Language Trainers Blog

Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglourious Basterds taught us all the important lesson that the wrong hand signal could well get you killed (if you were pretending to be a Nazi in the wrong place and time).  In the film, someone gets gunned down because he uses the wrong hand signal for the number three.

A lot of people use the middle three fingers to denote the number three, though some use other combinations.  In the town in Germany mentioned in Inglourious Basterds, people use the thumb and first two fingers.  In China, many people use the last three fingers (similar to the A-OK hand signal).  I found myself using the latter yesterday when buying three bananas.  It used to feel wholly unnatural to me, but it suddenly doesn’t feel so weird any more.  Strange.

Which signal do you use for three?

*Out of interest, you can also use ‘finger’ as a measure of alcohol.  If you hold your finger horizontally against the bottom of the glass and fill it to the depth of the top of your finger, that’s ‘one finger’.  So, three fingers would be a pretty strong drink!

I was looking over some things at work today, and realised that the word 画 (huà) had been used as the translation for both draw and paint.  I brought it up with the author of the document, and she said that there was no difference in Chinese, and asked if there was a difference in English.  I told her it was quite a big difference (draw being associated with pens, pencils, crayons, etc., and paint being done with, well, paint).  She discussed this with another colleague for a while, and I looked up 画 in the dictionary.

It happens quite often in Chinese that one character means several different things, with the meaning usually worked out from the context or the other characters around it.  In this case, the meaning, to Chinese people, is the same.  It makes a lot of sense when you think about it, as traditional Chinese calligraphy was done with a brush, not a pen.

In the end, as I did want to distinguish the difference between the two English words, we compromised with 画 (油画), where the first character (yóu) is the noun paint, and 画 means…paint. And draw.

I’m currently in a situation where I speak a dialect to a moderate level, but the main language to a lower level (Cantonese and Mandarin, respectively).  I understand more Mandarin than I would otherwise, because some words and structures are very similar.  But listening comprehension doesn’t always mean oral proficiency, and it can be difficult to reproduce the unfamiliar words, especially in tonal languages.  I know that the pronunciation is different, but I don’t often know how it’s different.  I haven’t come across too many false friends yet (where a foreign word is similar to a word in your native language, but it means a totally different thing), but I’m sure they will arise.

One way to bridge the gap is to try the word in your own language, and sometimes the native speaker will understand you.  My Cantonese-speaking friend has had mixed success with this method in Mandarin-speaking cities, but it seems to work for quite a few food items, which is the important thing!

Do you speak two languages that have similarities (e.g. Spanish and Italian)?  I’d love to hear any suggestions you have for successful communication in both.

In my last post, I talked about the usefulness of dictionaries, and how they will inevitably struggle to keep up with changing languages.  No language resource will ever be completely current, as, by their nature, they are describing what has already happened, words that have already been used.

I read a great post on Confessions of a Language Addict, that discussed this very issue, along with giving some interesting advice about dealing with differences between spoken and documented language, whether the language is natural or created.

When you’re learning a language, real or made-up, one of the struggles you’re going to face is that no resource is going to be completely accurate, at least not for the time you’re learning it. Study French and you’ll think that “I don’t know” is je ne sais pas, pronounced “zhuh nuh say pah.” But you’re more likely to hear “shay pas.” Orthography hasn’t caught up to speech - and probably won’t. That’s because of the strange byplay between orthography and speech: People will still say “zhuh nuh say pah” for emphasis because when you’re carefully sounding something out, you sound it out as it is written, not as it is transcribed. Likewise in English, “I’m gonna go ta New York tamara” turns into “I am going to go to New York to-morrow” if you’re asked to repeat yourself. So writing isn’t always great for everyday speech, but it’s marvelous if you want to talk to someone as if he is half deaf.

So what can we do?  Well, if you are determined to use a formal version of your target language, I think you’ll be fine to use written resources as they are.  But what if you want to learn to talk to real people?  To be understood by them and speak, as much as possible, as native speakers do?

Don’t take written material as gospel.  Embrace the fact that there will be differences between what you read and what you hear and experience.  Trust that maybe your ears aren’t deceiving you!

Learning from a native speaker is always a great direction to take.  He or she will be able to answer any questions you have about the differences between textbooks and real speech.  In order to really see language at work, though, you have to be able to hear real people speak to each other.  Beginners will often need slower versions of conversations, or breakdowns of examples.  Podcasts are a great way to go, especially if they have some written material to go along with them.  If you can’t get out into an environment where people speak your native language, try audio books or internet radio.  Repeat what you hear.

Dialects and regional usage mean that nobody will ever speak the imaginary ‘real’ language.  This should encourage you!  Listen, repeat what you hear, speak the language, and revel in the fact that people begin to understand you on their terms.

