Languages Online: The Best of November 2017

Here are our favourite stories about language from last month. Let's dive straight in...

10: 6 Steps To Listen Your Way To A Better Accent In Any Language on I Will Teach You a Language

If you're struggling with accurately replicating the accent in your foreign language, this article shows you how to do it by just listening. While it only features 4 steps when we first published it on our Facebook Page, two more steps have been added. This article just keeps on giving.

9: Kazakhstan Is Changing Its Alphabet - Here's Why on The Independent

This article covers the news that Kazakhstan is looking to adopt the Latin alphabet. While the country has traditionally used the Russian Cyrillic script, decisions have been made to use the same alphabet as many countries in the West do in order to improve the country's global integration.

8: J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' Translated To Scots, Marking 80th Language on NPR

Harry Potter fans north of the border (if you're in the UK) should rejoice at the news that the first book has been translated into Scots. You should listen to the interview on NPR to hear a sample of it.

7: We put Google's new language-translation headphones to the test with 10 different languages — here’s how they did on Business Insider

There's been a lot of buzz about Google's headphones and how they'll do away with translators by giving everyone access to live interpreting wherever they go. However, as Business Insider found out, they're not ideal.

6: Why written languages look alike the world over on Science

While you wouldn't say that the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic script are the same (Kazakhstan is looking to change from the latter to the former, after all), there are a number of characters in both that have very common roots. In this article, you'll find out why there are so many similarities between human writing systems.

5: No more middots: French PM clamps down on gender-neutral language on The Guardian

The French language's latest controversy comes in the form of gender. French is now trying to include gender-neutral versions of words to rectify the problem with middots, a punctuation mark that looks like a full-stop but in the middle of a line. Traditionalists, including the French PM, are not happy.

4: Five languages Brexit Britons should learn on Financial Times

Without trying to speculate on the future of the UK, it's fair to say that it probably wouldn't be able to survive as an isolated nation like North Korea. This means that languages are still going to be useful in the future and here's an interesting article on which languages might be useful for those in the UK.

3: From inboxing to thought showers: how business bullshit took over on The Guardian

If you're like me and you hate business English, you should definitely check out this article. Unfortunately, it looks like the ridiculous use of English employed in offices and boardrooms around the country isn't going anywhere, though.

2: What are the Most Spoken Languages in the World? on Fluent in 3 Months

Which is the most spoken language in the world? Should you just count native speakers or should you consider how many people speak it as a foreign language? What about those who learn the language as a foreign language? There are a lot of questions to answer just to answer a seemingly-simple question. This article aims to address a few of them.

1: A ‘critical juncture’ for language learning in the UK on Times Higher Education

Our most popular article this month was on the future of learning languages in the UK. As you may have heard, the UK is leaving the European Union. With a potentially-massive political shift occurring, the UK has a lot of questions to answer about how it's going to conduct itself in the future and how it teaches foreign languages is one of the biggest questions.

Were there any great language articles in November that we missed? Feel free to tell us and our readers about them in the comments below.

A Brief Tribute to Sir Terry Pratchett's Death

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

Yesterday I was incredibly saddened to be notified (via Twitter) of the death of one of my favourite authors, Sir Terry Pratchett. Pratchett was a fantasy writer most famous for his Discworld series. In honour of his great work, rather than present an obituary I thought I'd have a fond look back at both a character and a concept that he covered extensively: death.

Death in Discworld is based on this
Western depiction. He also rides
a horse which is named "Binky".

Throughout the series, death (or Death when referring to the character) is regularly mentioned. When personified, Death appears as a scythe-wielding skeleton in a robe. Aside from his love of cats and curries, his "voice" is one of the fascinating elements in the series.

Despite the wonderful descriptions of Death, he is rarely perceived by humans as they unsurprisingly don't want to see him. While I've used the masculine pronoun to refer to Death, in the books his gender is somewhat ambiguous. While English doesn't have gendered nouns, certain languages, such as French, require it, meaning that international versions of the Discworld books featuring the character have come up with some inventive ways to deal with his/her/its gender.

There is also a cultural issue when it comes to the representation of Death in Discworld. His appearance is based on a Western representation of death, which can make matters very confusing for cultures that have a different idea of Death's appearance.

One of my favourite elements of Death's representation in the Discworld books is his voice, if you could call it that. Anything uttered by Death always appears outside of any quotation marks and, like the tweet, is always represented in capital letters. However, rather than traditional capital letters, Death's voice uses what is known as "small caps", which (in my head at least) seem firm, authoritative, and delightfully dry, all without shouting. Take the following witty example:

That’s mortals for you, Death continued. They’ve only got a few years in this world and they spend them all in making things complicated for themselves.

