Much like the Olympics themselves, this term has Greek origins. Since the pentathlon includes five events, it's a merger of the Greek word pente (meaning "five") and athlon (meaning "contest"). However, it used to be called the pentathlum, using the Latin name.
Rowing
This event gets its name through Proto-Germanic roots and lent itself to a variety of Northern European languages. When it arrived in Old English, the verb "to row" was rowan.
Rugby
Like "badminton", this sport gets its name from where the sport was first played. Rugby should really be called "rugby football". Rugby is a town in Warwickshire, England, if you were wondering.
Sailing
Like rowing, this sport's name also originates from Proto-Germanic. In Old English, the word was seglinge, but became sailing when the Old English word for "sail" changed.
Shooting
Shooting comes from Proto-Indo-European roots, and was scotung in Old English before referring to the sport as of 1885.
Swimming
Interestingly, the verb "to swim" was swimman in Old English, but "swimming" comes from making "swim" a verbal noun.
Taekwondo
Like judo, taekwondo is a way of doing something. In Korean, do is "a way or manner", tae means "to kick", and gwon means "to punch", so taekwondo is literally "the way of kicking and punching".
Tennis
Tennis comes from French; Old French, to be precise. In fact, it comes from the Old French verb tenir, which means to hold, receive, or take. The imperative form of this verb was tenez, which entered Middle English as tenetz and tenes. This evolved into the "tennis" we know today.
Triathlon
Remember pentathlon? The term triathlon is almost the same, but with pente being replaced by tri, meaning three, instead of five. It only has three events, rather than five.
Volleyball
The word volley comes from Latin volare, meaning "to fly", and then French volée. It eventually referred to the act of volleying the ball in tennis in the mid-19th century before combining with the word "ball" to give us the term "volleyball" that we use today.
Water Polo
The word for the game "polo" came from the Balti word for "ball", polo. Polo was played in Asia long before it made its way to England and was adapted for the water, at which point it became known as water polo.
Wrestling
Wrestling came from the Old English term wræstlung, while referring directly to the sport itself was the verbal noun of wræstlian.
Well, that's the remainder of our Olympic etymologies! We hope you enjoy the games as much as we surely will.
There are plenty of lists around the internet of the hardest and easiest languages to learn. While these lists can be interesting and helpful if you're trying to decide upon a new language to learn, they're inherently flawed due to the idea that such languages actually exist.
Hold on! I'm not saying languages don't exist; that'd be completely absurd. Of course they do! What I'm saying is that it's pretty much impossible to classify languages as difficult or easy to learn. However, I have seen a number of clever criteria for attempting to create these classifications, so I'd like to look at a few of them today.
Hong Kong, the home of both Chinese and English!
Similarity to your Native Language
One of the first ways many people classify language difficulty comes down to similarity to the learner's native language. While I agree that I've seen plenty of evidence to support this statement, this does mean that the world's hardest or easiest language differs depending on your native language. Does this mean it could also be affected by which dialect of your native language you speak? I'd love to see some studies about that...
Complexity
The complexity of a language is said to influence how easily somebody can learn it. However, "how complex is a language?" is as difficult to answer as "how difficult is a language to learn?". If one language uses more phonemes in speech, is it more difficult than one that uses more characters in its alphabet? How do we assign value to each component part? We couldn't possibly all come to an agreement on which elements complicate a language the most and which parts the least.
Time Spent Studying
Time is a fairly scientific way of measuring progress. The less time taken to become proficient in a language, the easier the language must be. However, at what point is a speaker "proficient"?
I don't find language learning to be a journey from A to B with a definite endpoint, but rather an ongoing adventure. I definitely couldn't pinpoint an exact moment when I became proficient in any of the languages I speak.
If proficiency is judged by passing a test, then the tests would have to be standardised across the entire world. I'm sure they're not...
All roads lead to Rome, but do all Romance languages lead to
a simple language learning experience?
