Language Trainers Blog

I really couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse to write about Hallowe’en today, but I wanted to because I like the holiday.  Not necessarily the excuse to dress up and get ridiculously drunk, but I’m sure that appeals to some people.

Yesterday I tried to work a Hallowe’en-themed warm up into an English lesson (although there was absolutely no link to the rest of the material I was teaching).  My aim was to get the students to discuss the last time they’d dressed up as something, describe their costumes, etc.  Unfortunately, people in China don’t do fancy dress.  I had a sneaking suspicion that this was the case, but wanted to talk about October 31st anyway.  My mistake.  There aren’t any celebrations that involve dressing up as something/someone else (just yourself in your best new clothes), and I guess it’s related to the fact that people used to, and still do, spend a lot of their money on essentials like food and shelter rather than flimsy costumes and unnecessary amounts of confectionery.   And thinking about that made me feel like a bit of a jerk.  I’m glad I like All Hallow’s Eve more for its pagan roots than for its modern consumerist leanings.

Well, all those links were tentative at best.  I’ll finish off by wishing you easily-removable face paint and the willpower not to eat all your candy at once.  Happy Hallowe’en!

I was looking at some online resources aimed at helping people improve their English pronunciation when I came across the word ‘nill’, which was used as an example of how to pronounce the sound /ɪ/ (as in bit).  I didn’t know if this was a misspelling of the word ‘nil’ (meaning zero or nothing), or a word I’d never heard of, so of course I looked it up.  Using trusty old dictionary.com, I was informed that the word ‘nill‘ was an archaic verb, meaning to be unwilling, will not, or to refuse (something).

This led to the phrase ‘will he, nill he’ (or ‘will ye, nill ye’), which means ‘whether he is willing or not’.  This in turn morphed into the phrase ‘willy-nilly‘, which is still used today.  ‘Willy-nilly’ is generally used to describe something that is disorganised, unplanned, or generally ‘all over the place’, but it still has a secondary (but rare) meaning that is related to the original form, which is basically ‘whether you like it or not’.

So if you ever hear someone say ‘you’ll have to do it willy-nilly’, don’t assume that it means they want you to do a shoddy job.  Unfortunately, they probably mean that you’ll have to do the task whether you want to or not.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an experiment that found that people have a good try at predicting what a speaker is about to say, and this makes it easier for us to keep up with the rapid pace of conversation.

I also mentioned the mental stumbling blocks caused by hearing something that we haven’t predicted.  This is demonstrated by a particular kind of structure called a ‘garden path’ sentence.   The way that these sentences are written intentionally misleads the reader or listener, or ‘leads them up the garden path’.  Unusual phrasing and parsing (dividing up the sentence) make the audience expect or predict something different from what they end up hearing.

A good example of a garden path sentence is “The girl told the story cried.”  We expect the girl to be the one telling the story, but it turns out that she was the listener.  Writing the sentence using “the girl who was told” gets rid of any ambiguity, but takes all the fun out of it.

A few of the better ones that I’ve seen:

1. We painted the wall with cracks.
2. When Fred eats food gets thrown.
3. The prime number few.
4. Fat people eat accumulates.
5. The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.
6. The old man the boat.
7. The man whistling tunes pianos.
8.  The dog that I had really loved bones.

I don’t think they’re too hard to work out, so I’m not going to post the less-ambiguous versions.  Leave a comment if you need the answers, though!

I had one of those days today where I left the house and managed to forget my watch, a jumper, my lunch, my vitamins… At least I remembered my keys and my bus money, I suppose.  It got me thinking about memory, though, and something I heard recently about the storage of memories in the brain.

There are still a lot of mysteries associated with the biology of the brain, but it seems that when consolidating memories and information, the more often we think something, the stronger the neural pathway will become.  We can liken this to a track being worn further into the ground every time you walk over it.  Eventually we will go from a learning stage to a knowing stage, and the memory or idea will become physically impressed on our brains.

For this reason, it’s been advised that if you are trying to remember something (in one of those ‘it’s on the tip of my tongue!’ situations), it’s best to just not think about it.  If you keep thinking ‘I can’t remember [something]‘, then you will reinforce that idea, and it may actually get in the way of the recall that you’re after.

I was trying to list all the things that I’d forgotten this morning, and couldn’t remember ‘lunch’ (yet another thing I forgot today).  A couple of minutes after I stopped trying to remember, it came to me.  Now I won’t forget that I forgot my lunch today.  Hopefully this means that I won’t forget lunch again tomorrow!

The school students of Texas have been recommended a list of 150 books that includes only four that reflect Hispanic culture, despite nearly half of the students coming from Hispanic backgrounds.  The list is heavy on the ‘classics’ but has been roundly criticised by local teachers for not providing literature that many of the students will be able to relate to easily.

The chairman of the State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, said that he couldn’t comment on the list, as he hadn’t read it.  From the full article at a local paper:

However, McLeroy said he directed a group of experts to add examples of “good literature” to the list. He said students should spend their time in English class learning English and reading literature that will help prepare them for college.

“What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?” he said. “You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That’s not going to help you master … English. So you really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?”

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Despite the fact that the criticisms weren’t anything to do with ‘Chinese stories’, Mr McLeroy has provided some great insights.  Perhaps only stories about ordering food from ethnic restaurants are appropriate for the students of the Lone Star state.

