Language Trainers Blog

A father and daughter from Gwynedd, North Wales, are refusing to pay their parking fines as the tickets were not written in Welsh. Noel Jones and his daughter Bethan were issued with the £65 tickets after parking in the car park of a village community hall in Penrhyndeudraeth. The private car park is primarily for the use of customers, and resident drivers have been issued with bilingual notices regarding the parking enforcements for the past two years.

67% of locals use Welsh as their primary language, however both Noel and Bethan Jones are fluent in English. The pair feel that the tickets are not in line with council policy as they are not written in both English and Welsh, and therefore they should not have to pay.

The ticket was issued by a private firm, FlashPark, which is based in London. A spokesman for FlashPark has said that the tickets will be reissued in Welsh.

Language cards are now being used to communicate with tourists who find themselves in difficulty when climbing mountains in Austria. More than half of all mountain rescue operations in Carinthia, in the south of Austria, are for tourists who do not speak any German or English.

The A6 size cards hold questions pertaining to any injuries the patient might have, and help the mountain rescue teams communicate how the patient might be safely rescued. It is hoped that the climbers will point to their answers in their own language.

Other popular tourist regions in Austria are also looking to start using the cards.

Latvia is set to hold a referendum on February 19th, to decide whether Russian should officially be the country’s second national language. Currently, 44% of the population are Russian speakers, however, 16% of the population are ethnic Russians, who do not hold Latvian citizenship thus are not eligible to vote.* According to Latvian law, more than half of Latvian voters must vote in favour for the proposition to pass.

The proposal does not have the backing of President Andris Berzins. “Granting the Russian language the status of the second state language is the denial of Latvia as a national state and it contradicts the basics of the Satversmes (Constitution),” he said. Parliament rejected the bill in December, after a petition signed by 187,000 citizens was forwarded to the Government by the Dzimtā valoda (Mother Tongue) organisation.

Latvia most recently regained independence from Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2004, Government reforms introduced restrictions on the use of the Russian language in schools.

*Figures sourced from New Europe Online

To coincide with Plain English Day last Friday, (December 9th) the Plain English Campaign announced the latest winners of its annual “Golden Bull Awards”. Each year, the campaign presents awards for the best and worst examples of English.

This year’s winners include the Met Office for using phrases such as “overnight tonight” and “temperatures really struggling,” and my personal favourite, Flybe, for this gem in a letter sent to a customer:

I believe that what has not been explained to you is that it is not a £4.50 card charge, in the process of booking a flight, you will have a booking fee which is for a Credit Card (return journey), booking fee £4.50 and Credit Card supplement £1.00, for a (one way) booking fee £5.50 and credit card charge £1.00.

Concerning a Debit Card (return flight) booking fee £4.50 and there is no additional fee for a Debit Card. for a (one way) booking fee £5.50 with no additional Debit Card charge. If you which any more details about our charges, you can call our call centre on 0871 700 2000 / 01392 268500 (from outside the UK) (calls cost 10p per minute; calls from mobiles and some networks may be higher) and one of our agent will be happy to assist you.

Regards

Flybe

Should you wish to use some nonsensical English, the website also has a Gobbledygook Generator, which is fun!

This weekend saw the 8^th annual Liet International Song Contest, which was held in Udine, Northern Italy. The competition is a lesser known version of the Eurovision Song Contest, and songs must be performed in one of 82 languages recognised in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The competition winner is decided by a group of music experts, whereas the second prize is voted for by viewers and the studio audience.

Out of this year’s 12 finalists, the winner was Janna Eijer, from the Netherlands, who sang in Frisian, a language which is spoken in Germany and the Netherlands.

Second prize went to Coffeeshock Company, an Austrian band who perform in Burgenland-Croatian; a language which is spoken in Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

Other entries were in Friul and Ladin, (both spoken in Italy) Rumantsch, (spoken in Switzerland) Asturian and Basque, (both spoken in Spain) Vepsian and Udmurt, (both spoken in Russia) Gaelic, (spoken in Scotland) Sami,(Scandinavia) and Irish Gaelic (Ireland).

The World Shakespeare Festival takes place next year in locations around the UK, starting from 23^rd April. As part of this event, the Globe Theatre in London will be taking on one of its most ambitious projects yet. The project, entitled Globe to Globe, encompasses 37 of Shakespeare’s plays, each performed in a different language. This will run for 6 weeks only, from 21^st April – 9^th June 2012.

