Language Trainers Blog

Most people think of language as a way to communicate and describe the world around us, but have you ever considered how much our language affects how we see the world?

I read a great article on the Wall Street Journal about just this.  It’s not something that I really think about unless it’s put in front of me, but language really can affect how we interpret the world.

One of the most interesting parts of the article talks about how some cultures (up to a third of languages!) don’t have words like left and right, and instead talk about direction in absolute terms (north, south, etc.).  In these languages, you would talk about things like your east leg, or your northwest arm, depending on which direction you were facing.  If you’re thinking about absolute directions all the time, you are most likely going to be better at finding your way around.  Also fascinating was that for people who speak languages where no blame is given to accidental wrongs (e.g. someone knocking over a glass), it is more difficult to remember who did it.  For example, in English we would say that ‘Jack knocked the glass over’, but in Japanese or Spanish, they would just say that the glass had been knocked over.  I wonder how much this has perpetuated the tendency in English-speaking countries to lay blame on others for things that happen to us.

Does language shape culture, or does the culture we live in affect the language we use?

We’ve all had that experience where we know we know a word, but we just can’t recall it.

An American study set out to reproduce this phenomenon to see if there was any difference between monolingual and bilingual speakers’ chances of having a ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ moment.

It has already been documented that people who only speak one language have fewer instances of words on the tips of their tongues, but researchers wanted to know if it was because people are sounding out words in their heads (and bilinguals have around twice as many words in their heads as monolinguals).

To study this, the researchers asked participants to name dozens of different objects (often with rarely-used names, like metronome and gyroscope), and counted the number of tip-of-the-tongue experiences (but only for those instances where the participant actually knew the word).  They found that monolingual participants had fewer occurrences, but that English-Spanish speakers had around the same number of tip-of-the-tongue moments as English-ASL (American Sign Language) speakers.

This led the researchers to believe that we’re not sounding things out in our heads at all (as ASL does not have sounds), but looking through a catalogue of rarely-used words.

Full article: New Scientist.

I’ve talked previously about learning language through other personal interests or hobbies, but how about through other academic subjects, or through general knowledge?  Imagine being able to play Trivial Pursuit in your new language!

One way to boost your vocabulary is to learn what countries, cities, and people are called in your adopted language. You might even learn a few things about each place on the way.

Nations Online is a fascinating website with all sorts of information about the world on it.  Their Country Lists page has links to lists of countries in eight different languages, as well as the local names for places.  It also has lists of countries sorted by the mega languages they speak (Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and French).

If you are learning one of these languages, it could be an interesting place to start research into geography, culture, traditions, and even local dialects of your chosen language.

Curt Smothers has developed an interesting exercise for Spanish learners based around Spanish-speaking country names, the names for their nationalities, and fun facts about the places.  This exercise could easily be adapted for any language, and is interesting for children and adults alike.

Some fun facts:

• Belize is the only non-Spanish speaking country in Central America.  Its official language is English.
• Papua New Guinea is a small country in the Pacific, and is the most linguistically-complex country in the world.  Over 800 languages are spoken there.
• The most widely-spoken languages in the world are (from most speakers to least): Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish, and Arabic.
• Africa is the continent with the most living languages, at over 2,000.
• There are nearly 7,000 living languages in the world.

Go to en.bab.la to order a full-size poster of the map above.

I recently started a salsa dance class, out of interest in dance, as well as a need for exercise.  I had assumed that because the website and the woman I dealt with were bilingual, that at least some of the instruction would be in English.  I was almost right.

I was the only person in the class who didn’t speak Chinese, so I mostly watched and followed along.  The names of the steps were in English, so that helped a bit.  In fact, I got to learn a few new terms because of the repetitive nature of the class, it helped with my listening skills, and I got to do something I enjoyed at the same time.

Taking an interest course in a different language is a great way to practice your language skills, but it may be difficult if your language level isn’t very high yet.  Practical courses are easier, because there is a lot of watching, demonstration, and practice involved, with the instruction not being the main part.

