Language Trainers Blog

Some people love it, some people hate it, a lot of people need it, and for many, it’s all they have.  But how many people celebrate the diversity that is the English language?  A staggering 2 billion people speak it to some degree, and the minority are native speakers.  It’s often claimed that it’s a difficult language that cannibalises words from everywhere, but to many, this is a sign of progress and something to be glad of.

The English Project has taken it upon themselves to designate October 13 English Language Day.  Because October 13 (in 1362) was the first time an English speech was used to open parliament in the UK, the theme of the first English Language Day is the often-confusing topic of legal language.  As even native speakers can find legalese difficult, it puts native and non-native speakers on more of an even playing field.

Check out the Ideas page to get some inspiration for how to celebrate.  Even if you’re not in the UK, you can participate by logging onto the website and filling in the survey.

A Chinese student from Sichuan province failed his gaokao (final examinations) essay because it was written in ancient characters, some of which were from thousands of years ago.  From Shanghaiist:

The script, called “甲骨 Jia Gu” (oracle bone script) is from the Bronze Age and is usually found on ox bones or turtle shells. Professors who translated the essay into modern Chinese found that 19-year-old Huang Ling’s character use was largely correct, but his essay was awarded an 8 out of 80 (later lowered to 6).

The student’s score would normally mean that he would not be accepted into university, as Chinese requirements are usually very strict.  However, examiners were impressed by his knowledge, and correct usage, of the so-called Oracle Bone script, and he may be accepted into Sichuan University after all.

Although I applaud his risky performance, I wonder if the results would be as positive if a British student wrote an essay in Middle English, or a French student in Gaulish.  I kind of like to hope so.

In the aftermath of the recent Iranian election, the protests that followed, and the ensuing violence, the availability of accurate information is becoming rarer, and more crucial.  Hotels in Tehran have been locked down to prevent foreign journalists from reporting anything to the outside world.  Live video footage posted to YouTube and messages sent through Twitter by protesters and people amidst the violence have become important sources of news for people within the country, and around the world.  Unfortunately, the people in power in Iran have realised this, and done their best to shut down mobile and internet networks, and it has escalated to the point where anyone seen openly carrying a laptop, mobile phone, or camera runs the risk of being attacked by paramilitary groups.

Internet giant Google has pushed forward their release of Google Translate in Persian, or Farsi, which is the major language of Iran.  This will hopefully make more international information and news available to people within Iran, and Persian speakers around the world, as well as allowing outsiders to get an idea of what is happening inside the country.

The Twitter service is playing an arguably more important role on the ground, as protesters are using it to organise demonstrations as well as spread news to the outside world.  It has even been recognised as crucial by the US State Department, who urged the company to delay a planned upgrade in order for service to continue uninterrupted in Iran.

If you’re interested in knowing more about what’s happening, I found quite a good summary on Reddit, there’s a lot of information in the news, and there are plenty of Twitter, news, and blog feeds being updated all the time.  As well as wanting to keep up-to-date with the actual situation, I’m fascinated by the changing roles of media, technology, and communication.  Is the blocking of a single website or internet service tantamount to a human rights issue these days?

A new education strategy from the UK government is recommending that teachers stop teaching the traditional spelling ‘rule’ “I before E except after C”.

Although it’s familiar to generations of English speakers, the National Strategies document Support for Spelling says there are too many exceptions to the rule, and the mnemonic could be more confusing than useful.  Though they say that it is useful only for ee sounds (as in receive), the rule still has exceptions - seize, seizure, and the ee versions of either and neither.

Campaigners for plain English and simple spelling reforms have taken this as support for their cause, but Judy Parkinson, author of I Before E (Except After C): Old-School Ways to Remember Stuff, suggests that teachers should be able to make up their own minds about using the phrase in their classes.

For instance, one predominantly American variation of the rhyme includes the lines “…or when it sounds like an A; as in neighbour and weigh“.  This happily deals with the exceptions veil, beige, eight, and sleigh.

I think it would be more trouble than it’s worth to try to include all of these other exceptions: counterfeit, leisure, caffeine, science, ancient, foreign…

Full article from Times Online.

You’d think that the word ‘billion’ would mean the same to all English speakers, but, in fact, the two different meanings of the word are vastly different - 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 (one thousand million and one million million).  The first is the current ‘global’ understanding of the word (using the short scale, sometimes known as American usage), and the second, much larger number, uses the long scale or British usage.  As the numbers get bigger, the difference between them gets larger, as the short scale increases by thousands (e.g. a trillion is a thousand billions, or 10¹²), and the long scale increases by millions (e.g. a trillion is a million (long scale) billions, or 10¹⁸).

Most countries use the short scale, these days, but many still use the long scale.  Some countries, such as France and England, have used both scales at different times in history, so it’s important to check sources if you ever come across billion, trillion, etc in older publications.

The French word billion, German Billion; Dutch biljoen; Swedish biljon; Finnish biljoona; Danish billion; Spanish billón and the Portuguese word bilião all refer to 10¹², being long scale terms. Therefore, each of these words translates to the modern English word: “trillion” (10¹² in the short scale), and not “billion” (10⁹ in the short scale).