This excerpt comes from an article that claims that bicultural people may interpret situations differently, depending on what language is being used at the time.  The methods may need to be polished, but I think it’s an interesting idea.

The article mentions bicultural people specifically, rather than people who are simply bilingual, but I wonder how much difference this makes.  Do people feel more expressive or creative when speaking Italian, compared to German?  I’d love to read people’s comments about this.

Bicultural people may unconsciously change their personality when they switch languages, according to a US study on bilingual Hispanic women.

It found that women who were actively involved in both English and Spanish speaking cultures interpreted the same events differently, depending on which language they were using at the time.

It is known that people in general can switch between different ways of interpreting events and feelings - a phenomenon known as frame shifting. But the researchers say their work shows that bilingual people that are active in two different cultures do it more readily, and that language is the trigger.

One part of the study got the volunteers to watch TV advertisements showing women in different scenarios. The participants initially saw the ads in one language - English or Spanish - and then six months later in the other.

Researchers David Luna from Baruch College, New York, US, and Torsten Ringberg and Laura Peracchio from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, US, found that women classified themselves and others as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English.

“In the Spanish-language sessions, informants perceived females as more self-sufficient and extroverted,” they say.

For example, one person saw the main character in the Spanish version of a commercial as a risk-taking, independent woman, but as hopeless, lonely, and confused in the English version.

Full article from New Scientist.

Besides the most basic terms in a language (greetings, numbers, how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no), swear words seem to be some of the most readily-learned phrases in foreign languages.  Just the other night, I met a Mandarin speaker whose Cantonese lexicon contained the words for ‘hello’, the numbers 1 to 10, and various ways to insult other people.  He was in the army in a Cantonese-speaking province, so this isn’t entirely unsurprising.

Why is there such a need to learn these words?  Perhaps it’s because learning other languages is sometimes so frustrating that learners want to express this.  I think it’s more that, especially in groups of younger people, swearing in a casual way is a way to connect with others, show that you are comfortable with them, and have a bit of a laugh.  As long as you choose your audience well, and don’t have conversations consisting entirely of swear words and rude gestures, I think it’s acceptable.

I’ve also found that people sometimes swear in other languages when it is inappropriate to swear in their own.  Even though many people know what the words mean, they seem to lose their potency in other languages.  For example, I’ve heard quite a few people say the German word Scheiße (scheisse) instead of the English counterpart, shit.  This has happened in social situations as well as in the workplace.

For a user-generated list of foreign swear words and phrases, have a look at YouSwear.com.  They have phrases in languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish, and they even have a Swear Phrase of the Day.

Do you have any other examples of people’s fantastic swearing abilities in foreign languages?

Image from Sianuska at Etsy.com.  ‘Old Lady’ is a foreign language sometimes, surely?

Groups of people, especially very different people, can produce interesting and educational experiences.  When people speak different languages, it can be a challenge, or it can be a great learning opportunity.

I’ve been in situations where I have been the primary speaker because I happen to know the most of a foreign language, and also the person who has to have everything translated for her.  I’ve also been in the situation where others think that because I look like I speak the language, I’m the primary speaker, but it’s not the case at all.

I recently came across a great anecdote about trying to find a kitchen utensil in Italy.  The author speaks some Italian, but doesn’t understand that much, which is the opposite of how many people are in a foreign language.  He explains:

The problem, however, was this: I can speak Italian well enough to pose a question without sounding like a complete idiot, but when it comes to getting the answer, I am just that: a complete idiot. In fact, I’ve tried learning several languages in my life and always have the same problem: I can speak okay, but for some reason I have a hard time comprehending when someone speaks back to me. I understand nothing. Most people seem to have the opposite problem when learning a new language. When my wife Jessie and I had lived in Rome a few years earlier, we were an Italian-speaking team: since I spoke better, I’d do all the speaking and pose all the questions. Then, Jessie would listen to the answer, the whole time I’d be watching her bob her head in comprehension, until she’d translate it into English for me so I could respond. It was odd, but it worked.

The full story is both entertaining and well written, and you can find it here: The Language of Can Openers in the Italian Countryside, by David Farley.  Image from Ed Yourdon, under Flickr Creative Commons.

I’ve always found it interesting that some words and phrases, even when they have almost identical dictionary definitions, are interpreted differently by different groups of people, and even different individuals.  Sometimes I am sure that a word means a certain thing (because it’s always been used that way amongst people I associate with), and am very surprised to hear that it has different or alternative definitions in the dictionary.

