more opportunities for valuable corrections. Furthermore, they also provide an opportunity for children to practice new vocabulary. (Source: Eurekalert.org)

Whilst the study focused on language acquisition in children, I think the findings can be applied to all language learning. Make the most of any opportunity you have to converse in your chosen language – and don’t be scared to make mistakes!