In my experience, Americans often see my southern English accent as ‘cute’. They also confuse it for being ‘British’, no matter how many times I explain there is no such thing.
I came across this funny video today of the American comedian Elon Gold talking about accents, including English ones. Take a look:
The latest edition of Collins Official Scrabble Words has been released. Nearly 3,000 new words have been added – which will you use to perplex your opponent?
A small selection:
BREDREN: brother
GOBI: cauliflower
INBOX: email folder for incoming mail
INNIT: isn’t it
NANG: cool
QIN: a Chinese zither
TWIGLET: wheat snack
VLOG: video blogging
WAGYU: a breed of cattle
(Source: The Guardian)
What words would you like added to the book to help you win a game?
Are you having trouble telling your treggings (seen in picture) from your jeggings? Then a new dictionary is here to help. (clearskiesmeadery.co)
Department store Debenham’s has launched an online reference guide to fashion lingo to “help clear up the confusion”. The guide defines terms such as “mandles” (sandals for men”) and “whorts” (winter shorts).
As these terms are reasonably simple amalgamations of two common items of clothing (blurt = blouse/skirt), I can’t help feeling that a spokeswoman for Debenham’s is taking it a bit too far when she says:
“It’s now easier to understand Sanskrit than some of the words commonly used by commentators within the fashion industry to describe garments.” (Source: Sky News)
Apparently the reason behind the dictionary is:
..so that every shopper – both fashion expert and non expert alike – can shop easily and clearly in all of our stores. However, we are also urging the fashion industry to use existing English words to describe their garments rather than made up amalgamations. We’d love to drop all these amalgamations and at the very least we are committed to keeping their use to a minimum. (Source: Debenhams.com)
A noble cause indeed.
Big news yesterday with the announcement of the death of another language.
Boa Sr, the last person fluent in the Bo language of the Andaman Islands, died and took with her an ancient tribal language. The Andaman Islands are a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal.
The Bo language was one of the ten Great Andamanese languages, and took its name from a now-extinct tribe. The languages are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia. Many of the indigenous languages survived unchanged for years, before the modern world encroached on the tribes that spoke them.
Linguists now hope that they can preserve other tribal languages, after Boa Sr spent her last years unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue. She sounds like an incredible woman – speaking Hindi and another local language as well as songs and stories in Bo. (Ultram) She lived through the 2004 tsunami, reportedly climbing a tree to escape the water.
“Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology,” Narayan Choudhary, a linguist of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was part of an Andaman research team, wrote on his webpage. “To me, Boa Sr epitomised a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else.” (Source: The Guardian)
Listen to a clip of the Bo language at the BBC website.
A great way to experience local culture when travelling is to visit the theatre, particularly in countries with a strong theatrical tradition.
For example, when I visited Hanoi a few years ago, I made time to attend a water puppet performance. Water puppetry is a traditional art in this part of Vietnam. However, whilst it was interesting to watch, it was sometimes hard to follow the storyline as the songs were sung in Vietnamese.
It’s a great way to immerse yourself in a language, but what if you want to enjoy the show in your native language?
A British company has come up with a solution – hand held translation devices called ‘AirScript’. These small screens provide a real time translation of what is happening on stage, in eight different languages including French, Russian and Japanese.
Whilst only available at The Shaftesbury Theatre in London at the moment, the devices could become popular with theatre-goers.
I guess using the device is a decision between becoming immersed in the visual aspects of the performance, and knowing precisely what is said. Which would you choose?
One of my favourite things to do in a new country is try out the new and exotic foods on offer, and it’s also a great way into the local language. Here in Spain I’ve been eating a lot of delicious tortilla, paella and churros, for example.
Most of the Spanish I’ve picked up has been from reading menus and ordering in restaurants. Hunger is a great motivator!
A language school in Montreal, Canada is taking this one step further, holding classes in local restaurants so students can experience both culture and cuisine along with their chosen language. In such a relaxed setting, it’s easy to pick up new words and you may feel more free to make mistakes.
You don’t even need to be in a different country to try out this idea; just pick up your phone book and find some local ethnic restaurants. The staff may be a little surprised at first, but explain your enthusiasm for learning and they may become a great teacher!