On the other hand, the Brazilian Portuguese word bilhão (note the alternate spelling to the European Portuguese variant) and the Welsh word biliwn both refer to 10⁹, being short scale terms. Each of these words translates to the English word “billion” (10⁹ in the short scale).  [Wikipedia.]

I think the best thing to do if you have to communicate in such large numbers is just to use the numerals instead of the words!

A person’s family name can tell a lot about their ethnicity, family history, even what their ancestors did for jobs.  Many older names reflect occupations, such as Baker, Tailor, Smith, and Cook. Surnames can sometimes give clues about where a family comes from, even down to a town or village.

There are a lot of genealogy resources available if you are interested in researching your own family name, or that of your friends. Behind the Name has family names from many different cultures and languages, from Basque to Icelandic, Romanian to Sikh.  An interesting addition is the Statistics option, which allows you to see how common a certain name is in the USA or England and Wales.

The Mandarin Chinese surnames Wang and Li are the most common surnames in the world, with over 90 million people each.

Just out of interest, my surname was ranked 459th out of 88,799 names in the US census of 1990.  You can also tell that my family is from a Cantonese-speaking part of China, as the English transliteration is ‘Wong’, not ‘Huang’ (which is a Mandarin spelling).

When I first heard the song It’s All About the Benjamins by Puff Daddy and friends, I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about.  This was back in 1997, though, when American slang wasn’t quite as widespread as it is now.  These days, I’m quite aware that benjamin* refers to a US $100 note, because of the portrait of former president and inventor Benjamin Franklin.  It’s more commonly used in hip-hop circles than everyday English, and has been mentioned on film (2002 film All About the Benjamins) and TV.  Puff Daddy (aka P Diddy, aka Sean Combs) has been credited with the first use of this term.  He even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary:

The OED lists him (as S. Combs) as the first citation (1994) for the word in the line “My pockets swell to the rim with Benjamins.” (from A.Word.A.Day.)

Benjamin* has also been used for many years in some European cultures to mean the youngest person in a family or group.  “The benjamin of the family”, “le benjamin de la famille” (French), “el benjamin de la familia” (Spanish), and “der Benjamin der Familie” (German) all mean the youngest child of a family.  It’s an older term that refers to the biblical Benjamin, who was the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons.

*A word that is derived from the name of a particular person is called an eponym.

When I was reading about UK councils banning confusing jargon, I came across a discussion board thread which asked readers which terms they would to see “thrown into the linguistic trash can“.

An interesting post noted that the term Third World country was actually a leftover from the Cold War.  I’m not all that familiar with war terms, but this surprised me.

During the Cold War, the world was simplistically divided into three parts.  The First World was made up of NATO allies (the capitalist Western bloc), the Second World comprised the countries aligned with the communist Soviet Eastern bloc, and the Third World was essentially made up of all the rest.  The Third World, or unaligned countries at the time, were generally developing countries, although Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland were notable exceptions.  They remained neutral during the war, but weren’t considered undeveloped.

Here’s a general picture:

These days, the Third World tends to refer strictly to developing countries, no matter what their political leanings.  The First World now refers to highly developed countries with large incomes.  Both terms are difficult to define, and I wonder how useful they really are.  The term Fourth World has also arisen, to describe nomadic or nationless states or groups who are politically powerless.

Note: There is also the theory floating around that the Third World (speaking of Africa, mostly) came about following the terms Old World (Europe), and New World (the Americas).  These were terms used to match the order in which European explorers discovered the world.  It’s not an accurate origin, but it’s still somewhat logical, and probably less politically charged!

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

I was watching a new TV series the other night (I’m not going to name it but anyone who knows anything about it will know what I’m talking about), and some of the characters are named after the NATO phonetic alphabet that’s been adopted by many military and civilian organisations around the world. That’s the Alpha Bravo Charlie one, if you weren’t sure.

Quite a few years ago I memorised this alphabet, partially because I worked for a mail carrier, and partially out of my own interest. For some reason I like to be able to spell things using it “Yes, that’s Wendy - Whisky Echo November Delta Yankee” (I am a giant dork).  If, for whatever reason, you need to be able to spell something using the phonetic alphabet, but you can’t remember it, you can use this handy tool.  I’m sure someone can think of some valid use for it.

After a little bit of investigation, I found this page, which is fairly old, but very comprehensive. It contains information about systems used in other languages as well. This wiki is more succinct, and the table is easier to look at. I like how the Royal Navy used Xerxes during WWI, and I giggle to myself when I imagine big burly military men spelling words out using Duff, Nancy, Pup, Pudding, Queenie, Quack, and Willie. I guess words had different connotations back then.

Interestingly, the current system was developed with international speakers in mind, and the words that caused the most confusion in different accents (Coca, Metro, Nectar, Union, and Extra) were replaced by less ambiguous ones (Charlie, Mike, November, Uniform, and X-Ray).

I think the makers of the TV show tweaked things a little bit, though, as Sierra and Echo are better names for characters than, say, Uniform, Kilo and Hotel. I imagine that if the main characters were called Sugar and Easy (as in the 1941-1956 US and RAF phonetic alphabets), it might’ve been quite a different show.