The Apache people of the
The metaphorical naming continues inside. The car’s electrical wiring is tsaws, the veins. The battery is zik, the liver. The petrol tank is pit, the stomach. The radiator is jisoleh, the lung; and its hose, chih, the intestine. The distributor is jih, the heart.
On the tiny mountainous Canary Island of La Gomera there is a language called Silbo Gomero that uses a variation of whistles instead of words (in Spanish silbar means to whistle). There are tour ‘vowels’ and tour ‘consonants’, which can be strung together to form more than tour thousand ‘words’. This birdlike means of communication is thought to have come over with early African settlers over 2500 years ago. Able to be heard at distances of up to two miles, the silbador was until recently a dying breed. Since 1999, however, Silbo has been a required language in La Gomera schools.
The Mazateco Indians of Oxaca,
Some people need to travel to a foreign country whose language is completely unknown by them. In those cases a phrasebook seems like a handy temporary solution… or maybe not… Have a look at this poor Hungarian immigrant by the Monty Python:
In the earliest cultural beginnings, magic was closely associated not only with science, but also with semiotics. The etymology of several basic semiotic concepts indicates that the origin of the science of signs may be found in the context of magic rituals.
The English word ‘spell’ still means both ‘to name or print in order the letters of (a word)’ and ‘a spoken word believed to have magic power’. The old Germanic ‘rune’ is not only a sign from the code of the runic alphabet, but the word also means ‘charm’, or ‘magic incantation’. Another interesting case is the etymology of ‘glamor’, in the original sense of ‘a magic spell’ or ‘bewitchment’. This word is a derivation from the word ‘grammar’, from the popular association of semiotic erudition with occult practises.
The etymology of the German word ‘Bild’ (image, picture) also contains a magic element, namely, the Germanic etymon *bil-, ‘miraculous sign/.
This etymological evidence indicates that in the origins of our cultural history, the knowledge and usage of letters, writing, and later grammar was closely related to their acquaintance with magical practices. Evidently such a connection continued to be assumed for many centuries - the cultural origins of pictures and art in general are also to be found in the realm of magic.
An Old English charm prescribes the burning of a dog’s head as a remedy for a headache. A more recent folklore formula recommends the utterance of the following conjuration as a therapy against fever: ‘Fever, fever, stay away / Don’t come in my bed today’. These examples show that magic is a form of semiosis. In the first case there is a non-verbal icon representing the destruction of the disease; in the second case there is the speech act of a request (an incantation) addressed to the disease. In both cases there is an addresser communicating a message to a somewhat unusual addressee.
Rules or risks? Learning a foreign language is just one form of learning in general; therefore, each individual will employ the approach that he or she usually applies to other learning situations.
When it comes to foreign languages, one kind of learner prefers a highly structured approach, with plenty of explanations in the mother tongue, graded exercises, constant correction, and careful, airtight rules of formulation. This type of learner is generally very analytical, reflective, and reluctant to say anything in the foreign language that is not grammatically perfect. This person is a rule learner.
A second type of learner relies more on intuition, the gathering of examples, and imitation. He or she is willing to take risks, and is not afraid to make errors in the target language, in the hope that they will be corrected at some point down the line. Such people have become known to me as language disciples - following the language and learning as they go instead of ingesting it in bite-size chunks.
There is no evidence that one type of learner is more successful than the other. What is more important is that the learner’s style is appropriate to the particular task. If the task is to communicate orally in a real-life situation, then risk-taking would be the more efficient path to your goal. If the task is to say or write something correctly, then the rules should be consulted.
It is helpful for each learner’s preferences to be accommodated in the classroom. You may thus wish to examine your own preferences and communicate them to your teacher. For instance, if you feel that you need rules and regulation, you may be a little uncomfortable in a classroom dedicated to imitation and repetition of dialogue, and you might want to ask the teacher for further explanation. If, on the other hand, you feel that you learn more from being exposed to the language and from making your own inferences, you may feel ill at ease in a classroom where the teacher takes time painstakingly explaining the new grammar in your native language, and you would do well to ask the teacher for more practice in speaking.
There are a number of justifications for the use of small groups in language classrooms. Many of them would be worth recommending, whatever the model of language acquisition or instructions being followed. Small groups provide greater intensity of involvement, so that the quality of language practice is increased, along with the opportunities for feedback and monitoring, given adequate guidance and preparation by the teacher.
The setting is more natural than that of a fuller class, as the size of the group resembles that of normal conversational groupings. Because of this, the stress and anxiety which generally accompanies ‘public’ performance in the classroom should be reduced. Experience also suggests that placing students in small groups assists individualisation, since each group, being limited by its own capacities, can determine its own appropriate level of work far more quickly and effectively than a larger class. Furthermore, co-operation with your peers is ideologically desirable, especially in educational systems which advocate socialist principles.
Because the small group simulates natural conversational settings more closely than any other mode of classroom organisation, it will most effectively combine all aspects of communication, learning, and human interaction referred to in the justifications cited above, in the most integrated, non-threatening, and flexible mode of class organisation available to the teacher.
As a Spanish language teacher I have learnt to value the ever-valiant attempts made by students in their effort to speak their new language. It is clear that, when using a foreign language, the sound of their speech will be slightly, if not totally different from the one of the natives. This means they are never free from making “mistakes”; though this is far from being an obstacle, instead being is a great way to improve.
Nonetheless, one of the most frequent kinds of mistakes heard in the classroom represents a good clue in appreciating the gradual learning process of new grammar: the error of ‘regularization’.
