Languages Online: The Best of July 2017

As it's the start of a new month, we're back with some of the internet's best stories and content from last month. Let's have a look:

10: Pollie-speak: 9 uniquely Australian political terms on Oxford Dictionaries

The Oxford Blog brought us some fascinating terms on Australian political speak in this article. Do you know your barbecue stopper from your wombat's tail? Don't worry if you don't! Find out about these interesting English terms in this article.

9: 7 Ways to Embrace Mistakes When Speaking a Foreign Language on I Will Teach You a Language

Anyone learning a language will appreciate this one. While making mistakes in a foreign language can be embarrassing, you should own those mistakes and use them to improve your foreign language skills. This article tells you how!

8: 5 Obscure Words For Everyday Feelings And Emotions on Mental Floss

You ever had a feeling you can't put into words? This article explaining words for weird sensations and feelings might help!

7: Raising a Truly Bilingual Child on The New York Times

Whether you're having a baby, trying to raise one bilingual, or just interested in child language acquisition, this is an article you should be reading!

ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

6: Cantonese v Mandarin: When Hong Kong languages get political on The BBC

This article discusses the languages spoken in Hong Kong and how the linguistic landscape has changed since the UK handed it back over to China in 1997.

5: Do you want fries with that? Data shows Americanization of English is rising on The Guardian

If you're American, this won't bother you. However, if you're a speaker of British English, you may feel a little annoyed. It turns out that English is becoming more and more American but that doesn't mean that there's anything to worry about.

4: End Result Irrelevant on Itchy Feet

We just love the comics on Itchy Feet. Especially this one! (You should also check out their Kickstarter for their travel card game here.

3: Bilingual Baby: How to Teach Your Baby Two Languages on Fluent in 3 Months 

Here's another article on child language acquisition. However, the article's focus is on making your baby bilingual. If you're interested in raising your child in a multilingual environment, here's how!

2: Babies can understand the difference between two languages while in the womb, scientists find on The Independent 

According to a recent study, babies can distinguish languages before they can even speak them. Check out this intriguing article about the study carried out by the University of Kansas.

1: We still have no idea why humans speak over 7,000 languages on Quartz

This month's most popular piece is an article on what would seem like a non-story. It turns out we don't know why there are so many languages in the world! If you'd like to know more about why we don't know stuff, you should check out this article.

Were there any other articles or content online this month that we should have featured? Tell us about them in the comments below.

Luck and Languages: Superstition Around the World

As today is the 13th, an unlucky number for some, I thought I'd delve a little deeper into how fortune and luck differs across languages. It seems that numbers play a huge role in superstition, and since there are plenty of countable objects that we deal with in everyday life, numbers seem to have made their way into the superstitions of almost every culture.

I won't get through them all today because almost anything can be considered lucky or unlucky, so I thought I'd just pick out a few of the most interesting numbers associated with luck.

4

Numbers are everywhere when it comes to fortune and misfortune. The number 4 is considered to be terribly unlucky in the Chinese culture and gives rise to tetraphobia. In Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Hakka, Min Nan, Japanese, and Korean, the pronunciation of the number 4 is very similar to the word for "death".

The luckiest garden ever.

Those aware of the superstitions related to the number 13 in Western cultures (which I'll get to shortly) will be familiar with the practice of avoiding specific numbers. In the cultures where the aforementioned languages are traditionally spoken, particularly South East Asia, the number (and even digit) 4 is avoided when possible, especially when numbering floors, doors, parking spaces, etc.

Despite 4's misfortune in Asia, in Irish and Celtic cultures, the four-leaf clover is said to be a sign of considerable fortune.

7

The number 7 is often considered to be very lucky, especially in prominent world religions. The Old Testament frequently references the  number 7, such as the creation of the world in 7 days in the Book of Genesis. In Judaism, the menorah has 7 branches, while in Islam, the earth is composed of 7 layers. Japanese mythology also features 7 lucky gods. The list goes on and on...