I have seen far too many hilarious misuses of English in other countries, especially in Asia.  It’s trendy to have English adorning everything from t-shirts to stationery, handbags to car upholstery, and it doesn’t seem to have to make sense, either.  I especially love the way that any vaguely-official notices (museum placards, warning signs, polite reminders) seem to use the ‘find the longest word in the thesaurus’ method of translation.

One of my favourites was in a museum (of sorts) in Guangdong province in China.  It said that the town was aiming for ‘refulgence’, which was a word that made me giggle.  Initially I thought that it couldn’t possibly be an English word, but something in the back of my mind told me that something about it sounded plausible.  So, naturally, I looked it up (these are the things normal people do on holiday, right?).  Refulgent means ‘shining brightly’, or ‘gleaming’.  Huh.  I liked it.

One of the more famous websites dedicated to poking fun at English usage in Asia is Engrish.com.  There you can find a nearly endless supply of amusing signs and notices, including one from Japan that advises motorists who find their way blocked by someone to ‘tootle him melodiously’, and if that doesn’t work, then ‘tootle him with vigour’.

On the flip side, it has become very fashionable in recent years for westerners to use Asian writing in an ornamental fashion.  Chinese and Japanese characters are especially popular.  I’ve seen cushion covers, candles, clothing, and of course the trendy character tattoo.  Being a firm believer in knowing what I’m broadcasting to the world, I have thus far avoided buying any sort of clothing or accessory that has writing on it that I don’t understand.  What I don’t understand is that many of the people who laugh at Engrish will then have what they think means ‘happiness’ in Chinese permanently inked into their skin.  Tian at Hanzi Smatter provides plenty of examples of simple failure to do research.

With English becoming so popular around the world, it is somewhat of a necessity for many people to write in this unfamiliar language.  And it’s difficult for many people to have their work checked by a native speaker.  Necessity and lack of resources sometimes add up to hilarious mistranslations.  What excuses do foolish people* in the west have, though?

*I understand that there are a number of westerners who have genuine connections with Asian cultures, through family, study, travel, self-interest, etc., but they do seem to be a minority.  They are also more likely to have done their homework.

Have you ever been in a familiar situation where someone says something completely unexpected?  It can throw off the rhythm of the conversation, and often listeners will have to take a few moments to catch up (often with requests for the speakers to repeat themselves).  New language learners will often feel like this, as they are still learning all the standard responses in everyday situations.  It can be bewildering when a native speaker starts with a completely unfamiliar or unexpected set of phrases, and it would be really handy in these cases to be able to predict the future a little bit, so you could process the information and begin to prepare your own responses.

A recent study has shown that native speakers do actually do lightning-speed mini predictions when communicating with others. It supported existing theories that had supposed that the only way that people can keep up with speeds of up to five words a second in regular conversations is by narrowing down their range of expected responses to related words and words that begin with the same sound (e.g. kitten and kitchen).

For example, if someone says “I’m going to put dinner in the kit-”, our brains automatically predict ‘kitchen’ (based on the initial syllable and the context), and start forming a response.  If the speaker finishes with ‘kitten’, no doubt we will have a mental stumble and take a moment to absorb the unexpected information.

This helps to explain why non-native speakers of a language have an even harder time keeping up with native speakers talking rapidly to each other.  As we become more familiar with the language, though, we can begin to expect and predict conversations just like the locals do.

Full article on Eurekalert.

Most reasonable-sized homes have a room dedicated to leisure and entertainment (of residents and guests).  Usually it contains some comfortable furniture and some kind of entertainment unit (television, stereo system, games console).  There are a few different names for this room, and I have a theory that what people call it has been influenced by the type of society that they come from.  At the very casual end, there is the ‘lounge’ or ‘lounge room’, which is quite a common term in Australia and New Zealand.  In the middle is the popular ‘living room’, which is prevalent in North America, and nearer the more formal end of the scale is the English ‘sitting room’.

Funnily enough, these three names for the same room seem to fit with common stereotypes about people from these different parts of the world.  If anyone were to pick the most casual of the three regions, it would probably be ‘Down Under’.  I know that to me, it sounds like it’d be more fun to hang out in a lounge than a sitting room, even if the two were completely identical.

Here are some other terms for similar rooms, which might give a hint as to what they are used for, and what the atmosphere might be like.  Some definitely sound more casual or cosy than others.

drawing room

parlour

family room

recreation room

den

I’m sure we’ve all met that one guy (or girl) who rants and raves about how it should be ’10 items or fewer’ on the supermarket checkout signs, not ’10 items or less’.  Technically, they’re right, but does that mean that they need to get on their soap boxes about it?

Admittedly, I’m fairly picky about ‘correct’ usage in most cases, but this is one of the few that I’m not so worried about.

According to the official rules (and the ranters), “fewer” should be used when talking about countable nouns (pencils, light bulbs, pandas), and “less” should be used with uncountable nouns (rice, water, space).  We have fewer bottles of milk, but less milk.  The opposite of both, though, is “more”.  Why the difference?

The general trend is for “less” to be used for both countable and uncountable nouns.  It is virtually unheard of (I’m not saying nobody’s ever done it, but I doubt they have) for people to use “fewer” when they should be using “less”.  Try saying “I have fewer food than I did yesterday”, and see how many people think you’re weird.

For some reason, I think “one fewer” often sounds unnatural (e.g. “one fewer car on the road”).

So why not just accept this gradual linguistic change?  There’s only one word for “more”, so why not the same for “less”?  Let’s worry more about the things we have less of (clean air, money, quality Hollywood films) rather than which words we’re going to use to talk about them.

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