Before I get carried away, I’d like to talk about an interesting Linguaphiles discussion I saw on LiveJournal yesterday.  The original poster asked people what they thought the difference was between a first language, a mother tongue, and being a native speaker.  According to narcissus1, and the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary:

… mother tongue and first language both refer to the language you acquire as a child and are most fluent in. When we use these words in everyday speech, do they include any connotations of race, culture and background? For example, if a person is Japanese does it necessarily mean that their mother tongue is Japanese? What about second and third (etc) generation immigrants who have lost the language of their parents?

Another question is, who do you call a ‘native speaker’? Again, OAL says that a native speaker is one who speaks a language as a first language. I’ve always considered English as my first language simply because it’s the language I’m most fluent in. But in my country English functions as a second language, and as a result I’ve never considered myself a native speaker of English.

A lot of the commenters seem to think that mother tongue is different from the other two, in that it carries the idea of culture and ethnicity.  I tend to agree with this, and I think that’s why it’s not commonly used as an official term any more.

I consider myself a native speaker of English, and wouldn’t hesitate to say that it was my first language.  I would say that Cantonese was my mother tongue, as my parents speak it, and I spoke it when I was very young.  My Cantonese is not very good nowadays, but should I then consider it a second language?  Was Cantonese equally my first language?

Read the full discussion for more interesting interpretations.  I’d also be interested to hear about other people’s views and experiences.

I recently started a salsa dance class, out of interest in dance, as well as a need for exercise.  I had assumed that because the website and the woman I dealt with were bilingual, that at least some of the instruction would be in English.  I was almost right.

I was the only person in the class who didn’t speak Chinese, so I mostly watched and followed along.  The names of the steps were in English, so that helped a bit.  In fact, I got to learn a few new terms because of the repetitive nature of the class, it helped with my listening skills, and I got to do something I enjoyed at the same time.

Taking an interest course in a different language is a great way to practice your language skills, but it may be difficult if your language level isn’t very high yet.  Practical courses are easier, because there is a lot of watching, demonstration, and practice involved, with the instruction not being the main part.

Even if you don’t want to take a course entirely in another language (or if this option isn’t available to you), you can still pick up or develop a hobby that involves other languages or culture.  Dance or music from other countries, foreign films, cuisine, crafts.  Learn more about terms you already know, for example, the background of Italian food names, or learn how to read knitting patterns in another language.  It will add interest to your existing hobbies, and won’t put too much pressure on your language learning.

Taking it to the extreme, American Jim O’Neill’s lifelong love of baseball language (not the sport itself, but the language used) has led him to create a dictionary of baseball terms.  Not just an English dictionary, but an English-Spanish one.

“I was just a little kid when I first heard ‘Can of corn,’ ” O’Neill said. “And I thought that was the coolest expression I had ever heard in my life.”

Hearing that baseball phrase, which means an easy-to-catch fly ball, started O’Neill on a decades-long quest to translate English baseball phrases into Spanish dialects.

O’Neill, faculty emeritus in the St. Cloud State University Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, turned his love of the language into a book he self-published, “The Bilingual Baseball Dictionary English-Spanish/Spanish-English.”

His dictionary contains about 8,000 definitions in its 344 pages, with nearly 3½ pages alone dedicated to various ways of saying “hit a home run” in Spanish.

I thought that most hobbies would only have a few pages’ worth of useful terms, but who knew baseball could have so many?

Full article from the St. Cloud Times.

I seem to be giving out suggestions from personal experience at the moment, so I’ll continue along that vein.

Today’s snippet of advice is: don’t get ahead of yourself.

You’d think it was always beneficial to have good pronunciation, but sometimes it’s actually better to make sure that native speakers know that your level isn’t quite the same as theirs (if this happens to be true).  If their first impression of you is that you’re fluent when you’re not*, you will just be overloaded with lightning-speed responses that you possibly won’t understand.

If the person you’re speaking to is made aware that perhaps you aren’t quite as proficient as they are, they will be more likely to grade their language and slow their speech a little.  It’s much better to be able to understand all or most of the conversation and be able to respond than to miss everything because of speed or local dialect.

So, if you know how to ask a question in a contracted or colloquial way, make sure that you will also be able to predict and understand the answer!

Similarly, maintain a comfortable and steady pace.  If you can say some sentences very quickly, but stumble on others, it will make the conversation much more difficult for the listener.  A steady rhythm will ensure you say your words correctly, and will give the listener an idea of how quickly to provide their responses.

*I’ve had endless experiences with this kind of thing in Asia.  I always try to learn a few pleasantries in the local language, but because I sometimes look like I could be a local myself, I get torrents of Thai, Vietnamese, and Mandarin in response.  I’m glad most people are accepting of my blank looks and stilted apologies.