8

Just as the number 4 in Mandarin sounds like the word for "death", the number 8 also has a similar-sounding counterpart. However, unlike the number 4, the number 8 is considered to bring about good fortune. This is because the number 8 in Mandarin sounds like "fortune" or "prosper", following a rule can seemingly be applied to a whole host of numbers in Chinese.

The luckiness of the number 8 also dictates all kinds of behaviours by both people and companies, who love to use the digit "8" in any way they possibly can. For example, Sichuan Airlines paid a hefty sum for a phone number that consisted only of 8s, and the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games started on the 8th August at 8 p.m. local time.

13

In many English-speaking cultures, 13 is considered to be an unlucky number, so much so that it has its own phobia, triskaidekaphobia. The term itself, like most fears and phobias, is named using Greek words. There are a number of suggestions as to why 13 is considered to be unlucky, including the number of people at the Last Supper, the date of the arrest order for the Knights Templar, and the number of full moons in a year.

However, this superstition goes even further, especially in several Western cultures, if the 13th day of the calendar month coincides with a Friday, making the dreaded Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th

It is suggested that Friday the 13th is considered to be unlucky due to the number's prominence in the story of Jesus: 13 people (12 disciples and Jesus himself) were at the Last Supper, plus the fact that Jesus was killed on the Friday. If you are inexplicably terrified of Friday the 13th, you may have paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Tuesday the 13th

While I grew up with the knowledge that Friday the 13th was an unfortunate day, if you grew up in a Spanish- or Greek-speaking culture or country, you'll probably consider Tuesday the 13th to be the unlucky day.

What numbers are considered lucky and unlucky in your language or culture? Tell us about them and the reasons why they're lucky or unlucky in the comments below!

Country Profile: The Languages of China

Exactly two years ago, we started a regular series of language profiles. Now we're replacing it with a new series in a very similar vein, country profiles. While the language profiles covered one particular language, the new country profiles will be a look at the linguistic makeup of one country in particular.

When we did language profiles, we worked our way through a list, starting with the language with the most native speakers. As we certainly missed a few of the world's many languages, we'll still occasionally do language profiles, just not weekly as we have been doing.

This week marks the first of our country profiles. We're starting with the languages spoken in the world's most populous country, China. After that, we'll work our way around the world, making sure to skip the places we've already covered during their national holidays.

The flag of the People's Republic of China

The Languages of China

Almost one fifth of the world's population lives in China, and Mandarin Chinese is spoken by around 840,000,000 people as a native language. Mandarin has de facto status as the national language.

However, with around 1.3 billion people in a single country, there are certainly more languages than just Chinese. In fact, China has 8 official languages: Standard Chinese, Cantonese, English, Portuguese, Uyghur, Tibetan, Zhuang, and Mongolian.

Sino-Tibetan Languages

Since the Sino-Tibetan languages are indigenous to most of what makes up modern-day China, you can expect plenty of these languages to be spoken in the country. Aside from Mandarin, Cantonese is also another Sino-Tibetan language with official status.

Cantonese is natively spoken by around 62,000,000 people in the world. In China, Cantonese is an official language in Hong Kong and Macau and used by the local governments in these places.

Unsurprisingly, Tibetan is spoken in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The language is spoken by over one million people and is written using a Brahmic script, a type of abugida.

Indo-European Languages

You may have spotted a couple of Indo-European languages in the list of official languages in China. These are the lasting heritage of European colonialism in China.

The English language has official language status in Hong Kong, which was a British colony for 156 years until it was handed back to China in 1997. Likewise, the Portuguese language is spoken as an official language in Macau, which was a Portuguese colony between 1557 and 1999, making it both the first and last European colony in China.

Turkic Languages

The Uyghur language is spoken around the world by up to 11 million people. Within China, it is principally spoken in Xinjiang, where it has official status.

