Language Trainers Blog

I’ve talked about how people’s brains are continually trying to predict what’s going to come next, which is why we get misled by garden path sentences and sudden changes of direction.

A recent study of ERPs (Event-Related Potentials) by psychologist Jos J.A. Van Berkum from the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands has shown that people’s brains show a specific spike (called the N400) when they hear a word that was unexpected or seems out of place.  Interestingly, the research also showed that it’s not just the words being spoken or read that matter, but other information as well.  As listeners, we also take into account clues from our perception of the speaker:

In addition to the words themselves, the person speaking them is a crucial component in understanding what is being said. Van Berkum also saw an N400 effect occurring very rapidly when the content of a statement being spoken did not match with the voice of the speaker e.g. “I have a large tattoo on my back” in an upper-class accent or “I like olives” in a young child’s voice. These findings suggest that the brain very quickly classifies someone based on what their voice sounds like and also makes use of social stereotypes to interpret the meaning of what is being said. Van Berkum speculates that “the linguistic brain seems much more ‘messy’ and opportunistic than originally believed, taking any partial cue that seems to bear on interpretation into account as soon as it can.”

The material used in the study was all in written or audio form, so there were no conclusions drawn about visual information about speakers.  I don’t think it would be a huge jump to assume that we also take visual clues about speakers into account, though.  It’s likely that we gather a lot of information about a speaker before they even open their mouth to talk. If they say something that doesn’t fit in with what we have assumed, it takes a moment to catch up again, much in the same way as it’s surprising to hear a tall, burly man speak with a high-pitched voice.

Full article from ScienceMode.

Learning business English can sometimes be much more of a challenge than conversational English or English for particular industries.  Students of English may be surprised that native speakers are also often frustrated by the sheer number (and often pointlessness) of new management-speak terms that are thrown around the corporate workplace.

In the office, everything from modified sports terms (‘this project will be a home run for us’), to business clichés (‘let’s think outside the box on this one’), to completely irrelevant analogies (‘this company is a really cool train set‘) abound. Middle and upper management seem to constantly be throwing together mixed metaphors (‘You can’t have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music‘) and making up words and phrases (incentivise, strategic staircase).  Is it because they don’t really know what they’re doing, don’t have a plan, or do they think that buzzwords will justify their overblown salaries?

Many of the above phrases are from a compilation of BBC readers’ worst examples of office-speak.  Read the full list to find out why one reader’s boss suggested idea showers instead of brainstorms.

Earlier this month, a hard-fought campaign by a Los Angeles high school student was recognised by the county school board, and the first school week in March was declared ‘No Cussing Week‘.

McKay Hatch, 14, launched the ‘No Cussing Club’ two years ago, and it now has its own website, which has the tagline Ya Wanna Hang with Us? Don’t Cuss! (capitalisation included), over 20,000 members worldwide, and eye-catchingly-orange club t-shirts. You can even buy the story on DVD, or read the book by Hatch, the self-branded ‘most cyberbullied kid in the world’.

Cussing, an American variation of the word cursing, includes all kinds of foul or offensive language, and is widespread in the USA, as it is in many places.  Often one of the first things someone learns in a new language is how to say something offensive!  [See my note about Cao Ni Ma, the grass-mud horse, if you want to approximate some Chinese swearing.]  The No Cussing Club aims to make people feel better about themselves and be more positive by taking the negative influence of swearing out of their lives.  It’s also teaching kids to stand up to peer pressure, which can’t be a bad thing.

Personally, although I think what these kids (and adults) are trying to do is admirable in many ways, I don’t agree with cutting out swearing altogether.  I think it has its place in language and communication, just that that place isn’t everywhere and anytime.  I don’t think that ‘cussing’ belongs in the classroom, especially not in primary or middle schools, or in many professional settings.  If this campaign helps people realise that maybe swearing isn’t for everyone and everywhere, though, it’s doing its bit to educate people about appropriateness of speech.  Here’s hoping!

You may know that there’s one unified writing system in China, but not everyone knows that it was reformed during Mao’s era.  This resulted in mainland China using a simplified version of many characters, while Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other overseas Chinese communities continue to use the traditional, more complicated forms.

There’s been a lot of discussion by experts about the benefits of reverting back to the original system.  James Fallows sums up the major issues pretty well:

The argument for simplified writing is analogous to various crusades to “rationalize” English spelling — so u can rite in a kwik and e-z way The simplified versions are obviously simpler to write, with fewer strokes. But there are many objections, enumerated at astonishing length here, which boil down to:

1 The new characters violate tradition. Written English had been in very great flux until the standardization of printing about two centuries ago. We can barely read Chaucer, and students require glosses for Shakespeare. Written, traditional Chinese characters had been the great element of continuity for a much longer time — at least for the people who could read them. Now they’ve been upturned — although partisans of simplified characters claim that they’re based on a time-honored hand-written form.

2 The new characters are graceless and ugly. The characters below mean the same thing, guangchang, or “Square,” as in People’s Square, Tomorrow Square, or Tiananmen Square — a name I dare use because it’s on the street maps in Beijng. Those on left are traditional. On the right, streamlined and simplified. It’s like the difference between “through” and “thru.”

3 The new characters are easier to write but harder to understand. A nonobvious point but an important one. Consider the English word pronounced “for.” When spoken, it could be ambiguous. When written, it’s immediately obvious whether we mean for, four, or fore. Same with “right” — potentially confusing when heard, immediately obvious when read as right, write, wright, or rite. And — strangely — characters have a counterpart to this problem, made worse by simplification. This is not even getting into the related but different topic of words pronounced the same and distinguishable mainly by their characters– as if the for/four/fore problem came up all the time.

