Language Trainers Blog

Thousands of Croatians attended a demonstration in Zagreb on Sunday to protest against the return of the Cyrillic alphabet on signage in the town of Vukovar.

Vukovar, a town in eastern Croatia, was destroyed during a siege in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, and was ethnically cleansed of  non-Serbs before being taken by Serb forces. The city was reintegrated into Croatia in 1998. The Croat and Serb communities in Vukovar remain divided.

According to the 2011 census, the Serbian population has reached over a third (34.8%) of the city’s population, which therefore protects the community’s right to have the Cyrillic alphabet displayed on public signs. The Croatian language uses the Latin alphabet. Croatian Minister for Public Administration, Arsen Bauk, said such signs were now necessary under a constitutional law that mandates bilingual signs in towns where a minority accounts for more than 30% of the population.

Croatia is due to join the European Union on July 1st, and protesters are testing the country’s resolve on matters of minority rights.

Source: BBC News

A new €5 banknote was unveiled by the European Central Bank today.

The main feature of the new note, other than enhanced security features, is that the word “Euro” is now written using the Cyrillic script, as well as the Greek and Latin alphabets. There are no countries for which the Euro is the currency which use Cyrillic as the primary writing system.

Many languages are written in Cyrillic but only 12 countries use the alphabet. Bulgaria is the only member of the EU which uses Cyrillic, whilst Macedonia and Serbia are candidates for EU membership. The inclusion of Cyrillic could hold future clues to the distribution of the currency.

The new note will be in circulation from 2nd May.

The European Day of Languages is set to be celebrated on September 26th. The Strasbourg based Council of Europe initiative has been in place since 2001, and aims to encourage language learning across Europe.

In honour of the day, I’ve compiled some European language facts!

• Russian is the most widely spoken language in Europe with approximately 150 million native speakers
• English is the most popular second language, but only the fourth most widely spoken!
• There are roughly 225 indigenous languages in Europe – how many can you guess without looking at a map?
• 81% of adults regret not yet having learned another language
• Most European languages belong to the Indo-European language family – these can be further categorised into three groups: Slavic, Romance or Germanic.
• At least 6 alphabets are in use in Europe. Most languages use the Latin alphabet, although there are some Slavic languages which use the Cyrillic alphabet. Greek, Yiddish, Armenian and Georgian have their own alphabets.
• One of the smallest national European languages is Maltese
• There are 7 languages native to the UK. English, Cornish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Lowland Scots and of course, British Sign Language.
• Manx, the language of the Isle of Man, became extinct as a first language in 1974. Now there are over 100 island dwellers fluent in the language.
• Most European countries have at least one minority or regional language.

How many of us haven’t tried a crafty trick whilst playing Scrabble? One player took it to the extreme this week by cheating at the US National Championships. The five day event, held in Orlando, Florida, saw 350 players competing for a $10,000 (£6400) prize. The player was a minor, and thus has not been named. His methods, however, have. In the 24th of 28 rounds, a player who was due to be the next opponent of the boy saw two blank tiles on his side of the table. After the game, the boy was seen dropping the two blank tiles on the floor, in an apparent attempt to use them in the next round. He was questioned, admitted to taking the tiles, and disqualified from the tournament. His previous opponents were then awarded wins.

Cheating in championship Scrabble is not common. According to the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA), there have been five suspensions for cheating since 2008.

This week, children across England will be participating in mandatory reading checks. The Year One children, (ages five and six) have been learning to read using the phonics system. The tests are to measure how well the pupils are learning to read using the sounds of each letter and putting them together to form words.

The test will take between 5-10 minutes, and will ask pupils to read 20 real words and 20 made up words, such as ‘terg’ and ‘spron’.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Union of Teachers issued a joint statement, saying:

“The use of made-up words will confuse children for whom English is a second language and those with special educational needs as well as frustrating those who can read already. There are already enormous pressures on teachers to teach to the test, so how long will it be before children are being taught to read made-up words?”

The Government’s phonics-only approach to teaching reading is controversial. Most teachers advocate a balanced mix of methods, including flash cards and the ‘look and say’ method, because not every child learns the same way or at the same speed.

And now for something a little more silly…

Yesterday viewers of long running Channel 4 show Countdown were surprised to see the word “minge” pop up when letters were pulled up randomly for the board. For those who haven’t seen it, Countdown is a number and word puzzle game show, and is great as you play along and test your English vocabulary! In this particular round, contestants attempt to make the longest word out of randomly chosen vowels and consonants, which are selected by one of the contestants.

The winner of this round made the slang word “mingers,” if you’re interested!