If you’d like to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Korean, Macbeth in Polish, Hamlet in Lithuanian, or Richard II in Palestinian Arabic, tickets start at £5 and are available here.

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!

Language is constantly evolving, so it’s quite natural that certain words will be replaced and updated. When you read Shakespeare, for example, there is often an index of words to refer to since they are no longer in use today. A new survey has found that text speak is diminishing the usage of such traditional British words. The study of 2000 adults was carried out to mark the launch of Planet Word, the book which accompanies the series of the same name.

J.P. Davidson, the author of Planet Word said: ”This could be viewed as regrettable, as there are some great descriptive words that are being lost and these words would make our everyday language much more colourful and fun if we were to use them. But it’s only natural that with people trying to fit as much information in 140 characters that words are getting shortened and are even becoming redundant as a result.”

The book lists a top 20 of the unused words.

1. Bally: A word from 1885 - a euphemism for bloody

2. Laggard: An 18th Century word to describe someone who lags behind or responds slowly

3. Felicitations: To express congratulations

4. Rambunctious: Boisterous or unruly

5. Verily: From Middle English, simply means true or in truth

6. Salutations: A welcome greeting

7. Betwixt: Originated before 950, and means neither one nor the other

8. Lauded: From the Latin laudāre, to praise

9. Arcane: Known or understood by very few

10. Raconteur: A person skilled in telling stories, originated in the 19th Century, from the French verb, raconter, to tell. Most known now from Jack White’s band, The Racounteurs

11. Cad: An ill-bred man, originates from 19th Century, derived from the word Caddie

12. Betrothed: The person to whom one is engaged

13. Cripes: An expression of surprise

14. Malaise: A vague or unfocused feeling of mental uneasiness

15. Quash: To put down or suppress completely; quell

16. Swell: Originates before 900 from the Middle English verb swellen, meanings include the verb to inflate and an adjective which describes if something is excellent

17. Balderdash: From the 1590s, it was originally a jumbled mix of liquors (milk and beer, beer and wine, etc.), before being transferred in 1670s to ’senseless jumble of words’

18. Smite: To strike, deal a blow

19. Spiffing: From the word spiff, meaning well-dressed, means superb

20. Tomfoolery: Foolish behaviour

Are there  any words you’d like to see banished to history?

Language journal has published a study by three linguists at the University of Lyon, showing that certain languages are more or less equally efficient.

The study compared the efficiency of conveying information in spoken German, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, English, French, Italian, and Spanish.

Researchers took a sample group of 59 people, who each read a sample text in their native language. The recordings were then edited to remove the pauses, and syllables were tallied in order to draw conclusions regarding the density of information communicated in each language.

Japanese was found to be the fastest spoken language, with 7.84 syllables spoken per second. Mandarin Chinese was the slowest, with the average syllabic speech rate at 5.18. However, the researchers note that in ‘faster’ languages, the individual parts of words are shorter, meaning there are more syllables. They concluded that a higher rate of syllables by no means implies that content can be transmitted more quickly.

A more comprehensive study, carried out by University of Klagenfurt linguistics professor Gertraud Fenk-Oczlon in 2010, reached similar conclusions. In this case, 51 different languages were recorded, with Indian language Tegulu found to be the fastest, and Thai the slowest.

The latest study, in more detailed form, can be found here.

Some debate regarding language usage has been stirred up recently, after respected French language body L’Academie Francaise placed some English words on their blacklist of words to “ban”.

In reality, only two words/phrases have been listed so far – “le best of” and “impacter,” a word which means “to impact” and is a mixture of French and English. This move is intended to preserve and enrich the French language. It does not include English words such as “weekend” and “sandwich” which are in everyday use in France. Other words, such as “email,” are encouraged to be abandoned in favour of the correct French, in this case, “courriel”. Here in the UK, a lot of French phrases have been incorporated into everyday language; soiree, raison d’etre, baguette, rendezvous, and deja-vu, to name a few. The difference is that my keyboard doesn’t have the necessary accents to type the words correctly!

Both the French and English languages are historically in no way “pure”, they derive from the Latin and Germanic languages respectively, and have evolved throughout time, incorporating and adapting words from other languages. Whilst it is admirable that steps are being taken to preserve a language, a few crossover words, especially in an ever changing multi-lingual world, surely can’t hurt as long as they are recognised as foreign words?