The “extra information” in the traditional characters is what made them more cumbersome to write, but also easier to tell apart. Again, think right/write/rite/wright: suppose they were all spelled rite

He also brings up the very valid fact that with technology today, it’s more likely that Chinese people will be typing their characters (into mobile phones, computers, etc) than writing them by hand, and the number of ‘strokes’ in electronic Chinese writing remains generally the same.  Perhaps with the advances in technology and changes in people’s writing habits, it will be possible in the future to go back to the traditional, more beautiful, less ambiguous writing system of the past.

Full article, with examples and everything: Technology as friend of tradition Chinese language dept. – James Fallows.

I’ve mentioned before that musical training seems to help with language skills, and a recent American study has made progress into the specifics of the notion that ‘music makes you smarter’.

Children exposed to a multi-year programme of music tuition involving training in increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal, and practical skills display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers, according to a study published today in the journal Psychology of Music, published by SAGE.

According to authors Joseph M Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, USA, data from this study will help to clarify the role of music study on cognition and shed light on the question of the potential of music to enhance school performance in language and literacy.

Both the control group and the musically-trained group showed similar results after the second group had already undergone two years of musical training.  There are several theories as to what this means, but the authors of the study are quite confident that multiple years of musical training have a strong positive effect on vocabulary and and reading skills.

Full article from Eurekalert.

A sneaky little dig at the Chinese government’s pervasive censorship regime is gaining ground in China.  Seemingly-innocent videos about the mythical ‘grass-mud horse’ are attracting attention from people from all walks of Chinese life, and sending a message to the government that people care about freedom of speech and information.

A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more. Stores are selling grass-mud horse dolls. Chinese intellectuals are writing treatises on the grass-mud horse’s social importance. The story of the grass-mud horse’s struggle against the evil river crab has spread far and wide across the Chinese online community.

Not bad for a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.

The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that.

Read the full article at NYTimes.com to see other linguistic tricks people may use to get around the censors: A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors.

As a lot of our technology seems to be tending towards voice recognition, new software is being developed that aims to finish your sentences for you, much in the same way that many text-based programs currently do.  Speech recognition software still has its limitations, but you may be giving half-uttered commands to your mobile phone or computer any day now.

It’s been dreamed up as a speech-recognition equivalent to the predictive text on cellphones. Mutter a half-considered thought into the microphone and the software will plunder a database to complete half-formed words or sentences – in Japanese, at least.

The system looks for fragments of words and other signs of hesitation such as filler sounds that Japanese speakers use when searching for their next phrase, just as English speakers “um” and “er”.

It can work backwards too. If you’re using the voice-controlled jukebox made to demo the idea and ask for a song by “someone, er, Jackson” it will offer up Michael, Janet, and even Joe.

You can imagine how that could be useful for requesting songs from a car’s stereo while driving, or requesting a new location from a GPS device.

via the Innovation column from New Scientist.

Through the use of new supercomputers, language scientists have been able to analyse language dating back to 30,000 years ago, and have been able to predict which words will have the longest lives, and which may disappear soon.

Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘who’ and the numbers ’1′, ’2′ and ’3′ are amongst the oldest words, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages. What’s more, words like ‘squeeze’, ‘guts’, ‘stick’, ‘throw’ and ‘dirty’ look like they are heading for history’s dustbin – along with a host of others.

The scientists have been able to analyse the family of Indo-European languages – of which English is a modern-day example – reconstruct the rate at which words evolve and predict future changes to our vocabulary. The oldest words we use today have been in existence for at least 10,000 years.

Full article from: University of Reading

New Secretary of State Hillary Rodham-Clinton shows us exactly why you should always get reliable translations, or at the very least, a second opinion.  In any case, we can all feel a little bit better about our little everyday language gaffes.  At least they don’t generally affect international relations.

Russian media have been poking fun at the US secretary of state over a translation error on a gift she presented to her Russian counterpart.

Hillary Clinton gave Sergei Lavrov a mock “reset” button, symbolising US hopes to mend frayed ties with Moscow.

But he said the word the Americans chose, “peregruzka”, meant “overloaded” or “overcharged”, rather than “reset”.

via BBC NEWS | Europe | Button gaffe embarrasses Clinton.

FreeRice is an excellent website that combines education and charity.  The concept is simple: answer a question correctly and the UN World Food Program will donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry family somewhere in the world.

FreeRice started out as an English vocabulary game.  They would show you a word and then give four possible definitions or synonyms.  Since then, they have added English grammar, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and several other subject areas like mathematics, chemistry, and geography.

The difficulty level automatically adjusts depending on whether you get the question right or wrong, so the more questions you get right, the harder it becomes.  A great feature is that it will tell you the correct answers to the questions you miss, and repeats them later on in the game – an excellent revision method.

The  highest English vocabulary level they use is 60.  I’ve gotten to a maximum of 50 the last few times I’ve played.  The most memorable word I’ve learned today is jalousie, which is a type of window blind.  I actually guessed the answer correctly, even though it looks like a terrible attempt at spelling ‘jealousy’.

There’s no minimum or maximum number of questions, so there’s no excuse for having no time to feed people in need.  See if you can get to the highest level in your area of expertise, or even better, in the language you’re studying.

They say that nothing is free, but the cost of this is hardly worth mentioning, and the benefits far outweigh the effort of pointing and clicking!