This isn’t the first time questionable words have featured on Countdown. If you have time this Bank Holiday weekend, you can view some clips on YouTube, and read more here!

Photo credit: © Channel 4

It’s that time of year again, where we’re all trying to think of fabulous Christmas gifts for family and friends. Don’t worry, I won’t be making these a regular thing all the way through December! I’ve just discovered these magnets which would make a great gift for any language student, and thought I’d share!

These little Magnetic Poetry Kits now come in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Norwegian and Swedish, and are a fun way to practice your writing skills in another language. There’s also a Hebrew alphabet kit, a sign language kit, and a Chinese for Kids kit, but these are a little harder to find.

These are available from Amazon, Eurocosm, and directly from Magnetic Poetry (this is a US site)

It seems that native speakers of certain languages are able to roll their ‘r’s more easily than others. For me, as a native English speaker currently learning Spanish, it’s very difficult to pronounce rolled ‘r’s, which is also known as the alveolar trill. For example, trying to convey the name of a Cuban bar (Barrio) was particularly difficult when trying to arrange to meet up with my Spanish friend Eva recently. Pronouncing ‘r’s in an English accent, in the English form, is a huge disadvantage to communication in Spanish.

An Italian friend tells me that some children are taught the word “rabarbaro” (rhubarb) at school to help them pronounce their ‘r’s correctly. This word is not commonly used in the Italian language otherwise. In fact, when I told my Italian flatmate this word, he didn’t know what it meant. It could have been my pronunciation of course, but I wrote it down for him as well!

Having said all of this, one of my best friends, Mairi, is Scottish, and has no problem with rolling her ‘r’s, especially as you need to roll the r in her name to pronounce it correctly. So, is it down to accent?

This led me to try and find a way to learn how to do this properly. It is all in the tongue vibration, apparently. A lot of online help assumes you have an American accent, but I know of a few tips for us Brits.

The short term solution, for emergency use whilst you practice getting your tongue around your ‘r’s, is to pronounce the r as a hard D. You have to say it really fast to get away with it, but it does work! “Barrio” becomes “baDio,” and at least Eva will now know where I want to meet up for cocktails in the near future.

It’s better to try than to risk becoming a tentative speaker, as this is something that can really damage your confidence with speaking new languages.

Of course, in the long term, the only solution is practice, practice, practice. This video tutorial really helped me work out how to position my tongue properly, which is the basic principal to getting your alveolar trill right. If you’re not a visual learner, the WikiHow article is useful too. There are tongue twisters you can use to practice, but assuming that if you’re not confident with your rolled ‘r’s just yet, your level of Spanish isn’t advanced enough for this, so I like to stick to a short list of familiar words to practice with to begin. “Ferrocarril” (railway) is the perfect word to start off.

What works best for you? Does anyone have any other tips?

I had no idea that the UK had a National Scrabble Championship, but we do, and this year was the 40^th anniversary! Wayne Kelly from Warrington beat Gary Oliver from Southampton to win his very first official Scrabble title, having entered in previous years and not reaching the final.

The contestants entered months of heats, with over 300 players battling for a place in the final. The final itself consisted of five matches, the winner being the player who won the most matches out of five. Mr Kelly used the words “caromel,” (meaning to turn into caramel) worth 69 points, and “travails,” worth 74 points, to seal his victory.

Potential contestants need to register with the ABSP (Association for British Scrabble Players) to be eligible for next year’s competition – the prize money is £2000!

Punctuation is important. It can change the meaning of simple phrases, and is especially important these days, when so many more people are communicating via text, whether it be SMS, email, online forums, or blogs.  A famous example is the difference between “a woman without her man is nothing” and “a woman: without her, man is nothing“.

I do have an affection for the combination question and exclamation mark, the interrobang (‽), and I’ve already talked about outdated (but useful) characters like the thorn (Þ).  People are frequently using combinations of punctuation to form emoticons to express the intention of their messages, so maybe there is a need for new symbols to clarify meaning.

So, what would you pay for a revolutionary piece of punctuation?  What is the use of a single punctuation mark worth?  According to the people at SarcMark, it’s worth about 2 US dollars.  They have developed a new mark to indicate sarcasm (see above), and want to charge people to use it.  I can understand that this might actually be useful in this day and age, but the fact that you would then have to explain it to everybody you sent it to, and that they wouldn’t be able to use it until they’d purchased it, makes it seem a little too much effort for not much reward.

I think I may be too skeptical for the SarcMark.  How about you?

Thanks to Dave at Languagetrainers.com for the link.