Language Trainers Blog

Most people think of language as a way to communicate and describe the world around us, but have you ever considered how much our language affects how we see the world?

I read a great article on the Wall Street Journal about just this.  It’s not something that I really think about unless it’s put in front of me, but language really can affect how we interpret the world.

One of the most interesting parts of the article talks about how some cultures (up to a third of languages!) don’t have words like left and right, and instead talk about direction in absolute terms (north, south, etc.).  In these languages, you would talk about things like your east leg, or your northwest arm, depending on which direction you were facing.  If you’re thinking about absolute directions all the time, you are most likely going to be better at finding your way around.  Also fascinating was that for people who speak languages where no blame is given to accidental wrongs (e.g. someone knocking over a glass), it is more difficult to remember who did it.  For example, in English we would say that ‘Jack knocked the glass over’, but in Japanese or Spanish, they would just say that the glass had been knocked over.  I wonder how much this has perpetuated the tendency in English-speaking countries to lay blame on others for things that happen to us.

Does language shape culture, or does the culture we live in affect the language we use?

Being a bit of a pedant, I have quite a few peeves when it comes to the English language.  I don’t really have any favourites, but this post on Hyperbole and a Half has given new meaning to pet peeve.  Allie, the brilliant author, has turned her despair at the common mistake alot (misspelling of ‘a lot’) into a wonderfully surreal alternative.  Every time she sees someone write alot, she imagines it to be a mythical animal by the name of Alot.  The image at left is entitled I care about this Alot.

I know that I’m going to be imagining this cute, furry animal whenever I see alot from now on.  There may need to be some creative rearranging of punctuation, but Alot is very versatile and should cover most situations.  Thanks, Alot, Allie!

The blog on MacMillan Dictionary’s website has an ongoing campaign called What’s your English?, which focuses on regional usage of English from all over the world.  Each month is assigned to a different regional English, from native speaking countries as well as countries where it is a major foreign language.  This month is dedicated to Indian English, and past months have explored American English, Chinese English, Russian English, South African English, and more.

The campaign relies a lot on user submissions, so if you have a blog post, tweet, word definition, or video to submit about your own English, or experience with someone else’s, have a look at this post to get instructions on how to submit something.  If your English isn’t on the list yet, I’m sure they’ll get around to dedicating a month to it sometime soon!

I was reading through some of the great posts on English with Rae recently (if you are learning English, or would just like some topics to write or speak about in your target language, definitely check it out), and came across one that mentioned going back to basics.  This is a pen talks about how even though these basic sentences are easy, and learning them might be boring, they are crucial as the building blocks for more complicated conversations.  You may not think that knowing how to say ‘this is my new ruler’ is going to come in handy, but you do have to walk before you can run (crawling slowly is also an option).

A few days ago, I was at a Chinese restaurant.  One of my friends was in need of a spoon, and she asked if anyone knew the Chinese word for it.  Now, even though I have basic conversation skills and can talk about the weather and order food, I have a big hole in my vocabulary where basic things like kitchen implements should be.  The next day, I went back to basics and looked up utensils and basic homewares and did some other vocabulary practice.  Now I know how to say this is a spoon*, and I need a fork.  Success!

*Learning basic patterns like ‘this is a…’ are actually really useful for Chinese, because they let you practise classifiers, which are the measure words for items.  There are quite a few of these, and they depend on certain properties of the objects.  Unfortunately the best way to learn these is rote memorisation!

In the kind of news story that you wouldn’t even believe if it were in a Hollywood film, a woman from Devon started speaking in new accents after complaining of severe migraines.

She initially spoke in a Chinese accent for about a week, and then woke up speaking in a more Eastern-European sounding accent (apparent in the video below).  Unfortunately there’s no evidence of the Chinese accent; I would have been really interested to see what that sounded like.

Clearly she has had some kind of brain episode affecting her speech areas, as she makes some grammatical errors as well as the perceived accent change.  As she mentions in the video, she is unsure how long it will last for.  Apparently some people who suffer this kind of change recover after some time.

It’s nice that her mental capacity seems unchanged, although I think it would frustrate me no end to have people think I was a bit simple because of the way I spoke!