Easy Languages
When it comes to English speakers, most lists put the Romance languages in the easy category. French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese tend to feature regularly as easy languages to learn because of their similarity to English.
Difficult Languages
The languages that generally get lumped together as the most difficult languages tend be geographically and linguistically distant from English (at least if you consider the language to be from the UK, as I tend to do). Languages from Europe don't tend to be included in this list.
Many of these languages make use of a different writing system to English, such as Arabic, Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese. However, I'm sure Mandarin speakers wouldn't struggle as much with the Japanese writing systems as someone more familiar with the Latin alphabet would.
With all that said, I tend to find that similarities can also make something more difficult to learn instead of simpler. For example, I know how to walk and I know how to drive. If you make me walk on ice, I struggle, and if you put me in a car that I'm not familiar with, I have to spend a while working out where everything is. However, I can still walk to the car and start driving and start walking when I get out the car, despite the two being completely different activities. Differences can make something more memorable!
While these are all fair ways to measure how difficult a language might be, they all ignore a number of factors. I'm not disparaging those who have tried to measure something that's seemingly immeasurable, I'm just saying that you can comfortably ignore a lot of these lists. If you want to learn Tagalog before you learn French, then go for it!
Everyone has their own experiences while learning a language. In fact, in a recent post I complained about the subjunctive tense and a few of the reasons that English speakers may find it difficult. That said, I know plenty of people who comfortably master it without even breaking a sweat!
What I'm trying to say is that when learning a language, there will always be things you find easy and things you find difficult. You'll never get to find out which is which if you don't start!
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!
As rumor has it, you can’t learn to have a good accent if you’re above the age of 7, or 12, or some other age that you’ve most definitely already exceeded. But that can’t possibly be true. Singers and actors learn new accents all the time, and they’re not, on average, smarter than everyone else (and they certainly don't all start before the age of 7).
So what’s going on here? Why does everybody tell you that you can’t learn good pronunciation as an adult? And if that’s not true, what is?
In this article, we’ll take a tour through the research on speech perception and pronunciation, and we’ll talk about learning pronunciation efficiently as an adult. But first, allow me a moment on my soapbox:
Pronunciation is important
This is a big topic, and as an opera singer, it’s a topic close to my heart. I find accents extraordinarily important.
This is a fényképezőgép
For one, if you don’t learn to hear the sounds in a new language, you’re doomed to have a hard time remembering it. We rely upon sound to form our memories for words, and if you can’t even comprehend the sounds you’re hearing, you’re at a disadvantage from the start. (Try memorizing Hungarian's word for camera, fényképezőgép [recording] or train station, vásutállomás [recording]. These words are brutal until you really get a feel for Hungarian sounds.)
But in addition to the memory issue, a good accent connects you to people. It shows people from another culture that you’ve not only taken the time and effort to learn their vocabulary and their grammar; you’ve taken the time to learn how their mouths, lips and tongues move. You’ve changed something in your body for them – you’ve shown them that you care – and as a result, they will open up to you.
I’ve seen this repeatedly when I sing or watch concerts in Europe. As a rule, audiences are kind, but when you sing in their native language, they brace themselves. They get ready to smile politely and say, “What a lovely voice!” or “Such beautiful music!” But beneath the surface, they are preparing for you to butcher their language and their heritage before their eyes. No pressure.
At that moment, if you surprise them with a good accent, they open themselves up. Their smiles are no longer polite; they are genuine. You’ve shown them that you care, not just with your intellect, but with your body, and this sort of care is irresistible.
But enough romanticizing; how do you actually do something about pronunciation?
Research on Ear Training and Pronunciation
Good pronunciation is a combination of two main skills: Ear training and mouth training. You learn how to hear a new sound, and you learn how to make it in your mouth. It’s the first of these two skills that’s the trickiest one; if you can hear a sound, you can eventually learn to produce it accurately, but before then, you’re kind of screwed. So for the moment, we’ll focus on ear training.
