Language Museum Blog

Britney famously sang “oops, I did it again” and now Rick Perry, a US Republican presidential candidate, has brought the word back into the popular consciousness.

Perry’s “oops” came as he couldn’t remember the name of a third national agency he would close if he was made president. It’s unlikely he has an idea of the origins of the word, which started to appear around the 1930s. Whilst the exact origins are unknown, it’s thought it may come from the phrase “up-a-daisy”, which has been used since the 18th Century.

And oops isn’t just confined to the English language:

An Italian found in error might say, “ops!” while a Frenchman who’s made a faux pas might say, “oups!” In Spanish, one can say opa, but just as common are huy and ¡ay! A Russian who’s made a goof might exclaim, “ой” (pronounced oj), while a German blunderer might blurt out, “hoppla!” (Source: Slate.com)

What do you say when you’ve made an error?

Something that has always struck me about Spanish speakers is that they talk so fast in their native language. I’ll normally catch the beginning of a sentence, but the rest of it is lost as they talk at what seems like a million miles per second.

I’m not alone in thinking this. An interesting study just published in the journal Language has attempted to answer the question of why some languages sound faster than others. Researchers from the Universite de Lyon recruited native speakers of seven common languages – English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish – and one uncommon one, Vietnamese. The speakers were recorded reading different texts, and the recordings used to analyse language.

What they found was that some languages have a higher “information density” than others. English has a high information density and is spoken at an average rate. Spanish has a low density so is spoken much faster (about a syllable per second). Japanese is even faster. The differences mean that in the same period of time, each language will convey around the same amount of information.

“A tradeoff is operating between a syllable-based average information density and the rate of transmission of syllables,” the researchers wrote. “A dense language will make use of fewer speech chunks than a sparser language for a given amount of semantic information.” In other words, your ears aren’t deceiving you: Spaniards really do sprint and Chinese really do stroll, but they will tell you the same story in the same span of time. (Source: Time.com)

The study is fascinating, but it doesn’t make spoken Spanish any easier for me to decipher!

I always find it slightly disconcerting (but cool!) when I hear someone speak in a different language, when I’m used to hearing them speak English.

It’s especially odd when that person is a celebrity and you’d never have guessed they were fluent in a second language. So this feature from People magazine is really fun – videos of celebrities speaking in their second languages. Did you know Natalie Portman is fluent in Hebrew and French? I love the video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as he to me he looks like a Frenchman!

What’s really interesting though is that most of the celebrities learned their second language through immersion programmes whilst at school. They seem to have retained the language learned through adulthood (Bradley Cooper for example). So perhaps a period of immersion is good for your language skills long-term?

A girl aged just 10 has become an interpreter for the European Parliament… although just for a day.

Alexia Sloane has been blind since the age of two, and is fluent in four languages – English, French, Spanish and Mandarin. She is currently also learning German. Her mother is half French and half Spanish whilst her father is English, and Alexia has been trilingual since birth. By the age of four, she was reading and writing in Braille.

After winning a young achiever of the year award, Alexia chose to visit the European Parliament as her prize. East of England MEP Robert Sturdy invited her as his guest and Alexia worked with the head of interpreting to get hands-on experience of life as an interpreter.

She continues to harbour ambitions of becoming a full-time interpreter, revealing: “The trip was more than a dream come true. Unfortunately, I have to wake up to reality now.

“I am now more determined than ever to become an interpreter in the future and to return to Brussels in the not too distant future – to see all the wonderful people I met.” (Source: Digital Spy)

What incredible ambition from someone so young!

An amusing article from NewsBiscuit (“the news before it happens”) has French President Nicolas Sarkozy admitting that the French language is “a one thousand year old hoax”.

Apparently French is complete gibberish and all French people really speak English, except in front of British people of course. From the article:

During a speech given in received pronunciation, the French President came clean, stating that it all started off as a joke during William the Conquerer’s invasion to make the aggressors seem a bit more exotic. “What was initially a prank snowballed and after a few years we realised we’d look silly revealing the truth, so we had to keep up the façade,” said the Premier. “In the company of any Brits we would try to make convincingly “French” sounds, a mixture of guttural grunts and rapid-fire syllables.

But as soon as we were on our own we’d all heave a huge sigh of relief and revert to English. We developed a heavy reliance on hand gestures to cover up when we ran out of likely noises, and the shrug was a particular boon if inspiration dried up. In the end we became quite the raconteurs, with an impressive array of supposed vocabulary. So what began as a game for the élites, became a hobby across all levels of society, and it shocked us that the Brits were so naïve as to not see through the charade.”