Source: Sky News.

I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that English language programs for school students are being removed or seriously cut down in some places in Inner Mongolia.  The apparent reasoning for this is that the Chinese government doesn’t want kids there to have the opportunity to learn the language.  I can’t find any information to back this up at this point, but the whole concept of removing opportunities from students is just abhorrent to me.  I can understand if there are simply no resources to provide education in certain areas, but to actively remove important programs just seems unnecessary and unjust.

The quality and availability of English language teachers in places like Inner Mongolia is low enough as it is, with many English teachers being local people who can barely communicate in the language themselves.  This is the case in many populous lower-socioeconomic areas, as there is little funding to support native speaking teachers.  Even for locals who are good teachers, other opportunities in richer places are common.  There’s an interesting article about this on the Amity newsletter, and they also outline what they are doing to help the situation.

What would you think if your child was going to a school where an important subject’s program was either very poor or completely non-existent?

I came across a post on English Cafe (check/link) which talked about iPractice Obama English, an English learning service based entirely around Barack Obama’s presidential and senatorial speeches.  The post on English Cafe was a little bit incredulous, for the valid reason that the kind of language used in formal speeches like this is probably not what your average English learner will ever need to use in real life.

I thought I’d check it out, though, just to see what it was about.  They have a fairly good interface (in a downloadable program) which helps with reading and listening comprehension, as well as speaking practice.  They have a speech recognition engine that judges the learner’s speech and gives them a score.  Even though the language used might not be that helpful (unless maybe you are really really keen on American history and politics), President Obama has great enunciation and this program is sure to help English students with their listening comprehension.  Besides the speaking practice, there are also reading and listening comprehension questions to answer.  They seem to have a range of speech excerpts for free subscribers, and also premium services.

Check it out if you’re interested in English learning, politics, or are just an Obama fan.  The homepage may inspire you with just the low-angle headshot!

Note: I have tried to publish this and other posts several times, and they keep disappearing. I hope this time the post sticks to the blog!

I don’t have children myself, but I’d like to think that if I did, I would expose them to as many learning opportunities as possible.  I was speaking to an expat teacher the other day and she said that at one British school in Shanghai (which her children are no longer attending), children only receive Chinese instruction for two hours a week.  Apparently most parents don’t anticipate their kids being in China for long enough for it to be of value.

Do you agree with this?  I can sort of see why parents would think something like that (especially if they were going to send their kids back to the UK to boarding school), but if the language education isn’t going to encroach too much on their core education, I can’t see how it is a bad thing.  Kids will learn more about the local language and culture, which has obvious social and educational value.

I am a big fan of actually living in the country you’re living in, rather than locking yourself and your family away in a mini version of your home country.  Of course, everyone needs certain home comforts, but I think children should be given more experiences and opportunities, not less.  If they are about to be sent home to experience western culture anyway, why not let them experience the place they’re living in in the meantime?

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!

So I guess I don’t have my finger on the pulse, because March 4th was National Grammar Day, and I had no idea it was happening until it already had*.  The day, a chance to celebrate grammar and language in general, was started in 2008 by the founder of SPOGG (Society for the Protection of Good Grammar), and hosted by Mignon Fogarty (also known as Grammar Girl, who brings us the brilliant Quick and Dirty Tips).

Check out the National Grammar Day site for ways to celebrate and find out more about grammar and language, including links to some great cartoons, resources, e-cards and t-shirts. Let that grammar slacker in your life know it’s important to you (well, if it is, of course).

From the site, 10 grammar myths exposed:

1. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence.
2. You shouldn’t start a sentence with the word “however.”
3. “Irregardless” is not a word.
4. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in “s.”
5. Passive voice is always wrong.
6. “I.e.” and “e.g.” mean the same thing.
7. You use “a” before words that start with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels.
8. It’s incorrect to answer the question “How are you?” with the statement “I’m good.”
9. You shouldn’t split infinitives.
10. You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.

(Click here for more information about the list above.)

Did you celebrate the occasion? Do you think grammar deserves its own day?

*I think this is a failing of people who start ‘national’ days.  They should really go big and go international. Grammar is important everywhere!