While doing research for my book, I came upon a wonderful set of studies by James McClelland, Lori Holt, Julie Fiez and Bruce McClandiss, where they tried to teach Japanese adults to hear the difference between “Rock” and “Lock.” After reading their papers, I called up and interviewed Dr. McClelland and Dr. Holt about their research.
The first thing they discovered is that ear training is tricky, especially when a foreign language contains two sounds that are extremely similar to one sound in your native language. This is the case in Japanese, where their “R” [ɺ] is acoustically right in between the American R [ɹ] and L [ɫ]. When you test Japanese adults on the difference between Rock and Lock (by playing a recording of one of these words and asking them which one they think you played), their results are not significantly better than chance (50%). So far, so bad.
The researchers tried two kinds of practice. First, they just tested these Japanese adults on Rock and Lock for a while, and checked to see whether they improved with practice.
They didn’t.
This is very bad news. It suggests that practice doesn’t actually do anything. You can listen to Rock and Lock all day (or for English speakers, 불/뿔/풀[bul/pul/ppul] in Korean), and you’re not going to learn to hear the differences between those sounds. This only confirms the rumors that it’s too late to do anything about pronunciation. Crap.
Their second form of practice involved artificially exaggerating the difference between L and R. They began with extremely clear examples (RRrrrrrrrrock), and if participants improved, stepped up the difficulty until they reached relatively subtle distinctions between the two recordings (rock). This worked a little better. The participants began to hear the difference between Rock and Lock, but it didn’t help them hear the difference between a different pair of words, like Road and Load. In terms of a pronunciation training tool, this was another dead end.
Then they tried feedback, and everything changed.
Testing pairs of words with feedback
They repeated the exact same routine, only this time, when a participant gave their answer ("it was 'Rock'") , a computer screen would tell them whether or not they were right ("*ding* Correct!"). In three 20-minute sessions of this type of practice, participants permanently acquired the ability to hear Rs and Ls, and they could do it in any context.
Not coincidentally, this is how actors and singers learn. We use coaches instead of computerized tests, but the basic principle is the same. We sit with an accent coach and have them read our texts. Then we say our texts out load, and the coach tells us when we’re right and when we’re wrong. They’re giving us feedback. They’ll say things like “No, you’re saying siehe, and I need sehe. Siehe…Sehe. Hear that?” And as we get closer, they’ll keep continue to supply feedback ("You're saying [something that's almost 'sehe'] and I need sehe.”) After the coaching, we’ll go home, listen to recordings of these coaching sessions, and use those recordings to provide us with even more feedback.
Now, some caveats. Participants didn’t reach a full native ability to hear the difference between Rock and Lock. Their accuracy seemed to peak around 80%, compared to the ~100% of a native speaker. Further investigation revealed what was going on.
Consonant sounds have lots of different components (known as 'formants'). Basically, a consonant is a lot like a chord on a piano: on a piano, you play a certain combination of notes together, and you hear a chord. For a consonant, you make a certain (more complex) combination of notes, and you hear a consonant. This isn’t just a metaphor; if you have a computerized piano, you can even use it to replicate human speech.
English speakers tell the difference between their R’s and L’s by listening for a cue known as the 3rd formant – basically, the third note up in any R or L chord. Japanese native speakers have a hard time hearing this cue, and when they went through this study, they didn’t really get any better at hearing it. Instead, they learned how to use an easier cue, the 2nd formant – the second note in R/L chords. This works, but it’s not 100% reliable, thus explaining their less-than-native results.
When I talked to these researchers on the phone, they had basically given up on this research, concluding that they were somewhat stumped as to how to improve accuracy past 80%. They seemed kind of bummed out about it.
Possibilities for the future
But step back a moment and look at what they’ve accomplished here.
