Language Trainers Blog

Learning Portuguese here in London? You might be interested to know that Mariza is playing at the Barbican Centre on Monday 13th May.

This is a great chance to hear fado, the popular Portuguese traditional music, live. Mariza has won awards for her music, including a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music.

This video has the lyrics in Portuguese on screen – particularly useful to check pronunciation.

Someone sent me this which I thought I’d share with you… it’s kind of pointless but interesting at the same time.

Music video experimentalists Collective Cadenza decided to put the lyrics to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme tune through every single language on Google Translate… and back to English. Here’s the result.

Paul McCartney’s music video for his latest single My Valentine features actors Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman using sign language to convey the lyrics of the song.

It has been widely reported that there are some errors in the sign language used, most notably, that both actors use the sign for ‘tampon’ rather than ‘appear,’ and ‘enemy’ instead of ‘Valentine.’ Whilst in British Sign Language, the sign is for ‘tampon,’ it’s important to note that the actors are using American Sign Language, for which the signs for some words differ slightly. Therefore, the sign they used to signify ‘appear’ is correct. There are actually two ASL signs for the word ‘appear;’ one means ‘to show up’ and the other is ‘to seem.’ Natalie Portman used the correct sign.

It’s a shame that Johnny Depp remained expressionless throughout the video, as all sign language relies on facial expressions to bring the language to life. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see sign language brought to the spotlight!

You can view a Johnny Depp solo video, a Natalie Portman solo video, AND the video featuring both actors on Paul McCartney’s YouTube channel.

A new show on BBC channel CBeebies aims to teach pre-school age children about languages and their related cultures.

Eleven minute programme The Lingo Show features an animated bug named Lingo, as the “host” of the show. Lingo then introduces other bugs from other countries who sing little songs about their respective allocated language and culture within a live action set. Episode 1 introduces Wei, a bug which sings in English with Chinese Mandarin words interspersed. Through the use of songs and repetition, we learn that the Mandarin word for hello is nee hao.

The show isn’t especially logical, as it goes on to demonstrate the words for ice cream, banana, and yellow fan, red fan and blue fan, but hey, it’s for kids so I guess needs to keep their interest. It’s literally an introduction, and doesn’t overwhelm with too many words. The series doesn’t look at a different language each episode either, which is great for continuity.

There are other “characters,” each of which will introduce a different language. The languages they represent are Spanish, Somali, French, Punjabi, Welsh, Polish, and Urdu.

You can watch episodes on the BBC iPlayer here.

Software developers, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, designers.  Many people of different occupations spend a lot of time trying to work out how people’s brains work, what things we associate with which other things, and how to make our everyday lives easier and more intuitive.

A lot of internet-based programs aim to be as human as possible in their responses.  For example, if we put only two or three words into a search engine, it will try to give the most logical responses possible.  The methods behind it are complicated, but there are ways to help.

One way is to play the addictive games on Gwap.com.  By playing games that combine audio, visual, and linguistic components, developers can try to pinpoint the ways that humans think.  Which pictures are the most attractive?  Which words does everybody use to describe a certain thing?  How do people describe music?

The results of the games will be used to tag images, music, and more, and hopefully make them easier to find for others in the future.

Take a break from the study, and see which words come to mind.

A great way for language learners to increase their exposure to a foreign language is to listen to the radio.  With the convenience of internet radio* and podcasting, it’s easy to find a program available in almost any language.  In many cases, you can both listen live, and download audio files to listen to whenever you want to.

Multilingualbooks.com has collected a list of stations in over forty languages, from Indonesian to Slovenian, and is a great place to start looking for the perfect radio station.  Some stations are purely news, some play different genres of music, and some are regional stations which can teach you a little bit more about local culture in foreign countries.

VoA (Voice of America) maintains their news homepage in 45 languages, and has always aimed their content at an international audience.  For English learners, they have a regular newscast in what they call Special English. In their words:

It has a core vocabulary of 1500 words. Most are simple words that describe objects, actions or emotions. Some words are more difficult. They are used for reporting world events and describing discoveries in medicine and science.

Special English writers use short, simple sentences that contain only one idea. They use active voice. They do not use idioms.

Special English broadcasters read at a slower pace, about two-thirds the speed of standard English. This helps people learning English hear each word clearly. It also helps people who are fluent English speakers understand complex subjects.

As well as keeping learners up-to-date on world news, VoA provides scripts to match the audio, so learners can read along, or look up any words they are unsure of.  On their Special English page, they have lots of other resources for learners as well.

Get listening!

*You will need a media player to listen to radio broadcasts online, and they usually recommend RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or an MP3 player like Winamp.

I’ve mentioned before that musical training seems to help with language skills, and a recent American study has made progress into the specifics of the notion that ‘music makes you smarter’.

Children exposed to a multi-year programme of music tuition involving training in increasingly complex rhythmic, tonal, and practical skills display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers, according to a study published today in the journal Psychology of Music, published by SAGE.

According to authors Joseph M Piro and Camilo Ortiz from Long Island University, USA, data from this study will help to clarify the role of music study on cognition and shed light on the question of the potential of music to enhance school performance in language and literacy.

Both the control group and the musically-trained group showed similar results after the second group had already undergone two years of musical training.  There are several theories as to what this means, but the authors of the study are quite confident that multiple years of musical training have a strong positive effect on vocabulary and and reading skills.

Full article from Eurekalert.

I was a little dismayed to discover that the ability of an adult to learn a second language may be pre-determined (i.e. there’s not a heck of a lot I can do about it at this point).  Researchers in the USA have found that, based solely on the size of a small auditory brain structure, they can quite accurately predict an adult’s performance in a language-learning exercise.  The structure being examined is called Heschl’s Gyrus (HG) and accounts for only about 0.2% of the average adult’s brain mass.  The HG is associated with recognising changes in pitch and tone, so it is relatively unsurprising that a well-developed HG will help when learning tonal languages.  The team in the USA discovered that people with larger HGs (often related to experience with musical training at a young age) did far better at differentiating and recognising 18 invented words involving three different tones.

So, it seems that adults who studied music in childhood have a physically-measurable advantage when it comes to learning a second language.

This doesn’t mean that the musically-disinclined among us should give up on our language studies.  There’s no reason that you won’t become just as proficient as if you had a bigger HG, it will just take a little bit more work.  Also, this study used an invented tonal language, and the study participants were all American citizens with no former exposure to tonal languages (which makes me wonder if people who speak tonal languages have bigger HGs than those who don’t).  Tonal languages account for only half of the languages in the world, so there are plenty more to choose from if you feel intimidated.

Besides, not all of us have a natural ability to excel at the things we enjoy, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep trying, or stop enjoying them!

Full article available on Eurekalert.