Be Fluent in Less Than a Day!

Posted on October 6th, 2013by Melanie
In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

LingalaFrom a trip to the Congo to study chimpanzees for the National Geographic to a conversation with a pygmy, Joshua Foer is now able to converse in Lingala, the lingua franca of the Congo basin, which he learned in just 22 hours. So how did that happen?

During his trip, Joshua stayed with a local tribe, the Mbendjele pygmies, and got to know them with the help of a translator. On his return home, he decided to take a new direction with his career and vowed to visit the tribe again but this time to stay with them and immerse himself completely in their lifestyle and culture. This meant learning the language universally spoken across northern Congo – Lingala – albeit not the first language of the pygmies.

With only a 1963 edition of the US Foreign Service Institute handbook and a scanned copy of the Lingala-English dictionary which consisted on 1,109 words, Joshua used a learning technique to get to grips with the language. Using a combination of mnemonics and an app resembling the fun of online gaming, Joshua was able to learn the 1,000 most common words of Lingala. Over the course of 10 weeks, the total time spent on learning added up to just 22 hours and 15 minutes, with 20 minutes being the longest period he’d spent studying the language at any one time and 4 minutes being the average time.

The trip back to the village showed his linguistic studies to be a success as he was able to converse with the tribe without the aid of a translator. So it just goes to show that you really can learn a language in under 24 hours!

What techniques have you used to help you learn a language? Would you, like Joshua, be up for the challenge of learning a foreign language in such a short space of time?

Australia’s linguistic diversity

Posted on June 24th, 2012by Michelle
In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Data from last year’s census has been revealed, showing Australia’s linguistic diversity.

Just over 20% of households across Australia report speaking more than one language at home, with the most commonly reported languages being Mandarin, Italian, Arabic, Cantonese and Greek. In major cities Melbourne and Sydney, this rises to over 30%, with some areas of Sydney at 85%.

Indigenous languages are also represented in the data, with Warlpiri spoken in 2500 dwellings, Djambarrpuyngu in 3000, and Pitjantjarjara in 4000. English-based creoles spoken in a number of communities are also reported, with Kriol spoken in 6800 dwellings.

All this means that around 1 in 5 people in Australia speak another language. I wonder what the comparable data is for the UK?

(Source: Fully (sic) )

Less-spoken languages

Posted on June 8th, 2012by Michelle
In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Think you know your languages?

Try this BBC quiz and see how you get on! I scored a dismal 2 out of 7, despite all the time I spend reading and writing about languages. I obviously need to pay more attention!

Language at risk because last two speakers aren’t talking

Posted on April 24th, 2011by Michelle
In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

The old Mexican language of Ayapaneco is in danger of dying out as its last two speakers aren’t talking to each other.

Despite living close to each other in the village of Ayapa, southern Mexico, Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, don’t speak. It is not known whether they have a long-running feud or simply don’t like each other.

There is hope for the language however – a project is being run to produce a dictionary of Ayapaneco, which both speakers are assisting with. Interestingly, both Segovia and Velazquez call their language Nuumte Oote, which means True Voice. They tend to disagree on details of the language, which means that both versions will be included in the dictionary.

Whilst it’s a shame that Segovia and Velazquez don’t speak, hopefully they will be able to assist the project to complete the Ayapaenco dictionary and get others speaking the language before it’s lost forever.

(Source: The Guardian)

Death of the Bo language

Posted on February 5th, 2010by Michelle
In Events | Leave a Comment »

Boa Sr - Bo languageBig 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. 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.

More language maps

Posted on January 31st, 2010by Michelle
In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

I’ve been in Deep South of America for the past month, and it’s definitely been interesting to be surrounded by a range of southern accents. Some are so thick I can only nod and smile in response to comments!

It’s also been interesting to learn more about the many different languages people may not know are spoken in the US. Whilst Spanish is prevalent (even here in South Carolina, many miles from the Mexican border), a lot of minority languages are also spoken, including the many Native American tongues.

Whilst I’ll be looking at these further in future posts, for the moment I’d like to share this – a linguistic map of the states, showing indigenous languages, dialects and regional accents. You can also view maps of Canada, Asia, Europe and Africa. Incredible.

Remapping the world

Posted on January 15th, 2010by Michelle
In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Papua New GuineaIn my last post I wrote about The Atlas of True Names, which renamed places according to their etymology.

Another map has been brought to my attention – one that reorganises the world according to the number of languages it has produced.
Limits of Language: Almost Everything You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Language and Languages (whew!) by Mikael Parkvall is “part Guinness Book of World Records, part Book of Lists, and part illustrated encyclopedia”. And if that doesn’t make you want to take a look at it, this will: Papua New Guinea is the biggest place on the map.

Yep, tiny little Papua New Guinea (it’s off the northeast coast of Australia, if you’re trying to find it on a map), has produced more languages than any other country. Its total indigenous language count is 841, of which 830 are classified as ‘living’ and 11 have no known speakers.

Take a look at this PDF file for a sneak preview.

Native languages of Canada

Posted on October 11th, 2009by Michelle
In Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Assembly of First NationsAfter graduating from university, I had the opportunity to live in Canada for a year.

My knowledge of the country was pretty limited, to the extent that I didn’t know it is officially bilingual (French and English). I found an article discussing efforts to preserve indigenous Canadian languages interesting. The two official languages are supplemented by a range of indigenous languages, which do not get as much attention as French. (Note: “First Nations” refers only to the Indian aboriginal people of Canada. For more information, see here.)

By official count, there are more than 50 First Nations languages across Canada.

Some are thriving.

The Cree, for example, have as many as 80,000 everyday speakers. Dozens others, though, are in danger of disappearing. In 1998, the Assembly of First Nations declared a state of language emergency.

First Nations people aren’t the only ones concerned about the vanishing words. Linguists frantic to preserve the historical tongues are furiously collecting and recording data before all those speak them pass away.

“There’s a sense of desperation, of our data disappearing before our eyes, ” laments aboriginal language expert Darin Flynn from the University of Calgary.

Southern Alberta provides an example of the dangers facing First Nation languages across the country.

The Treaty 7 languages – Tsuu T’ina, Stoney Nakoda and Blackfoot – are each at different stages of decline. (Source: Canada.com)

Let’s hope that all the effort put in to bilingualism in Canada will also recognise these indigenous languages. Read the full article here.

European Day of Languages 2009

Posted on September 26th, 2009by Michelle
In Events | 1 Comment »

European Day of LanguagesFirst celebrated in 2001, the European Day of Languages has grown to encompass a whole week of events!

The first EDL was organised jointly by the Council of Europe and the European Union, who chose 26th September as the designated day. The aims of the day are:

To alert the general public to the importance of language learning
To promote linguistic and cultural diversity and increase intercultural understanding
To encourage lifelong learning

Watch Pedro Chavez from the European Commission talking about the day.

I recently posted about the proposed idea to adopt Latin as the official language of the European Union, but as I concluded then, the EU is committed to multilingualism, so it’s unlikely to happen. Europe is incredibly diverse, with around 225 indigenous languages as well as non-European languages such as Arabic, Hindi and Chinese.

So, get involved and become one of the many Europeans who are multilingual! Try here to find out what activities are happening near you – there are events all over Europe. And if you can’t make it to any of them, try some of these online activities.