In a way, second language students take the role of young children acquiring their mother tongue. There are wide differences from a psycholinguistics point of view, as children do not have a previous grammar to hinder the internalization of a new one (that is why we ‘acquire’ our first language when we are young, but ‘learn’ a second one when adults).
Once we have made a distinction between adult students and children, I would like to mention one of the coincidences I found: there is a clear tendency make words regular. For instance, it is not unusual that a student says “no sabo” in order to say “I don’t know”, which does not exist in Spanish, and is a mistake for sure (“no sé” is the correct form). However, more important than the specific inaccuracy, is the fact they have shown that they are not just learning a list of words by heart, but learning a new grammar. They have learnt the rule that says ‘take the ending off the infinitive and add ‘o’ to get the form for the present indicative first person singular’. In this case, it didn’t work because for irregular verbs there are no general rules. However, this student has shown themselves to be capable of conjugating most Spanish verbs correctly, even if it is the first time they’ve come across them - but now it’s time for them to memorise the exceptions!
While studying Japanese at university, I was looking forward not only to learning my first non-European language (having studied French, German, Latin & Greek at school and university), but also making a stab at an entirely new alphabet (or as our sensei told us to call it, writing system). It was only after our first lesson that I became a little more apprehensive, when I learnt that they employ three separate writing systems simultaneously.
First of all there are two phonetic writing systems: hiragana, which is used to ’spell out’ Japanese words in short phonetic units (for example, sensei (せんせい), meaning ‘teacher’, consists of four hiraganas: se (せ), n (ん), se (せ) & i (い).
The other phonetic system follows the same rules as hiragana, but is used to spell out ‘loan words’ (Japanese words borrowed from English or other languages) or to emphasise Japanese words (for example, in signs outside shops and bars). This writing system is called katakana, and while it follows the same pattern of phonetic sounds, the characters look different, consisting more of straight lines when compared with the more curvaceous hiragana. For example, the Japanese word for ‘icon’ is the same word, but transliterated into the more limited Japanese phonemes to match the sound of the original term as closely as possible - in this case, aikon (アイコン).
These two writing systems were manageable for a gaijin (’foreigner’) such as myself: regular practice reading and writing the characters and recognition exercises coupled with my own enthusiasm helped me become fairly proficient in both writing systems in only a couple of weeks, but it was the third writing system that bamboozled me - kanji.
Kanji are characters of Chinese origin, first imported to Japanese shores by articles from China. These characters are far more complex and intricate than the kana systems, many requiring upwards of 20 individual strokes to draw, and are used primarily for nouns, adjective stems and verb stems, replacing what would otherwise be phonetic characters. Most kanji have several different ‘readings’, which can subtly alter their meaning, as well as usually completely changing the way you say them. The main drawback when learning kanji, however, is that you don’t know how to pronounce them unless you either have the furigana form of the character, or have been briefed in advance of the different readings. To add insult to injury, there are over 50,000 kanji in existence; although only around 2,000 are in daily use.
While the Chinese students in my class had very little difficulty recognising the root meanings of many kanjis, as well as being able to write them with amazing speed and accuracy, every facet of every kanji exercise was a huge challenge for somebody with my background, trained purely on Roman and Greek alphabets with very little talent for drawing complex shapes.
For those starting out in Japanese reading and writing, the only advice I can offer for unlocking the mysteries of kanji would be the same advice given to me by my sensei - gambatte!
“False friends” (a word in another language that closely resembles a word in somebody’s first language, but means something different) are practical proof for the fact that seemingly different languages have at one point been strongly connected: the form remains identical, or at least recognizable, but the meaning has subtly shifted in one or both languages from its original definition.
So, with that in mind, can you translate these Spanish words into English without using a dictionary? Hover your mouse pointer over the box to the right to reveal the correct answer, and the answer a native English speaker might have been expecting.
Adepto :: follower, supporter (NOT adept)
América :: the Americas (NOT America specifically)
Embarazada :: pregnant (NOT embarrassed)
Librería :: bookstore (NOT library)
Parientes :: relatives (NOT parents)
Sensible :: sensitive (NOT sensible)
Soportar :: tolerate, deal with (NOT support)
Do you know other false friends? Many linguists have at least one amusing anecdote involving these tricky words. For example, the famous song “Sympathy for the Devil” is known in Spanish as “Simpatía por el demonio” which actually means “Affection for the Devil”. The correct translation should have been “Compasión por el demonio”.
Spanish, Castilian, what’s the difference?
Spanish students will often express their confusion in regard to these two words. Some tend to believe that Castellano implies a regional dialect, while Español refers to the standard usage of the language.
In actual fact, the difference lies in politics rather than linguistics. The term Castellano derives from the Castilla area in Spain, where this ‘language’ was first spoken, just like Catalán, Vasco or Gallego in different parts of the country. However, unlike these other languages, Castellano extended over the rest of the peninsula. The reason was simply the socio-economic importance given to the term by the region in which it was first spoken. Thus Castellano isn’t merely a dialect, but another word for what non-native speakers would collectively refer to as Spanish.
Usually, speakers of Catalán, Vasco or Gallego are unwilling to accept the name Español for their mother tongue, as to them it would imply they were undermining their own language. Nevertheless, as the language has since become an extremely well-represented international language, in countries outside Spain and Latin America the language is mostly referred to as Spanish.
If you’re still confused, Wikipedia attempts to explain the phenomenon thusly:
To understand how two terms can refer to the same language, imagine that the English language were sometimes called English after the historical nation whose language it is, but also sometimes British after the modern state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), of which it is the official language. To add to the complexity, former British colonies such as British North America had to choose a name for the language, as did the speakers of Welsh and other non-English languages in the United Kingdom. This resembles the situation with Spain and its historical centre, Castile.
