Language Trainers Blog

It’s that time of year when the Oscars are announced. Recently I wrote about using world cinema as a tool for language learning and development.  As some of my favourite films have won the Best Foreign Film award, (Czech film Kolya won in 1996, and Argentinian film El Secreto De Sus Ojos took the title in 2009) I will paying particular attention to the nominees this year.

This years’ ceremony takes place on February 26th, and the shortlisted films are due to be announced next Tuesday. This Wednesday, nine films were chosen to be on the long list out of 63 entries. The following titles, at the time of writing, are currently in the running for Best Foreign Film 2012.

Bullhead (Dutch/French)

SuperClasico (Danish/Spanish)

Pina (German, various)

Monsieur Lazhar (French)

A Separation (Persian) This just won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and so is tipped to win the Oscar as well.

Footnote (Hebrew)

Omar Killed Me (French)

In Darkness (Polish/Ukrainian)

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Seediq/Japanese)

As a student of Spanish, none particularly appeal to me from a learning point of view. Having said this, I find it’s always good fun to test your aural skills whilst watching films which feature more than one language. If you close your eyes so you can’t see which character is speaking, can you distinguish from two different languages if you speak neither of them? I had trouble with this when watching Kolya, as both Czech, Russian and Slovak are spoken throughout the film. Therefore, personally, I would be most interested to see In Darkness and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale. The latter features Seediq, an aboriginal language spoken in Taiwan.

Do the Foreign Film awards inspire you to watch other films?

If any readers have seen any films listed here, please let us know!

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)

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!

I recently stumbled across Digital Dialects, a website providing vocabulary-learning games for not just one, but 60 different languages.  These range from Afrikaans to Zazaki, a few of which I hadn’t even heard of (including the latter, which is spoken in eastern Turkey).   The games are simple and focus on basic word categories like numbers, food, and animals.  Each game has images and many have sound, as well as options such as choosing to read a word or listen to it.  Each language has a different combination of games depending on the vocabulary, and I think they would be suitable for both children and adults at a beginner level.  All of the games are free to use.

Whether you are just starting out in a language, want to pick up some useful vocabulary before a trip abroad, have a child who is studying, or just want to know how to count to 10 in as many languages as possible (I met a kid in Cambodia who could do this in at least 10 languages), check it out.

Recently it was announced that the rules of Scrabble were changing, and players would in future be able to use proper nouns in the game, which has never been allowed before.  The change would mean that previously-illegal proper nouns, including celebrity names, brands, and company names would be acceptable.  The justification from game company Mattel was that they wanted to attract players from younger generations, and thought that allowing players to use names would achieve this end.  I was a little bit unsure of how I felt about this, because I’m sure I’ve had occasions where I wanted to play a proper noun as my word, but there’s definitely a difference between playing ‘Vatican‘ and ‘Beyonce‘.

Just after I read this, I read another article that said that the rules would remain the same, and that the news of the rule change was an exaggeration of the truth, which is that Mattel is planning to release an entirely different game called Scrabble Trickster, where anything goes, including proper nouns and words spelled backwards.  I’m not sure if this was just all a big marketing ploy, but I think a sigh of relief may have been heard throughout the Scrabble-playing world.

I’m also not sure if changing rules like this would justify an entirely new game.  Surely you could just play different rules with the same equipment?  Which reminds me of this cartoon, which made me giggle.

Does Scrabble matter to you?

I’m not really a fan of acronyms like LOL (laugh[ing] out loud), so I tend to stick with the written representations of laughing sounds, and the ones I usually use are hahaha (that’s funny!), hehehe (that’s kind of mean!), and hee (cute! squee!).

I’ve always thought the Spanish versions - jajaja, jejeje, jijiji - were really cute, but I have a tendency to read jajaja in a German accent, so it says ‘yes yes yes’.

Here are a few more ways* to show your humour in other languages:

Chinese
哈哈 / ha ha
嘿嘿 / hei hei
呵呵 / he he

Russian
ха-ха-ха (hahaha)
хи-хи (heehee)

Malaysian
kahkahkah (hahaha from comic books)

Turkish

eki eki (used in comics, as the older way of laughing)
muhaha (evil laughter)
nihaha (evil laughter)
puhaha, uhaha, zuhaha (used if something’s really funny)

German
hnhnhn, hmhmhm, chrchrchr (giggle)

My favourite at the moment is a Chinese coworker’s use of hohoho.  I don’t think she really means to sound like Santa Claus, but it brightens my day.

*Many of these examples are from WordReference Forums.

I’ve already mentioned how confusing business-speak can be, both to the language learner and the native speaker.  How often have you heard someone give a presentation and had no idea what they were actually talking about?

The Business Sentence Generator is a fun little application that uses a standard sentence structure and combines it with business-speak phrases and buzzwords to randomly create sentences worthy of the flashiest, most content-free business presentation in the world.

Here are the first four sentences it gave me.   It’s a little disconcerting how genuinely corporate they sound.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen…

From a historical point of view, the recent re-engineering necessitates supply chain integration.

Although…

In pursuit of unique opportunities, our burn rate is further compounded by considering a novel quality vector.

However…

Given the undue reliance on derivative materials, a transaction-enabled platform stabilises a tangible return.

In conclusion…

To proactively manage profit, our contingency schematic embraces our exceedance of standards.

Thank you for your attention.  Please sign here to allocate funds to my project…

As it’s my birthday, I thought we could widen our viewpoint on language and communication, and look at something that combines audio input and visual output to create something potentially beautiful. It’s also fun and may make people think you’re a crazy person.

Ze Frank has invented a drawing tool that is controlled by volume input from your microphone. A low volume turns anticlockwise, a medium volume draws a straight(ish) line, and a high volume turns the line clockwise. It’s kind of like a vocal Etch A Sketch. I was never very good at those, either.

This is one of Ze’s, as mine are ‘abstract’ at best.

It hasn’t even officially been launched (just try to find a link on our homepage), but already the Accent Game has proved a huge success among those with a finger on the virtual pulse.

The makers of the game asked native and non-native speakers of English to read two lines of a poem, and now it’s up to you, the player, to determine where the speaker is from.  If the excerpt was read by a native speaker, you also get the chance to earn bonus points by picking the city they come from.

Do you have a lot of friends from all over the world?  Do you think you have what it takes to pinpoint an accent’s origin?  The concept is deceptively simple, but the challenge itself can be a lot more difficult than you’d think.  I got just over half of the countries the first time I played.

Give it a try, and then challenge your friends to do better!

If you enjoyed playing the game, think you have an interesting accent, and have a desire to participate in the next one (and potentially be world-famous!), upload a short video or audio file here, and we will let you know if you make the cut!