If you haven't already, you should read the fantastic Reaper Man, a wonderfully funny story about Death working on a farm. When you do, you'll be rewarded with one of Pratchett's most relevant and pertinent sentiments, summing up life and death perfectly:

"no-one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away"

Rest in peace, Sir Terry Pratchett.

Languages In The News: December 2013

In many western countries, spirits were probably very high in December as the festive season rapidly approached. Sadly, on 5 December, the world lost Nelson Mandela. Since we're not a politics or history blog we won't say much about this, though we felt it deserved a special mention.

On 7 December, Techcrunch.com had a fascinating article on localisation, (or localization to quote it directly), which looked at the issues surrounding the localisation process for China.

This is more likely to be sign language than anything the
Mandela interpreter signed.

Returning to the sad news of Madiba's death, there was controversy surrounding his memorial when a 'bogus' sign language interpreter marred the proceedings with fake signing. The news was covered pretty much globally, but we preferred the approach of UK newspaper The Independent,
 on 11 December.

The same day, The Independent covered news that a French café was charging rude customers extra, something that we certainly agree with.

The following day, there were developments in the sign language interpreter debacle. We saw in The Guardian that apparently the interpreter suffered from schizophrenia. Elsewhere, it emerged that he also had somewhat of a sordid past. 

Also on 12 December, the Prospero Column of The Economist covered language and thought and whether speaking German changes the way one sees social relationships.

On the 15th, we found the fascinating story of a translator who found love by translating poetry. This was covered in Russia Beyond the Headlines and is one of the most incredible and heart-warming stories we've seen about language in a long time.

The next day, the Telegraph's expat blog told a tale of the long, hard road to learning the Thai language. It may not be for everyone, but if you're a language learner interested in Thai, this may be the story for you.

On 19 December, Wired.com had an interesting article on the linguistic diversity of Wikipedia. By Christmas Eve, any semblance of productivity had left us, and thankfully, The New York Times provided us with a delightful dialect quiz showing us what our language usage indicates about our city of origin, as long as it's in the US. Hopefully there will be more quizzes for other parts of the world and other languages soon.

We can't wait to see what January and 2014 will bring us. Here's hoping it's a good one!

Happy Birthday David Crystal!

As today is the birthday of David Crystal, perhaps one of the greatest British linguists of modern times, we felt it was only fitting to pay homage to the man.

Originally born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, Crystal grew up in the town of Holyhead in northern Wales. He later moved to Liverpool where he studied at St. Mary's College, and then moved on to University College London where he studied English. Crystal was later a lecturer at Bangor University and the University of Reading.

One of Crystal's most important hypotheses is on the evolution of the English language. The theory stipulates that local dialects will become more and more distinct and that the language will require a standardised variant such as an international dialect.

Crystal has also authored many books on linguistics covering topics such as orthography, phonetics, phonology, and language evolution. He also worked on two encyclopaedias for the Cambridge University Press, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.

As Crystal is an expert on language, linguistics, Shakespearean English, and the evolution of the English language, he worked on productions of Shakespeare at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in Southwark, London.

Currently, Crystal works from his home in Holyhead and is working on a new book, Wordsmiths and Warriors: the English-language Tourist's guide to Britain, with his wife Hilary, which is due for release September of this year. We can't wait!

Happy Birthday David!

Languages In The News: May 2013

Today we've decided to take a look at some of the biggest language stories featured in the news from the past month. We try to share all language news on our Facebook page, but we'll look back at the top stories at the end of each month just in cased you missed them. Here's what has been going on in the world of languages throughout the month of May.

The Guardian and The Economist both featured the conlang Dothraki from Game of Thrones in posts at the end of the month. These were published on April 30th, but since this is our first "Languages In The News" post, we'll include them. 

The New York Times featured an overly-favourable article on translation apps. Despite calling the piece "The Utility and Drawbacks of Translation Apps", we found there were far too few drawbacks.

Arco della Pace in Milan, the city where writer Dan Brown
had 11 translators working underground for 2 months.

Dan Brown's new novel was covered by a few sources after it was revealed that the translators working on the piece were subjected to fairly "hellish" conditions whilst translating in order to not reveal any secrets and spoil from the book. One such article was found in The Telegraph.

The Los Angeles Times informed us that search engine Bing's translation services will now include the Star Trek conlang Klingon as part of a marketing campaign for the franchise's latest film, Star Trek Into Darkness. Trekkies can rejoice at the ability to translate text written in over 40 languages into Klingon, as well as convert it back into a "traditional" language.