Mongolian Languages

The Mongolian language is natively spoken by nearly 6 million people in the world. In addition to being the official language of Mongolia, it is also an official language of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China.

Tai-Kadai Languages

The Zhuang languages are the last of China's 8 official languages. In total, around 16 million people speak one of the Zhuang languages in the south of China. However, the languages are not mutually intelligible to one another and in some cases are more related to another language from the Tai language family than each other. Perhaps they should be reclassified.

Other Languages

"Surely there are more than 8 languages spoken in China?", we hear you ask. You are right. In fact, there are apparently nearly 300 languages spoken in China, far too many for one post.

Languages in the News: February 2014

As we enter March we're looking back at some of the language news stories that were hitting the headlines in February, and the very end of January. While most headlines were dominated by news of the Sochi Winter Olympics, the month ended with the Washington Post covering an interesting story from the US claiming that a legislator in New Mexico wanted to count programming as a foreign language skill.

The Week ended the month with the story of how Netflix managed to alienate its deaf customers, through a variety of bad subtitling practice.

Is French important? The countries that make up this flag
would say so.

One of the most controversial series of language stories stemmed from a piece in The New York Times stating that the French government is a big advocate of French language programmes in New York. This led to an article in New Republic telling us to stop pretending that French is an important language, claiming that Spanish and Chinese are more important languages for New Yorkers to learn. While this may be true, it divided opinions due to its dismissive nature of French as an important language, rather than simply stating that the other two languages are more important.

Business Insider provided a rebuttal by giving us 7 reasons you should teach your children French, showing us that French isn't as unimportant as the New Republic article would have us believe.

The Guardian gave us an interesting article on untranslatable words, and though none of the words were technically untranslatable, the article was more focused on difficult to translate words. Elsewhere in The Guardian there were concerns at the drop in language students in UK universities, an ongoing problem that doesn't seem to show any signs of being rectified under the current government, but we'll leave politics for a politics blog.

The BBC asked the question whether English still borrows words at the start of the month and in mid-February was decoding the signs left my construction workers on pavements.

The Register explained an interesting issue surrounding Google Translate. It just so happens Google Translate is terrible because Google Translate is terrible. This is due to people using the machine translation for websites and other documents then publishing them online. This leads to Google using these translated documents as sources to train the programme, meaning that Google accepts these poor translations as real translations and effectively makes itself dumber.

A piece in The Week looked at common words in English that people can't agree on how to pronounce. 

The island of Ireland, the home of Irish.

Meanwhile The Irish Times reported on a march for language rights, though they did have some good news later on as South Dublin council launched a programme promoting and celebrating the Irish language.

The Economist explained the difference between a dialect and a language, after Hong Kong claimed Cantonese was not an official language but rather a dialect of Mandarin.

The Oxford Dictionaries Blog gave us the lexicon to understand freestyle skiing at the Sochi games and Buzzfeed, in a surprise turn, gave us a list, albeit a list of 21 Victorian slang words that we should be using.

The Smithsonian showed us that "huh?" is an almost universal utterance and a fascinating piece by Ben Faccini in Aeon explained why he wanted his children to be bilingual.

The Guardian was back at the end of the month and asked whether musicians are better language learners.

Aside from these news stories, we also discovered James Chapman's Tumblr, which includes many lovely drawing of onomatopoeia in various languages.

That's all the news we had for February, but if there are any we missed that you feel deserve a mention, tell us about them in the comments below.

The Best Multilingual Cities In Asia

Recently we've been looking at the best multilingual cities across various places in the world, from Europe to Canada and the USA, and from Mexico and the Caribbean onto South America. In a similar fashion, today we'll be looking at the best cities in Asia for linguaphiles.

Darjeeling in 1880.

Darjeeling, India - Darjeeling isn't just a type of tea, it's also a place in India where the tea comes from. Millions of kilos of Darjeeling tea are made here every year and the city is also a popular destination for tourists and Bollywood film crews.