In three 20-minute sessions, they managed to take one of the hardest language challenges out there – learning how to hear new sounds – and bring people from 50% accuracy (just guessing) to 80% accuracy (not bad at all).
What if we had this tool in every language? What if we could start out by taking a few audio tests with feedback and leave with pre-trained, 80% accuracy ears, even before we began to learn the rest of our language?
We have the tools to build trainers like this on our own. All you need is a spaced repetition system that supports audio files, like Anki, and a good set of recorded example words (A bunch of rock/lock’s, thigh/thy’s, and niece/knee’s for English, or a bunch of sous/su’s, bon/ban’s and huis/oui’s for French). They take work to make, but that work only needs to be done once, and then the entire community can benefit.
Pronunciation is too important, and this solution is too valuable to wait for some big company to take over. Over the next 9 months, I’m going to start developing good example word lists, commissioning recordings and building these decks. I’m going to recruit bilinguals, because with bilinguals, we can get recordings to learn not only the difference between two target-language sounds, like sous and su, but also the difference between target language sounds and our own native language sounds (sous vs Sue). I ran this idea by Dr. McClelland, and he thought that may work even better (hell, we might be able to break the 80% barrier). And I’m going to do a few open-ish beta tests to fine tune them until they’re both effective and fun to use.
Hopefully, with the right tools, we can set the “It’s too late to learn pronunciation” rumors to rest. We’ll have a much easier time learning our languages, and we’ll have an easier time convincing others to forget about our native languages and to speak in theirs.
Yesterday we looked at some of the best multilingual cities in Mexico and the Caribbean. Today we're looking at South America, a region typically known for the prominence of Spanish, excluding Brazil, where Portuguese is usually the language of choice. Cochabamba, Bolivia - The first stop in our search is the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. It is home to around 700,000 people and aside from Spanish, the native language of Quechua is also spoken. Thanks to the businesses in Cochabamba, English is also becoming more commonly heard in the city.
Iguaçu Falls, on the border between
Brazil and Argentina
Pomerode, Brazil - The city of Pomerode is known as the most German city in Brazil, which unsurprisingly doesn't take much. However, Portuguese and German are popular languages there. In fact, German is so popular due to the heritage of the population that the local area is home to Oktoberfest celebrations every year. Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil - Nestled on the border of Brazil and Argentina, the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu has high numbers of both Portuguese and Spanish speakers, as one would expect. Due to immigration, Korean, Chinese and Arabic can also be heard, as well as any of the languages spoken by tourists visiting one of Brazil's most popular destinations. Buenos Aires, Argentina - The capital of Argentina is home to people from all walks of life. Spanish is the main language of the Porteños but Italian, German, French and Arabic are the other main languages to be heard around the streets. If we've missed any noteworthy multilingual cities in South America, tell us about them in the comments below!
Today we're heading south of the border into Mexico and then onward to the Caribbean. First stop, Tijuana...
Tijuana, Mexico - The city of Tijuana is basically San Diego's Mexican cousin. Excluding the US-Mexico border, the two cities are joined. When joined with San Diego, the conurbation is the third largest bi-national metropolitan area in the world, and is home to many Spanish and English speakers.
Whilst Tijuana may not offer the best entertainment for everyone, it certainly attracts a certain type of crowd and if that's your thing, enjoy it!
Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City
Mexico City, Mexico - The capital of Mexico, known in Spanish as Ciudad de México, was originally an Aztec city known as Tenochtitlan until Spanish settlers came along and effectively flattened the place. It is now home to nearly 9 million people and houses people from many walks of life.
Aside from the obvious presence of Spanish, there are speakers of other languages from Spain, such as Basque, Catalan, and Galician. More popular languages spoken in Mexico City include English, French, and German from Europe, Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, and due to religious ethnicities, Hebrew and Arabic are also prominent.
Oranjestad, Aruba - Although Aruba is technically in South America, we've decided to include a couple of Caribbean islands in our list for today since they're not a part of the mainland and make a good place to stop off before we dive straight into the best of South America.