In the mid-May, we found out from CNET that Google Translate now produces a billion translations per day while helping about 200 million users. The translation service works in 71 languages, but we're still skeptical of the quality of the machine-based translations it provides.

In Franglais, these are called talkie-walkies!

The relationship between French and English was heavily featured in the news this month. The Guardian informed us that the French government has decided to relax a long-time ban on the use of foreign languages in its universities. Since 1994, a French law has banned all teaching in a foreign language except, of course, in the case of language courses. The news inspired the BBC to produce some fun articles on Franglais, including a piece on their readers' favourite Franglais terms and phrases, as well as an amusing post called "How to speak Franglais" that is completely written in Franglais.

Finally, we have the results of two language-related research studies. The first study, done by researchers in Sweden and the US, discovered that foetuses actually listen to and remember their mothers' speech in the finals weeks of pregnancy. They can also distinguish foreign languages soon after birth, as discussed in this BBC article. A second study in Britain revealed that the long-debated idea of a Eurasiatic superfamily of languages may actually be a reality. The group of linguists was able to narrow down a list of 23 words found in at least four of the languages thought to belong to the superfamily, including "man", "mother", "worm" and "to spit"!

Was there another language article we missed that really piqued your interest this past month? Let us know below in the comments.

Geek Pride Day: Geeky Linguistics, Part 1

Since today is "Geek Pride Day", which is from the Spanish Día del orgullo friki, we thought we'd start out by telling you about this wonderful day and the effect that geeks have had on the English language, not to mention many others!

If you've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, then you know what this is all about!

So why the 25th of May? Well, if you're geeky and old enough, you'll remember that today is the day Star Wars was released back in 1977. It's also when the first Towel Day was held, exactly two weeks following the death of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you're a fan of the Discworld books, which we most certainly are, it is also the Glorious 25th of May. As if you need any more reasons to be geeky today, or any other day for that matter. 

One of our favourite elements of geek linguistics is 1337 (or Leet, to those less nerdily-inclined), the wonderful language of chat rooms, message boards and general online discussion for many years now. You can generally spot 1337 by its blatant disregard for the Latin alphabet and use of numbers in place of letters. The practice came around to avoid filters on chat rooms and message boards. Curse words would often be censored and sometimes, especially when someone disagrees with you on which Star Trek captain is better, you need an expletive to tell them exactly what you think of their dumb opinion. 1337 enabled uncensored communication across the information superhighway. 

The concept was fairly simple: replace certain letters with numbers. 1 is i or L, 2 is z, 3 is e or E, 4 us A, 5 is s, 6 is G, 7 is T, 8 is B, 9 is g, and 0 is o or O. This allowed users to avoid censorship and use words such as pr0n for "porn", and 1337 for "leet", short for "elite". 

The letter 'x' was often used to replace the combination 'ck', and -or replaced what would commonly be an -er suffix. This lead to words such as haxor for "hacker" and suxor for "sucker", as in someone who sucks. 

The letter 'z' became a popular suffix and was often added to suxor to make, obviously, suxorz. The word n00b was used to describe newbies, or the generally uninformed, because in internet nerd culture it is assumed that everyone knows everything about everything, and it is safe to insult newbies from behind a computer screen where one cannot be punched. Despite being language nerds, we feel this is probably enough geekiness for one day... read part 2.

Why The Book Is Better Than The Film

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is the case, then a 90-minute film with 24 frames per second would be worth 129,000,000 words. Right? Wrong!

You need a lot less space to read a book...
Unless you have a lot of books.

Despite enabling us to see and hear a story, all whilst gorging down popcorn, hotdogs, nachos or even a beer if you're old enough, most adaptations of books into films are often touted as being inferior. Why is this the case?

There are a lot of boxes that need to be checked in order to gain financing for a film. You need the right actors, the right producers and directors and the right studio. The immense amount of permutations this could leave you with is immeasurable, meaning the odds are good that the film will never match up with how you saw it in your head. Books often contain a narrative, the thoughts and feelings of characters, especially the protagonist. This doesn't often work in film, and as a result we're watching the characters rather than sharing their experiences.

The expression "too many cooks spoil the broth" and "a camel is a horse designed by a committee" ring true here. With so many involved, many compromises are made. These compromises often cause films adapted from books to become a hollow shell of what they were in print.

When you read a book from the comfort of your own home, the floors aren't sticky and the food isn't ridiculously expensive! Don't even get us started on the process of dubbing and subtitling!

Are there any films which you think are better than the book? Tell us about them in the comments.

