10 Things To Learn Before Going Abroad

Going on holiday? With the tremendous number of cheap flights available (at least in Europe) there's little reason not to go to obscure places. We often browse the internet just to see where the cheapest place to go is.

Budget airlines are getting ridiculous.

So what if you've found some cheap flights to Poland? Are you going to just go along for the weekend, shout at everyone in English, and hope they understand? We recommend that you take the time to do a bit of research. Find out what language or languages are spoken where you're going and learn the ten following things:

1. Greetings

Learn to say hello, goodbye, good morning, good evening and good night. You can't start or end a conversation without them.

2. Asking for things

The phrases Can I have or I would like are obligatory in most situations... at least if you want something! It can be used in bars, restaurants and shops.

3. Numbers 1-1000

This sounds like a big task but if you manage to learn the numbers 1-20, you usually only have to learn the remaining decades, the word for hundred and the word for thousand. If you're going somewhere where the currency is always in large quantities (yen in Japan, for example) you will be needing these higher numbers.

4. How are you?

It's always nice to ask people how they are. People are always happier if you ask how they are in their own language, so learn how to ask and respond to these questions. You'll probably need one expression and the words for good and bad.

5. Directions

You probably don't know where everything is and sometimes even a map won't do... especially if you're venturing off the beaten path. Learn the names of important buildings, transport hubs, hospitals and of course, the best drinking spots. Then learn left, right, straight ahead and a few ordinal numbers; first, second and third should do.

Don't get lost...

6. Food and Drink

Learn the names of everyday items such as milk, bread, cheese and even some of your favourite things, or even better, learn the names of some local specialty dishes and beverages.

7. Checking In

Unless you're some sort of vagabond you'll probably have a hotel or hostel. Make sure you know how to say you have a reservation.

8. Time and Date 

With hotels, transport and events you'll need to know when things are happening. Learn the days of the week, months and how to tell the time.

9. Transport

Unless you're an avid hiker, you're probably going to be using transport at some point. At least from the airport, getting to where you're going you'll probably need to get a train, bus or even taxi. Make sure you know what they're called and learn how to tell them where you want to go.

Make sure you know how you're getting around.

10. Emergencies

Learn a couple of emergency expressions. Hopefully you'll never need them, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Learn a few key phrases about injuries, illnesses and crimes too.

Don't worry about making mistakes. Few people will expect you to have mastered their language if you're going along for a couple of days. Plus, you may even find you enjoy the language and decide to learn some more!

Why Don't You Just Use Google Translate?

One question always makes us cringe: "Why don't you just use Google Translate?" It pains every bilingual, trilingual or polyglot on the planet. So why don't we just use Google Translate? Because it's shit, pardon our French. Why? Because it's a program. It can't think.

The translations are terrible because the program can't understand anything beyond the words. Context, register and tone are all lost. Each word is translated based on some fancy maths (algorithms or something) that works out how frequently words are used together and picks what it thinks is the best option.

If you've got a typo things become even worse. Humans are pretty good at working out when words shouldn't be there. That's because they understand the sentence. If we wrote though instead of thought it wouldn't be picked up by the program since both are correct spellings of words. There's no semantics involved with Google Translate. Only words that are "related" to other words in other languages.

For example, the word fan can refer to people who support or like something or the device used to circulate air. Many, if not most, languages have two distinct words for these two concepts. Google Translate will have to pick one. In Spanish there are a couple options... it could choose aficionado for the people and ventilador for the machine.

Cool...

In the sentence "There are a lot of fans on the ceiling," the online translator still picks aficionado, although most humans would know from context that we're probably not talking about people, as the machines tend to be installed in the ceiling. Not Google... it sees the words and guesses.

Well done Google...

We're not offering a simple solution to this modern age dilemma. However, you should be proud that your brain is powerful enough to deduce things like this. The amount of processing power required to calculate these things is immense. If you remember our post on speech recognition, we already know that people are definitely smarter than machines. Don't worry about a Matrix-esque uprising any time soon!

Religion And The Spread Of Language

Some people believe one thing. Some people believe another. When groups of people believe the same thing, they suddenly start speaking the same language.

This isn't some miracle. If you have organised religion, you usually end up reading from the scripture in the language it's written in. There are translations of course, but what really gets languages spreading is when they're adopted as an official language of the religion.

Funnily enough, having a different religion has been as good a reason as any for invading new places throughout history. The invaders teach them about their religion, and in turn help make a language official, since oppressors rarely decide to let the natives speak their own language.

Judaism and Hebrew, Catholicism and Latin, and Islam and Arabic. Each of these religions has a strong affiliation with a particular language. The Torah being in Hebrew helped Jews spread Hebrew across the world. Yiddish (a Germanic language with Hebrew influences) was once primarily used by Jews in Germany, but has spread across the Atlantic to North America, where some of its words have made their way into standard usage in American English. It took a lot of chutzpah to pull that off!

They don't fit so well into hotel drawers.

Catholicism had Mass in Latin for many centuries. Rome's conquest of most of the known world helped spread the language, and it continued to live long after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Why? Every priest across the world was conducting Mass in Latin. It's considered a dead language now, but it's still spoken in the Vatican and the Pope has even taken measures to promote it.

Look at the spread of Arabic from the Middle East to Africa. An empire helped this on its way, but convincing people that this was the right way to live your life certainly helped Arabic, the language of the Qur'an, get a foothold in Muslim areas of the world. Now Arabic spreads across such a large area that from one end to another the language is not mutually intelligible. The one thing in common is the Arabic used in the Qur'an.