Even if you don’t want to take a course entirely in another language (or if this option isn’t available to you), you can still pick up or develop a hobby that involves other languages or culture.  Dance or music from other countries, foreign films, cuisine, crafts.  Learn more about terms you already know, for example, the background of Italian food names, or learn how to read knitting patterns in another language.  It will add interest to your existing hobbies, and won’t put too much pressure on your language learning.

Taking it to the extreme, American Jim O’Neill’s lifelong love of baseball language (not the sport itself, but the language used) has led him to create a dictionary of baseball terms.  Not just an English dictionary, but an English-Spanish one.

“I was just a little kid when I first heard ‘Can of corn,’ ” O’Neill said. “And I thought that was the coolest expression I had ever heard in my life.”

Hearing that baseball phrase, which means an easy-to-catch fly ball, started O’Neill on a decades-long quest to translate English baseball phrases into Spanish dialects.

O’Neill, faculty emeritus in the St. Cloud State University Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, turned his love of the language into a book he self-published, “The Bilingual Baseball Dictionary English-Spanish/Spanish-English.”

His dictionary contains about 8,000 definitions in its 344 pages, with nearly 3½ pages alone dedicated to various ways of saying “hit a home run” in Spanish.

I thought that most hobbies would only have a few pages’ worth of useful terms, but who knew baseball could have so many?

Full article from the St. Cloud Times.

Further to what I said the other day about attitudes towards communication, I find that it makes a big difference to be around people whose foreign language skills are equal to, or lower than yours.  Not exclusively, of course.  Let me explain:

If you are communicating with someone who speaks very little of your native language, you will be further encouraged to speak with them in theirs.  I find that the language of communication tends to be that which both parties can speak the best, kind of like water always sinking to the lowest level possible.  So, if you are an English speaker learning Spanish, and you meet a Spanish speaker who doesn’t speak English, naturally you will try to communicate in Spanish.  If the Spanish speaker’s English is better than your Spanish, then you will probably speak mostly in English.

On the other hand, if you are in a foreign country and your companions speak less of the local language than you do, often times you will be relied on to be the primary communicator.  I found this when my relatives came to visit me recently.  They can speak Cantonese, but not Mandarin, so I had to rely on my paltry Mandarin to get us around.  It’s always encouraging to find out exactly how much you know, and you may surprise yourself!  It doesn’t hurt that your companions are often impressed with your skills.

I find that the best speaker in a group will inevitably end up being the spokesperson.  It makes interactions smoother, but it doesn’t help the other members of the group with their confidence.

Be bold, and be proactive in your speaking.  Every opportunity to practice is a chance to get better.  Don’t miss one just because you feel that someone else can say it better than you.

I’m not really a fan of acronyms like LOL (laugh[ing] out loud), so I tend to stick with the written representations of laughing sounds, and the ones I usually use are hahaha (that’s funny!), hehehe (that’s kind of mean!), and hee (cute! squee!).

I’ve always thought the Spanish versions - jajaja, jejeje, jijiji - were really cute, but I have a tendency to read jajaja in a German accent, so it says ‘yes yes yes’.

Here are a few more ways* to show your humour in other languages:

Chinese
哈哈 / ha ha
嘿嘿 / hei hei
呵呵 / he he

Russian
ха-ха-ха (hahaha)
хи-хи (heehee)

Malaysian
kahkahkah (hahaha from comic books)

Turkish

eki eki (used in comics, as the older way of laughing)
muhaha (evil laughter)
nihaha (evil laughter)
puhaha, uhaha, zuhaha (used if something’s really funny)

German
hnhnhn, hmhmhm, chrchrchr (giggle)

My favourite at the moment is a Chinese coworker’s use of hohoho.  I don’t think she really means to sound like Santa Claus, but it brightens my day.

*Many of these examples are from WordReference Forums.

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.

The Chinese government has been reported to have plans to release a list of about 8,000 characters that they recommend be used for everyday purposes, including textbooks, documents, and names for newborn babies.  Limitations in updating technology to recognise all of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters in existence means that it is very difficult for the government to implement nationwide electronic ID cards, as well as digitisation of texts.  Their solution, rather than adding thousands of characters that most people will never use, is to restrict new baby names, as well as require people with very unusual names to change them.