St. George's Day: The Languages of England

St. George was also the bad-ass who killed dragons.

As today is St. George's Day, we thought we'd honour England's patron saint with a look at the languages of England. It goes without saying that England is home to English, but before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes made their way to the British Isles, other languages were spoken across the land. Let's jump straight in...

Aside from being famed for pirates and their accent, the Cornish in fact have their own language. The Cornish language, also known as Kernowek or Kernewek in Cornish, has somewhere between 500 and 3,500 speakers. The language is related to Welsh and Breton and evolved from the native language of the British Isles, Brythonic.

Though classified as an extinct language, Cornish has seen a good level of revival in the UK, forcing UNESCO to reconsider its classification back in 2010. Cornish belongs to the Celtic language family along with Irish, Scots Gaelic, Scots and the next of our languages, Manx.

The Manx language, found principally and almost exclusively on the Isle of Man, actually lost its last native speaker in 1974, but thanks to the efforts of some great linguaphiles, it has been revived. It's now classified as a revived language, though we prefer the term zombie language. Manx now has between 100 and 1,800 speakers.

The Coonceil ny Gaelgey (Manx Gaelic Council), the regulatory body responsible for the Manx language, was set up no less than eleven years after the extinction of the language. It's clearly doing a good job!

St. George's Day is also the saint day of Catalonia, as well as UNESCO World Book and Copyright day. World Book Day in the UK was celebrated back in March.

As the English get vaguely patriotic today, remember that despite their reputation, they're more than a group of monolingual savages!

Copyright or Copywrong? Protecting Authors or Halting Progress?

Is copyright law protecting authors, writers and creators or just merely hindering human creativity?

Copyright is supposed to protect those who create something from a loss of revenue by stopping people from copying their stuff. Charles Dickens was hugely supportive of his works being protected since many people in the US were circulating copies of his works and he wasn't getting paid a penny for it.

Ironically the icon for copyright is not subject to copyright.

Before the invention of the printing press, creating works was such a time-intensive and costly procedure that duplicating works was rarely an issue. Initially, people weren't even certain whether ideas could be owned. Eventually it was decided that they could, and thus copyright was born. This began in the UK with the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 which protected the copying of materials such as books (referred to in the act as bookes) and other printed materials. The works were only protected for a meagre two years at the time. In 1710 the Statute of Anne, the first real semblance to a copyright law in the world, extended this protection of works to a total of 14 years.

There are two sides to this argument. Copyright protects authors and their work. The downside to work being protected is that it inhibits other creative people from adapting their own versions of the work. If creative works were protected ad infinitum many classic Disney films would have never been made. It certainly wasn't Walt who came up with the ideas for Cinderella, Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast or even Sleeping Beauty, to name a few. The Disney corporation made most of its classics using ideas that had entered the public domain and were open to interpretation by anyone. Once Disney made their films, they then proceeded to copyright their versions of these "classic" stories and fairy tales.

Disney was certainly one of the biggest supporters of increasing the length of time that works were subject to copyright and with good reason. Walt died years ago, but the corporation still owns the rights to the works.

It's infuriating that Disney adapted works from the public domain and then pushed to have their own versions protected for as long as possible. Maybe we're just a little bitter that they're going to make more Star Wars films...

March 7: World Book Day (UK)

Thanks to UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization if you had to know), World Book Day (WBD) takes place today. Ironically, this World Book Day only takes place in the UK on the first Thursday of March. It's celebrated everywhere else on April 23, which in the UK, or England at least, is St. George's Day.

Vouchers can also be used to receive a £1 discount from
the price of any other book they may want instead.

WBD in the UK has been running since 1998. Children in the UK receive a £1 WBD voucher which can be used for purchasing any book in any bookshop. Initially an anthology was released, but now every year a series of books are released at the price of £1 especially for the occasion.

This year's £1 books include The Diamond Brothers in... Two of Diamonds, which is a murder mystery involving strawberry yoghurt, as well as Horrid Henry's Guide to Perfect Parents, which gives children tips on how to convince their parents to give them everything they desire. If we were still in school, we'd probably use our voucher to get Tony Robinson's Weird World of Wonders: Funny Inventions, since it's a lighthearted look at the history of everything from the wheel to alarm-clock beds! 

The World Book Day site is full of ideas for activities for booksellers, teachers, librarians and pupils alike. We've even seen teachers in the UK dressing up as characters from books to mark this day, so if you're getting involved tell us below in the comments.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Dr. Seuss in 1957 with The Cat in the Hat.