With Dutch and Papiamento as the official languages of Aruba, Oranjestad also has prominent numbers of English, French, and Spanish speakers. Plus it's on a Caribbean island, what more could you ask for?
Willemstad, Curaçao - The capital city of Willemstad is another multilingual city which features Dutch and Papiamento as its official languages. Willemstad also features a good number of Spanish speakers.
Tomorrow we'll be continuing our journey into South America!
Since we finished yesterday's post on the best multilingual cities in Canada in Montréal, we thought we'd start today's post by heading a few hours south into the state of New York, where we find ourselves in the Big Apple ready to experience best multiculturalism and multilingualism that the US has to offer.
The Statue of Liberty welcoming
immigrants to the United States.
New York City, New York - America's most famous city has a rich heritage of immigration and is the epitome of the US as a cultural melting pot. Aside from the obvious presence of English and America's second language, Spanish, New York City (NYC) boasts a huge Chinatown area complete with a large number of Mandarin speakers and, of course, amazing food!
There are up to 150 languages spoken in NYC, so we won't list them all. There are large numbers of Italian, Russian, Yiddish and Arabic speakers to name a few. What we can say is that if there's a language you would like to hear, then you should be able to find it here.
Miami, Florida - If Will Smith's song Miami hasn't given it away, Miami boasts a huge Hispanic community. The Spanish language is so prominent in Miami that it is accepted as an official language of the government. You can also find a good number of speakers of French Creole.
San Diego, California - If you know any Spanish, you can guess where we'll be going with San Diego. The city was historically Spanish, and aside from taking a Spanish name it also took a huge number of Spanish settlers and colonists. San Diego is also very close to the Mexican border and the popular city of Tijuana.
The entrance to the Chinese Theatre in LA.
Sadly, it has nothing to do with the language.
Los Angeles, California - Los Angeles (LA) has a huge proportion of Spanish-speaking residents. Nearly 40% are estimated to speak Spanish, and the city boasts several ethnic neighbourhoods where other languages are spoken such as Mandarin Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Thai, and Arabic.
Seattle, Washington - This city isn't just the home of Starbucks and the band Nirvana. Seattle boasts a multinational community and ranks as one of the most livable cities in the US. You can find English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian and Japanese within its sometimes rainy streets. It's only a stone's throw away from Vancouver as well, so we're almost back where we started yesterday with Canada's best multilingual cities.
Are there any other multilingual cities in the US we may have missed? Tell us about them in the comments below!
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.
As we demonstrated the other day, languages often have families due to their shared roots. Some languages, however, do not. These loners are rebels without causes and though they are a headache for anyone who needs everything in neat little boxes, they are very interesting and unique.
What are these languages and how are they so distinct that we can't just throw them in with other languages? A few of the more widely spoken language isolates include Korean and Basque. It should be noted that an unclassified language is not the same as a language isolate, since language isolates are languages that have been shown to be unrelated rather than not having been classified as of yet.
City hall in Bilbao, the largest city of the Basque Country.
Having already covered Korean in a language profile, we thought we'd show you a little about a fascinating language isolate that isn't hidden away in the Amazon rainforest or spoken only by solitary tribes on a Pacific island. Basque is spoken in northern Spain, and sticks out like a sore thumb against the backdrop of Romance languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and French that are its almost immediate neighbours.
Though the Basque Country (País Vasco in Spanish and Euskadi in Basque) exists as an autonomous region of Spain, the true Basque region (Euskal Herria in Basque) is said to extend beyond and stretch as far as southwestern France. It is here where the Basque language, known natively as Euskara, is spoken by around 715,000 native speakers.
Despite the obvious link between the Basque language and Basque separatism, it should be noted that though the political organisation ETA obviously speaks Basque, it is by no means representative of the speakers of this fascinating and unique language nestled amongst historically Latin languages.