It’s certainly nice to poke some fun at languages for a change!

There’s an interesting opinion piece in The Observer today about the demise of the study of French in universities in the UK, and why this should not be allowed to happen.

A lot of the writer’s arguments could also be applied to other languages. French isn’t just spoken in France, it’s spoken in countries as far apart as Canada and Senegal – Spanish is an example of another language whose speakers are spread all over the world. So just as the French of Senegal won’t be the same of the French of Quebec, so the Spanish spoken in Spain isn’t the same as spoken in Peru – different cultures and different meanings.

I also like what Hussey has to say about the benefits of studying another language:

What studying French has really done for me is to provide me with a new mental landscape. French writing, from Voltaire to Sartre to Houellebecq, has a hard, confrontational edge to it, driven by big ideas, which does not exist in the same way in the English-speaking world. This is why French literature has appealed to English writers of a certain “outsider” stripe, from George Orwell to Will Self. This is a political phenomenon as much as anything else. For a working-class intellectual (which was how I rather cockily fancied myself as a student) to speak and understand French is to short-circuit many of the stupidities of class prejudice in the UK.

Studying another language not only enables you to connect with speakers of that language, it allows you to “access the world beyond the Anglosphere”. You may learn something new – you may start to see the world in a different way. So what are you waiting for?

As reported in the Telegraph today, foreign language GCSEs are making a return to the syllabus.

The current government is ‘overhauling’ the education system and this means that many more pupils will be taking a GCSE in languages including Spanish, French and German. Languages are counted as one of five ‘core’ subjects which also include English, maths, science and a humanities subject. Interestingly, the language requirement also includes ancient languages, allowing for students to study Latin as well as more contemporary options such as Mandarin.

I am, of course, in favour of people learning new languages. But although this policy seems like a good idea, as someone who has a GCSE in French and can barely speak a sentence in it, I have to wonder if it’s going to be effective. Post-16, are students going to continue with their language studies or, like me, forget what they have learned only to regret it later?

Continuing my occasional series of reviewing language books, here’s a slightly less serious one than before – Talk to the Snail by Stephen Clarke.

Clarke’s witty book doesn’t deal with subjects as weighty as dying languages; instead he tackles (as the book’s subtitle says) Ten Commandments for Understanding the French. Through themed chapters such as ‘Thou Shalt Be Wrong’ and ‘Thou Shalt Not Be Served’, readers are guided through how to get what they want from the French.

Helpfully each chapter ends with a list of phrases (including phonetic spellings) for visitors to France to use to get their way. Clarke clearly adores the French, for all their idiosyncratic ways, and gently mocks the national character throughout the book whilst providing handy tips on say, how to get served in a restaurant.

Definitely aimed at the British – a number of stereotypes are used) – the book is a good read, and perhaps a good accompaniment, to any trip across the Channel.

A cool new application from Google will soon be able to help you translate from written words.

Google Goggles users can point their phone at a word or phrase they wish to have translated, and then fine-tune their onscreen selection to a smaller area. Using the phone’s camera, the application will recognise the language and give you an option to translate it. This makes the application perfect for globetrotters – whether you need a menu or sign translated, you can do so without the hassle of searching through a guide book or dictionary.

The application can only translate languages based on the Latin alphabet such as English, French, Italian, German and Spanish at the moment, but once the text is captured it can be quickly translated to other languages. Google are apparently confident that other languages, including Chinese, Arabic and Hindi will soon be added to the app.

Whilst the app is free, you’ll need a mobile device running Android 1.6 or higher. I’ll definitely be giving this a try on my trip to Italy next month!

On February 21st I posted about International Mother Language Day, and mentioned that the UN was also launching a new initiative called UN Language Days.

Well, today is the first of those days, with the French language being celebrated.

“French, as a working language of the UN and one that is spoken on all continents, plays an important role in spreading the message of the United Nations in the world,” said Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for the Department of Public Information (DPI) and Coordinator for Multilingualism at the UN. (Source: UN)

Here are a few facts about French to help get you started with your celebration:

French is a Romance language descended from Latin

Around 75 million people speak French as their mother tongue

It is spoken officially in 33 countries

Apart from the UN, French is used as an official working language in many organisations – including Amnesty International, the International Olympic Committee, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the International Criminal Court

There are 16 vowels in French