Today marks the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Seuss was an interesting man who is probably hated by most translators due to his obscure style and word usage. Though most famous for his literary works on felines with head attire and off-colour foodstuffs, Dr. Seuss' work was much more than that.

He was born as Theodor Seuss Geisel and graduated from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he wrote and eventually edited the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern humour magazine. He first used the name Seuss after he was caught drinking gin and subsequently banned from all extracurricular activities. Despite the ban, he continued working for the Jack-O-Lantern using this new pseudonym.

He continued writing after leaving Dartmouth College and had already been published as Dr. Seuss by the time he attended Lincoln College, Oxford. At Lincoln College, Geisel was undertaking a PhD in English Literature but never finished his course. Technically, he should have published as Seuss his entire life.

His early work was principally political satire, though he also earned a living during the Great Depression by creating advertisements for big companies. It wasn't really until the 1950s that began to focus on children's literature and created the stories and characters that he is most famous for.

The Geisel Library, named after Theodor and his wife,
on the University of California, San Diego campus.

Following a challenge from the director of education at the Houghton Mifflin publishing house, The Cat in the Hat was initially written only using words from a list of 250 words considered important for first-graders to recognise. In the end, the book was written using only 236 of these words.

Geisel's innovative and entertaining writing style has helped to promote reading amongst young children and for that, we'd like to honour the man on what would have been his 109th birthday. Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

January 19: Edgar Allan Poe's Birthday

Although he's dead and has been for some time, we're still celebrating Edgar Allan Poe's birthday today. He would be 204 today, and we think he deserves at least a post for his troubles.

If you were unable to subtract 204 from 2013, you should know that he was born in 1809 and only lived to age 40. He was born Boston, Massachusetts and briefly attended schools in Irvine, Chelsea and Stoke Newington in the United Kingdom before eventually settling with his foster family, the Allans, in Richmond, Virginia.

He spent about a year at the newly established University of Virginia studying ancient and modern languages, but ended up dropping out. As an 18 year-old (although he said he was 22), he enlisted in the army and served as a private at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor. His first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, was released the same year. It was pretty much a horrendous failure, with only 50 copies published that few took notice of.

When he actually reached 22 his elder brother died, due in part to alcoholism. Poe focused on his writing and struggled, like many do, to make ends meet. After a few publications he was noticed by John P. Kennedy, who helped him in classic business style by introducing him to a few movers and shakers. This helped land him a job as the assistant editor for the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond until he lost his job for being drunk.

They were kind of sweet, though. Virginia wrote
this acrostic poem for Edgar one Valentine's Day.

In a part of his life that should be brushed over, Poe, quite disgustingly, married his 13 year-old cousin, Virginia, in Baltimore. The ceremony was held in secret, though he did later marry her in public. He eventually got his job back at the Southern Literary Messenger and returned to Richmond.

He stayed at the Messenger until 1837, and afterwards published the majority of his works. His cousin-wife fell ill to tuberculosis and Poe, who was already fond of booze, started drinking more. Virginia died in 1842, which obviously didn't help Poe's drinking problem either.

Poe went out with a few other women following his wife's death but with little success. More often than not his drinking problem and erratic behaviour got in the way. Poe was eventually found in a bad state on 3rd October 1849. Supposedly delirious and calling out "Reynolds", he later died at Washington College. All records concerning the cause of his death have been lost, so it remains a mystery. 

While Edgar Allan Poe had quite an erratic life, he is most known for the mark he left upon literature. During his lifetime, he was known not as a writer but as one of the fiercest of literary critics. Later in his short life, he began to gain notoriety for his short stories and poetry. His works were dark, and many of his stories and poems dealt with death. He was one of the first Americans to write short stories, and is even credited by some, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories), to have invented the detective fiction genre.

An 1858 illustration for "The Raven"
done by John Tenniel. 

Two of his most famous works are "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Raven". The first is a short story in which the narrator tries to convince you that he's sane while describing a murder he has committed. Eventually, he begins to hear the beating of his victim's heart from under the floorboards. We won't spoil the details of the story for you if you haven't read it, but it's definitely an interesting read if you're not too squeamish. 

You may also know his narrative poem entitled "The Raven", especially if you're a fan of The Simpsons. It tells of an upset lover and a mysterious talking raven that appears and repeatedly utters the word "nevermore" to him. However, as we pointed out yesterday, there are no such things as talking birds. Most of Poe's stories were quite dark, and we can only imagine that had to do with his life. Nevertheless, he left an indelible mark on literature, especially the mystery genre. The Edgar Award is even given out each year by The Mystery Writers of America for distinguished work in the genre. Last year's winner was a British author named Mo Hayder, for her novel Gone.