Language Trainers Blog

I was on a plane from Hong Kong to Bangkok this afternoon, and despite having a delayed take-off, a bit of turbulence and truly mediocre food, it was not really that bad.  While they were rolling the trolleys down the aisle, I noticed that the flight crew were (as is usually the case with Asian airlines) quite adept at switching languages to suit the passengers.  A bit of racial profiling probably comes in handy for them, as they pick a language to start with, and if they are mistaken, change almost seamlessly to a more suitable tongue after absorbing voice cues from the passenger.  Cantonese is the default for this Hong Kong-based airline, and as I look as if I speak it, I usually end up speaking some sort of Canto-English to get my order across.  This crew was particularly good at remembering which language was required for each passenger, and flipped back and forth between Cantonese for in-crew discussions, and English, Thai, or Mandarin for the paying customers.  I saw some very admirable high-altitude, high-speed language switching today.

The only problems they seem to come across are when the announcements have to be made in triplicate (English, Cantonese, Thai), and it can be a long time before some people realise they are being told to sit down until the plane has finished taxiing down the runway.  Eventually one of the stewardesses just came out and started waving her hands in a ’sit down!’ motion.  Sometimes language barriers do just need to be jumped over.

…and you could only take one word with you, what word would it be?

Obviously this is a ridiculous, hypothetical situation, but we’ve all seen The Little Mermaid, right?  What if she’d been given a single word that she could say to Prince Eric?

In English, all of our salutation words and phrases are different.  Hello, hi, good morning, how are you, fine, goodbye, bye, toodle-oo.

In more than a few other languages, the same word can be used for both ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’.  In French, it is ‘salut‘; in Thai it is ‘sawasdee‘; and in Italian it is ‘ciao‘.

Similarly, in French you can use ‘ça va‘ to mean both ‘how are you?’ (informal) and ‘fine’ (or, ‘it goes’).

In Laos and Hawaii, there are even more flexible words.  ‘Sabai di‘ (Lao) and ‘aloha‘ (Hawaiian) can be used to mean ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘welcome’, ‘fine’ (in response to ‘how are you?’), and many other things.  It’s difficult to establish exactly how many ways they can be used by their local people.

Adding in a question syllable (’baw‘), an entire conversation can be carried out in Laos thus:

A: Sabai di! (Hello!)
B: Sabai di! (Hello!)
A: Sabai di baw? (How are you?)
B: Sabai di. Sabai di baw? (Fine. How are you?)
B: Sabai di! (Fine!)

Added to this, both the Lao and the Hawaiian peoples are renowned for their friendly nature and hospitality, so maybe they’re onto something.

Perhaps, given the awful hypothetical choice, I’d pick ‘aloha’!

I have found this curious list of English names meanings when they are written in other languages:

Adam (Arabic) skin

Alan (Indonesian) comedian

Alf (Arabic) thousand, millennium

Anna (Arabic) moans and groans

Calista (Portuguese) chiropodist

Camilla (Spanish) stretcher

Cilla (Zarma, Nigeria) basket

Doris (Bajan, Barbados) police van

Eliza (Basque) church

Eve (Rapa Nui, Easter Island) buttocks

Fay (Zarma, Nigeria) divorce

Fred (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian) peace

Jim (Korean) baggage

Kim (Ainu, Japan) mountain

Kylie (Dharug, Australia) boomerang

Laura (Greek) groups of monks’ huts

Luke (Chinese) traveller

Marianna (Italian) accomplice who tells a gambler the cards held by other players

Sara (Hausa, Nigeria) snakebite

Sid (Arabic) plaster

Susan (Thai) cemetery

Vera (Italian) wedding ring

The capital of Thailand is abbreviated by all Thais to Krung Thep, and referred to as Bangkok, meaning literally ‘grove of the wild plums’. But, bearing in mind that there are no spaces between words in written Thai, its full correct name is:

Krungthephphramahanakhonbowonratanakossinmahintharayuthayamahadilokphiphobnovpharadradchataniburiromudomsantisug

meaning: City of Angels, Great City and Residence of the Emerald Buddha, Impregnable City of the God Indra, Grand Capital of the World, Endowed with the Nine Precious Gems, Abounding in Enormous Royal Palaces which resemble the Heavenly Abode where reigns the Reincarnated God, a City given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm.

It rather leaves the Welsh

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwillantysiliogogogoch

meaning St Mary’s Church by the pool of the white hazel trees, near the rapid whirlpool, by the red cave of the Church of St Tysilio in the shade.

At the other end of the scale are three places called A (in Denmark, Norway and Sweden), and two more, in Alaska and France, called Y.

H. Douglas Brown has an interesting story to share, involving university students and alcohol. Not the most surprising of combinations, perhaps…

A hundred college students were gathered for an audition at the University of Michigan. They had all responded to an advertisement asking human subjects to participate in a “psychological experiment”.

When Professor Alexander Guiora and his colleagues made their way to the front of the room, they explained that one half of the audience, randomly divided, will go to room A, and the other half to room B. The ones in room A were given a small glass of punch; in the punch was one and a half ounces of vodka. Volunteers in room B got the same punch, but without the vodka. After a short period of time the participants in both rooms were led to a large language laboratory, where they simultaneously took a recorded test in which they were invited to try to pronounce words in the Thai language (which none of the subjects knew). After the test they were dismissed, with thanks and a token payment for their trouble.

Later, the results of the experiment were published. Guiora announced that group A did a significantly better job of pronouncing words in Thai than group B. Conclusion: the alcohol lowered the students’ inhibitions, giving group A the advantage.

There is plenty to quibble about in this experiment, but it has been shown via other methods that one of the greatest blocks to adult second-language success is fear: fear of failing, fear of making a fool of yourself in front of others, fear of falling flat on your face. Children are far less inhibited linguistically than adults. Beyond a certain sensitivity to in-group slang, children don’t pay much attention to grammatical correctness and linguistic forms.

Much like inebriated adults.