If you're as nerdy about languages as us, you've probably thought about or even tried to make your own language. If you're as useless at it as we were, you have undoubtedly failed. We spoke briefly about Elvish and Simlish in previous posts, but now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty of making your own language.
But does it sound right?
Creating a language is not an easy task to undertake. The vocabulary of the average speaker of the English language is estimated to be between 35,000 and 75,000 words. Do you really want to single-handedly undertake the task of creating that many words for your new language?
Even if you have the time to create the lexicon for your new language, in order to make your conlang accessible you will have to ensure a certain degree of neutrality. If you want speakers of other languages to adopt your conlang you can't make all your words sound too much like English, for example.
After you've completed the arduous task of creating the lexicon, even with a simple nomenclature that would enable you to create a few roots and let other words be created from them, you'll still have to work on the grammar. If you're looking for clarity and making your language easy to learn, you should try to avoid irregular structures, which are pretty unavoidable in naturally-occurring languages. Take a long, hard look at your syntax. What may be simple for a native speaker of French, Spanish or Italian may not be so simple for a native speaker of Mandarin, Japanese or Korean.
You could even make "shorthand" your writing system.
If you have managed to tackle the lexicon and grammar, you still have the phonetics to think about. How will the language sound? You'll need to make sure that the phonemes in your language occur in almost every other language in the world, or at least as many as possible.
If you were to cross-reference every sound produced in every language, you'd probably find very few, if any, that were found in even 90% of modern-day languages.
What about the look of your language? All the world's languages don't share the same writing system, and some don't even have one. Do you want to use an alphabet, abjad, or abugida? A syllabary or logographic writing system? You'll have to create the simplest writing system to ensure that the written form of your language is easy to adopt.
If you've made it this far, we salute you. We gave up by the first step and decided that the pub was always the better option.
We've covered the top language universities in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Europe and now it's Asia's turn. If you're looking to head east (or stay where you are if you're from Asia), these universities offer something a little different from all the western (culturally, not as in cowboys) institutions.
Needless to say, there are a lot of people in Beijing.
Beijing Foreign Studies University, China
Unsurprisingly based in Beijing, the Beijing Foreign Studies University does exactly what it says on the tin. It's the first foreign language university in China and is operated by the state, which is hardly a shock if you have the faintest idea how communism works...
It boasts a range of 54 taught languages so odds are that you'll find the language (or languages) that you want to study.
Fudan University, China
As one of China's most prestigious universities, you'd expect Fudan University to make this list. There's a good focus on exchange programmes with a network of over 200 institutions offering students the chance to spend some time there.
Tokyo University of Science, Japan
Despite its obvious focus on science, the Tokyo University of Science offers an expansive liberal arts programme including English as well as other foreign languages. Of course, the focus is on English as the vehicular language in the sciences.
Kyoto University, Japan
Japan's second oldest university is highly rated in Japan, Asia and the world, so there's no doubt that it makes our list. English, German and French are the languages with the most focus though courses such as Linguistic Science and Foreign Language Acquisition and Education can give students a broader experience with languages.
Tokyo, Japan
Waseda University, Japan
Waseda University, though spread across several campuses, is based in Japan's capital city, Tokyo. Many of its courses have their curriculum available in English as well as Japanese, so if your skills in Japan's mother tongue are lacking you still shouldn't rule out Waseda.
When it comes to languages, a good range is on offer. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Korean are all available to study.
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea
As if the name didn't give it away, the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies is one of the places to go if you want to study languages. A massive range of 45 languages are taught. It includes every language you'd expect, and some of the less commonly taught ones, too!
National Chengchi University, Taiwan
Our only entry from Taiwan happens to sit quite highly on our list of Asian universities. The university offers over 500 courses in English if you only speak the one language, not that we encourage monolingualism!
The exchange programme is also quite extensive, so whether you want to get your whole degree from the university or just spend a semester there, the National Chengchi University could be the right choice for you.
