Language Trainers Blog

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

Does anyone else like to use foreign language films to help build their knowledge? As a world cinema fan, I have quite a few in my collection, and as a Spanish language student, I feel it’s in my best interests to have as many Spanish language films as possible!

Watching a movie in another language is an entirely different experience to a Hollywood blockbuster. One has to concentrate and focus undivided attention on the narrative, not only through the words spoken, but also the subtitles. I love immersing myself in a film this way. The subtitles aren’t always accurate, but it’s a good method to improve your vocabulary and find other ways to say a word or phrase. For pronunciation, it’s great, and just listening to the flow of the words can help too. I’ve heard many people state that they learned English through American and English television shows and films, and I’ve often been able to tell which they watched most of from the accent they use!

My recommendations for Spanish language films:

· Amores Perros (Mexico)

· The Motorcycle Diaries (Argentina)

· Maria Full Of Grace (Colombia)

· Bombon El Perro (Argentina)

· Secuestro Express (Venezuela)

· Live Flesh (Spain)

· Sin Nombre (Mexico)

· The Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina)

· XXY (Argentina)

· Chico y Rita (Cuba)

Other favourites include:

Kolya (Czech), Bus 174 (Brazilian Portuguese), Run Lola Run (German), Hidden (French), Gainsbourg (French), Lilya 4-Ever (Russian), Initial D (Cantonese), and Goodbye Lenin! (German).

Which films would you recommend to help with your language skills?

Since its beginnings, the Internet has been held mainly in the realm of languages that are able to be written in the English alphabet.  Sure, there are plenty of websites available in every language imaginable, but their domain names (or URLs, URIs) have had to be written in anglicised form.  You may not think that this small part of a site has that much impact on users, but for those who are unused to reading or writing English, even transliterations of their own language can be difficult.  Imagine seeing http://语言培训.com and trying to remember it to put into your browser.

So the big news is that the internet regulatory organisation Icann has approved a proposal to allow people to register domain names in non-Latin scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.  According to Icann, over half of the 1.6 billion internet users in the world, over half use non-Latin scripts, so this change should have a significant impact on the ease of use of the internet for many people.  It may also mean that there will be many more new users of the internet, as sites become more accessible in their audience’s native languages.

If you are learning a language with a cyrillic or pictorial script, this may represent a new challenge for you!  After International Domain Names (IDNs) are introduced sometime next year, it could make search engine experiences a lot more interesting.  Good luck with finding the information you want in the language you want!

Source: Guardian. Image: aljazeera.net.

New Secretary of State Hillary Rodham-Clinton shows us exactly why you should always get reliable translations, or at the very least, a second opinion.  In any case, we can all feel a little bit better about our little everyday language gaffes.  At least they don’t generally affect international relations.

Russian media have been poking fun at the US secretary of state over a translation error on a gift she presented to her Russian counterpart.

Hillary Clinton gave Sergei Lavrov a mock “reset” button, symbolising US hopes to mend frayed ties with Moscow.

But he said the word the Americans chose, “peregruzka”, meant “overloaded” or “overcharged”, rather than “reset”.

via BBC NEWS | Europe | Button gaffe embarrasses Clinton.

Some words must remain a mystery to all except native speakers. You would have to live in these places for quite a while to understand how to use correctly some of the following, which in their simply translated definitions contain what seem to us contradictory meanings:

 Hay kulu (Zrma, Nigeria) anything, nothing and also everything

 Irpadake (Tulu, India) ripe and un ripe

 Sitoshnna (Tulu, India) cold and hot

 Merripen (Romani, Gypsy) life and death

 Gift (Norwegian) poison and married

 Magazinschik (Russian) a shopkeeper and a shoplifter

 Danh t (Vietnamese) a church and a brothel

 Aloha (Hawaiian) hello and goodbye (the word has many other meanings including love, compassion, welcome and good wishes)

Some of the most fascinating examples of similarities and differences between languages are found in idioms and set expressions. Language learners are often surprised when a rather unusual expression has a word-for-word equivalent in another language. Just as often, they may be surprised to find that an expression does not have an equivalent in another language or that the equivalent differs in some ways.

Here are some expressions that rather unexpectedly have very similar equivalents in English, Spanish, and Russian – three languages that, although related, are quite far removed in most ways:

English: to shed crocodile tears
Russian: lit’ krokodilovy slyozy
Meaning: to pretend to cry in order to gain sympathy

English: to hit the ceiling
Spanish: tocar el cielo con las manos (literally “to take the sky in one’s hands”)
Meaning: to reach the limit; usually of your patience

English: to know something inside out
Russian: znat’ vdol’ I poperyok (literally “to know something lengthwise and crosswise”)
Meaning: to know something very well

English: to have nine lives
Spanish: tener siete vidas (literally “to have seven lives”)
Russian: dvuzhil’niy (literally “one with two lives”)
Meaning: to be good at avoiding death/danger

English: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”
Russian: “v Tulu so svoim samovarom ne ezdyat” (literally “don’t go to Tula with your own samovar”).
Meaning: When visiting a strange place, it’s best to follow the lead of the locals

On the other hand, there are no equivalents in English for the following Spanish idioms - see if you can guess what they mean from their literal translation:

cara de viernes (literally “Friday face”) :: a thin, wan face
decir cuatro verdades (literally “to tell four truths”) :: to speak one’s mind freely
saber más que las culebras (literally “to know more than the snakes”) :: to be cunning

At the same time, no language seems to have a word for word equivalent for the English expression “to go bananas” - although there is always a way to express the concept of craziness, no other language seems to use a fruit to draw the comparison between sanity and ‘going a little bit nuts’ (or perhaps in this case, a little ‘fruity’).