Everyday Chinese involves about 3,500 characters, and the recommended 8,000 simplified characters are reportedly enough to convey “almost any concept in any field”.  This doesn’t bode well for the some 60 million Chinese people with obscure names, who may have to choose simpler names in order to receive the mandatory ID cards.

Government officials suggest that names have gotten out of hand, with too many parents picking the most obscure characters they can find or even making up characters, like linguistic fashion accessories. But many Chinese couples take pride in searching the rich archives of classical Chinese to find a distinctive, pleasing name, partly to help their children stand out in a society with strikingly few surnames.

By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans.

At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.”

While I don’t agree with people having to change their names for the sake of convenience for the government, cultures that have an alphabet-based written language can’t compare to this situation.  In English, we have our standard 26 letters, along with numbers, and various punctuation marks.  We occasionally adopt accent marks when we borrow from other languages.  In Chinese, the computer systems must recognise thousands upon thousands of characters.  Many countries also forbid parents to name their children potentially offensive or damaging names, and names with numerals in them have been denied (such as baby 4Real, who was later named Superman).

I think it would also be quite frustrating not being able to input one’s own name on a computer, or have to describe it to someone who had never even seen the character before, but then again, both my English and Chinese names are pretty common.

Full article from NYTimes.com.

FreeRice is an excellent website that combines education and charity.  The concept is simple: answer a question correctly and the UN World Food Program will donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry family somewhere in the world.

FreeRice started out as an English vocabulary game.  They would show you a word and then give four possible definitions or synonyms.  Since then, they have added English grammar, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and several other subject areas like mathematics, chemistry, and geography.

The difficulty level automatically adjusts depending on whether you get the question right or wrong, so the more questions you get right, the harder it becomes.  A great feature is that it will tell you the correct answers to the questions you miss, and repeats them later on in the game - an excellent revision method.

The  highest English vocabulary level they use is 60.  I’ve gotten to a maximum of 50 the last few times I’ve played.  The most memorable word I’ve learned today is jalousie, which is a type of window blind.  I actually guessed the answer correctly, even though it looks like a terrible attempt at spelling ‘jealousy’.

There’s no minimum or maximum number of questions, so there’s no excuse for having no time to feed people in need.  See if you can get to the highest level in your area of expertise, or even better, in the language you’re studying.

They say that nothing is free, but the cost of this is hardly worth mentioning, and the benefits far outweigh the effort of pointing and clicking!

Growing up, we referred to Friday the 13th as Black Friday. It wasn’t until last November that I found out that Black Friday is also the name for the big shopping day immediately following Thanksgiving in the USA, and apparently the Friday just before Christmas in the UK (a big party day). It seems that my usage is non-standard at best (that is, pretty much unknown). Black Friday is also the name that has been given to numerous tragic events, as it seems like bad things happen fairly often on Fridays.

In some places, especially the United States and Commonwealth countries, today is especially unlucky because it is the combination of two unlucky things: Friday, and the number 13. The superstition causes many people to pay extra attention to staying safe, not letting black cats cross their paths, and not walking under ladders (other supposedly unlucky occurrences). Some people are so paralysed by a fear of this day that they can’t leave their houses and some can’t do anything on these days. The phobia is known as paraskavedekatriaphobia, or friggatriskaidekaphobia, which I think is an excellent word to try to say.

Interestingly enough, though Friday and 13 have individually been seen as unlucky for centuries, the combination has only been seen as a particularly unlucky day for the last 100 or so years.

In Greece and in certain Spanish-speaking countries (Mexico, Spain, and some parts of Latin America), it’s not the Friday that should be feared, but Tuesday the 13th. Tuesday is considered the worst day of the week, and why not, as you haven’t even reached Wednesday (the ‘hump’ day) yet. As a result of this, the horror film franchise Friday the 13th, although released in Spain as Viernes 13 (Friday the 13th), was released in Argentina as Martes 13, or Tuesday the 13th.