Just be careful what you order – I recently asked for jibia in a restaurant (the innocuous sounding cuttlefish), and got quite a shock when I saw the tentacles!
(Side note: if you’re interested in Spanish dining and cuisine, click on the picture.)
European dialects are apparently much more similar than we think.
Dialects are becoming increasingly rare in Europe, as borders are open and there’s more free movement between states. But dialects help preserve the local language and culture, so some Scottish and German poets have taken up the challenge of translating verse in these regional varieties.
Fitzgerald Kusz, a Franconian poet from Nuremberg, said that in translating Scots poems he was surprised to discover traces of that dialect’s Germanic roots. Kusz has spoken Franconian since childhood and regards his dialect as an intimate and comfortable form of communication.
“On one hand, globalization continues strengthen its hold,” he said, “High German, the unified language, can be heard on television in every village. But there is, in fact, a movement among the people to keep their languages alive.”
And that is one primary goal of dialect literature, he added.
Read the full article on dialect poetry here.
We often hear of languages becoming extinct, with the UN estimating that the world will lose half of its 6,700 languages by the end of the century.
This article, however, highlights one success story. Greenlandic, the native tongue of Greenland, is experiencing a revival, partly due to the country’s ongoing steps towards being independent from Denmark, who have ruled the island since the 18th Century.
With a population of just 55,000, Greenland is the least densely populated country in the world. Being tied to Denmark meant Danish was taking over as the most spoken language, with the associated loss of culture. As the article points out:
Grenoble smiles through the hardships because she believes that language is much more than words — it’s our culture, our history. It’s what connects people to one another, and if it’s lost, a society is truly threatened.
“When the language is in trouble there are all kinds of other things in trouble, so that’s the canary in the coal mine,” she said.
Let’s hope that Greenlandic, or Kalaallisut, can serve as an example to other indigenous and soon to be extinct languages.
Kia ora! If you happen to be in New Zealand this week (or even just know some Kiwis), why not take part in Māori Language Week?
Running from the 27th July – 2nd August, this years theme is “Te Reo i te Hapori – Māori Language in the Community.”
Te reo Māori is one of two official languages of New Zealand, along New Zealand Sign Language (English is a de facto official language). The language of New Zealand’s indigenous population, it’s experiencing something of a resurgence, with Māori language schools and it being taught at primary school. The national newspaper, the New Zealand Herald is getting involved, with some classic Kiwi phrases translated into Māori. If you’re already a fluent speaker, here’s an editorial celebrating the week in Te Reo (there’s an English translation too!).
I took a few classes in Te Reo when I lived in New Zealand, and it was a great way to connect with Māori culture. Here are some ideas for participating in the week, why not get involved?
My last post was about Aramaic, the language scholars believe was spoken by Jesus, making it approximately 2000 years old.
Perhaps even older are the languages of the Aboriginal people, the indigenous people of Australia. The Aboriginals, or Indigenous Australians, are thought to have inhabited Australia for around 40,000 years before the first European settlement. Pre-colonisation, Aboriginal people were part of different ‘nations’ spread all over the continent, each with its own language. There were an estimated 700 dialects and 250 distinct languages, which were as distinct as English, Swedish and Mandarin.
Today it is estimated there are 20 – 50 “healthy” Aboriginal dialects. These are spoken mostly in the Northern Territory. “Healthy” means the language is spoken to, and used by kids.
Aboriginal languages are strongly interlinked with their culture, with ancestral creative beings said to have left languages in the country.
In Aboriginal societies language is not only seen as a form of communication but as a method of right to land, forming boundaries for each family group, and language group. Language is used as social control as it has various forms depending on the ages and status of people within a language group. (Indigenous Australia)
Some elements of Aboriginal language have made it into Australian culture (for example, place names such as Canberra) and gone on to take a place in popular culture. Koala, kangaroo, and boomerang are all things we associate with Australia, generally without knowledge of their Aboriginal roots.
So, perhaps next time you think about Ayers Rock, you could spare a thought for this ancient culture and refer to it by its original name, Uluru*.
*Note: the correct spelling of Uluru has a retroflex under the ‘r’, which I cannot recreate here.