As you will know from our language profiles, India is a multilingual haven and Darjeeling is no exception. Aside from the beautiful scenery and perfect climate, you can find speakers of Nepali, English, Hindi and Bengali.

Delhi, India - India's capital New Delhi, which is part of the administrative region of Delhi, is home to literally hundreds of languages. English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi are the most commonly spoken, though thanks to cultural diversity, many other languages are spoken here, making it a perfect destination for those who love languages.

Mumbai, India - Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is another prime example of India's linguistic variety. The city boasts speakers of English, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, and over one hundred other languages.

As well as being a multilingual city, Mumbai is also rich in history and culture and well worth a visit for those who can bear with India's climate.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam - The former French colony of Ho Chi Minh, originally known as Saigon and colloquially as the Paris of the East, is home to several languages, including Vietnamese, Cantonese, English, and French. English and French are spoken mainly due to colonisation and the Vietnam War.

Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam, and District 1 is a popular tourist destination which bears a huge French influence. It's a must-see for those travelling through Vietnam.

The Bank of China building in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong - The former British colony of Hong Kong has speakers of Cantonese, English, and Mandarin. As one of the most densely populated areas in the world, Hong Kong is not recommended for those who like their getaways to be tranquil and quiet, but if you like the hustle and bustle it should be top of your list of places to go.

Macau - Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese, and English are the languages on almost everybody's tongue when you get to Macau. As one of China's two special administrative regions (the other being Hong Kong), Macau was formerly a Portuguese colony, hence the lasting fluency in the language.

Much like Hong Kong, Macau is a popular tourist destination and the tourist industry accounts for a large portion of the economy. Again, this is a bustling destination and comes highly recommended for those who like a different kind of holiday.

The Best Multilingual Cities In Canada

Since we covered the best multilingual cities in Europe last week, we felt it was only right to look at some North American cities this weekend. Today we're covering Canada, and tomorrow we'll head south into the US. Let's start our visit with Vancouver.

English Bay, Vancouver

Vancouver, British Columbia - If you leave Vancouver heading west you'll end up in "the East". Vancouver's proximity (it is only a few thousand miles, after all!) to Asia has helped cultivate some of the immigration that has left one of the World's Most Livable Cities with a huge Asian population and, as a result, Chinese and Cantonese as very popular languages within the city.

Aside from Mandarin and Cantonese, Punjabi, Persian, Tagalog, Korean, Italian, German, and French can also be heard in Vancouver. Despite French also being an official language of Canada, Mandarin and Cantonese are more popular in this area.

Toronto, Ontario - Given that Ontario borders Québec, Canada's principally French-speaking province, you can expect Toronto to have a fairly mixed bag when it comes to languages. Often confused as being the capital by ignorant foreigners (and a few poorly-educated Canadians), Toronto has very multicultural surroundings which can be found leaking into the city and government.

Ottawa, Ontario - Sitting right next to Québec, Canada's actual capital city has its own motto in both English and French. Advance-Ottawa-En Avant represents the country's two official languages, and the University of Ottawa is the largest bilingual university in the world.

Olympic Stadium in Montréal, which features
the tallest inclined tower in the world.

Montréal, Québec - As you could guess by the accent on the letter e, Montréal, or Montreal when Anglicised, is the largest city in the province of Québec. Recently the city has been in the headlines as a centre of controversy following multilingual political upheaval and the language debate within Québec. The famed Pastagate scandal following the over-Francofication of the city and tensions between French-speaking and English-speaking communities has been tarnishing Montréal's reputation.

That said, Montréal is a wonderful melting pot of French and English cultures, not to mention that Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and Arabic can also be heard around the streets of the world's second largest French-speaking city.

That concludes our quick trip across Canada. Are than any multilingual cities you feel we may have missed? Tell us about them in the comments below! Tomorrow we're heading south into the US.