Korea University, South Korea
As one of the oldest universities in South Korea, Korea University comes highly recommended for its language courses. The College of Liberal Arts offers English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. There are also courses available in linguistics and classical Chinese.
Seoul, South Korea
Seoul National University, South Korea
Seoul National University offers all the language combinations you'd expect from a top-rated institution. Available languages include English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and obviously Korean. If you prefer a broader view of languages, then linguistics is also available for study.
Peking University, China
Peking University in China's capital tops our list of language universities in Asia but also ranks very highly on the global level. Becoming the best language university in Asia doesn't just happen by magic, and the large range of languages available is a testament to the high level of language focus offered by the institution.
Following our discussion on foreign dialogue, we got to thinking about foreign characters, that is, characters that speak a language other than the main language of the show or film, or no language at all. Here are a few of our favourite characters that speak in a foreign language, a constructed or fictional language, or are indecipherable altogether.
Toshi (American Dad)
Friend to Steve Smith in the TV show, Steve's nerdy Japanese friend is always subtitled, though the characters often misunderstand or outright ignore what he's saying in favour of a racist joke. He is often imparting his wisdom to no avail. His sister on the show is fluent in English.
Imagine one of these capable of flight, only
made of rainbows and with a unicorn head.
Lady Rainicorn (Adventure Time)
The amazing sausage-dog-esque rainicorn from Adventure Time only speaks Korean. Why? Niki Yang, who lends her voice to the character, is Korean and also provides the voice for the games console BMO, or Beemo, who speaks in English with a Korean accent. You'd be a fool to start questioning the logic behind Adventure Time.
Dora (Dora The Explorer)
Dora doesn't really speak a foreign language all the time, but she is bilingual. She teaches kids how to speak Spanish. In the Spanish versions of the show her dialogue is changed so that she teaches kids English. We'll take this opportunity to say that we don't care much for Diego and think he's just copying Dora.
Jabba The Hutt (Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi)
Given the large number of languages spoken in the Star Wars universe, Jabba The Hutt has a voice and language to match his personality. Though he speaks a foreign language, all the characters around him seem to understand him half of the time, and in Return of the Jedihe had the assistance of C-3PO who acted as his interpreter.
Apparently American post boxes are
big Star Wars fans too!
R2-D2 (Star Wars)
One of the only characters to feature in all six Star Wars films, the three good ones and the three bad ones, and can be considered the narrator of the original trilogy. R2-D2 was the droid that communicated in nothing but beeps and whistles, while everything he said was inferred by C-3PO's responses. We're not sure why C-3PO never would answer R2-D2 in his own language...
Kenny (South Park)
It's entirely possible that Kenny from the TV show South Park speaks a foreign language. No one really knows for sure however, because nearly everything he says is unintelligible due to his signature orange hooded sweatshirt. We imagine that he keeps it tight around his face at all times to keep the cold mountain air away, but it also lends an air of mysteriousness to the language he uses. He's also living proof that tone of voice communicates just as much as the words themselves... that is, during the rare moments on the show when he is living!
Amy Wong (Futurama)
Another character in a TV show that infrequently utters things in a foreign language. Though the cursing exhibited by Amy in the early episodes of Futurama is actually poorly-spoken utterances of Cantonese, we prefer it to having no foreign language at all. Personal favourite Dr. Zoidberg occasionally says things in his own language, too.
Sooty and Sweep (The Sooty Show)
Sooty and Sweep (after his introduction in 1957) were two puppets from the long-running The Sooty Show. Sooty, the yellow and black puppet, was portrayed as entirely mute rather than foreign, except when communicating with his puppeteer. Sweep the dog only communicated in high-pitched squeaks, though other characters appeared to understand him.
Who are your favourite "foreign" characters? Are there any we have missed that deserve a mention? Tell us below in the comments.
Pentathlon