The Latin alphabet is starting to look pretty boring now.

Whether you love or hate religion, it can spread languages and bring groups of people together. Religions can help certain languages to survive or even thrive. They're fine by us as long as they're not spreading hatred and prejudice, but encouraging linguistic awesomeness instead.
 

Learning Languages With Video Games

Sometimes you need to unwind after a long day trapped in an office. People do this in various ways... watching TV or a film, listening to music or reading a book. Others prefer getting elbow-deep in warfare and running around underground stations shooting people with AK-47s. Or even just killing hookers and going on a joyride.

"Where are they going with this? Is there any way you can learn anything from this arthritis-inducing button-mashing in front of the TV?" The short answer is yes.

How is living an alternate life as a mafia boss or an SAS soldier going to help people to learn languages? Well, people are generally more actively involved with what they're doing whilst playing video games than they are when listening to music or watching a film. The games require interaction. You have to pay more attention in order to do well, and in turn, you learn more.

'Aint no school like...

We're not saying every game is going to make you fluent in a foreign language, but there's something for everyone. There is a vast selection of games available, from arranging tetriminos (the blocks in Tetris) to killing people in horrific ways. Whereas a movie plays on whether or not the viewer has understood the plot, a game does not advance in this way. Your skills are tested and if you have not understood a question, the instructions, or the plot, you will not be able to advance to the next level, complete a mission or progress in your game. Video games frequently test the user and make you prove to them that you're capable. What other medium does that?

"Ninten" apparently means "leave luck to heaven".
You've learnt something from games already.

On top of that, learning through playing games is fun. There is a wealth of educational games, and although they're nowhere near as fun as some of the top titles, they can still provide some amusement. If you enjoy something, you inevitably learn more because you're more passionate about it. We'd highly recommend playing RPGs as they're heavily story-based and tend to include a lot of dialogue and text. Perfect for practising language. Plus, you can pretend you're a wizard.

November 21: World Hello Day

It's been a while, but we're back with another obscure holiday. Today is World Hello Day. What's that, you ask?

World Hello Day promotes peace by encouraging people to greet each other to show that communication is better than force in terms of settling conflicts. All you have to do is greet ten people or more. It's that simple.

The holiday was created by a couple of American guys in response to the Yom Kippur War (aka the October War) between various Arab states and Israel in 1973. This year marks the 39th annual World Hello Day, which is now celebrated around the world by people in over 180 countries! Many people take the opportunity to write to their country's leaders to encourage them to promote peace.

No! We're promoting peace!

The best way to learn about other cultures is to communicate with people from places that are new to you. In honour of World Hello Day, here's a list of words for "hello" in various languages, from A to Z! The countries in parentheses are the places where each language has the most native speakers.

Our machine translator says "Hello".
Say "Hello" back and promote peace.

Azerbaijani (Azerbaijan) - Salam
Basque (Spain) - Kaixo
Choctaw (United States) - Halito 
Danish (Denmark) - Hej
Estonian (Estonia) - Tere 
Friulian (Italy) - Mandi
Greenlandic (Greenland) - Aluu
Hausa (Niger) - Sannu
Irish (Ireland) - Dia dhuit
Japanese (Japan) - Konnichiwa
Kurdish (Turkey) - Silaw 
Limburgish (The Netherlands) - Hallo 
Māori (New Zealand) - Kia ora
Norwegian (Norway) - Hei
Ojibwe (Canada) - Boozhoo
Polish (Poland) - Cześć
Quechua (Peru) - Rimaykullayki 
Romanian (Romania) - Salut
Samoan (Samoa) - Talofa 
Tetum (Indonesia) - Ola
Ukrainian (Ukraine) - Вiтaю
Vietnamese (Vietnam) - Chào anh
Wolof (Senegal) - Na nga def
Yucatec Maya (Mexico) - Ba'ax ka wa'alik?
Zulu (South Africa) - Sawubona

We hope you put this list to good use today!

French: Dangerous Liaisons

If you know French, you know that for some crazy reason you rarely pronounce the end of a word. Non? Exactly.

But French can't just keep things simple like that... sometimes you do say the end of a word, when you have an awkward vowel sound at the beginning of the next word. This is called liaison. Even then, not 100% of these cases are obligatory.

"I hate studying French!
How could my life get worse!?"

Take the word for "and", et. For some reason this little blighter doesn't like to liaise. Its school reports often cite "does not play well with others".

Think of asking for the time: Quelle heure est-il?

If we break it down we have the following:

quelle = "which"
heure = "hour", in reference to the time
est = "is" from the verb être, to be. Usually pronounced like "ey"/"eh".
il = "he/it" We always would remember he being God for a bit of fun.

Which hour is it? In a world of terrible translations, that is what the question means. Thank God we're looking at liaisons and not translation.

"Quelle heure est... forget it! I'll just find a clock!"

So what about this magical "t" sound? Well the French don't like their beautiful language to be butchered by horrible sound combinations such as a double vowel without a glide, so they pronounce the final sound of "est" and combine it with the start of "il". Try saying "quelle heure est il?"... pronounced "ey eel". They're right! "Quelle heure est-il?", roughly pronounced "eh-teel", does sound much better. English does the same with the words a and an. Just try saying a elephant. Not only does it sound horrible, but it makes you look like an idiot. Especially if you're reading this in a library and have just blurted out "a elephant".

Music And Language

Here at The Lingua File we love music, and we also love language, obviously. Music and language are more closely linked than you may first think. We're about to tell you how:

Sounds

All spoken language is made up of sounds. We're vibrating air and causing areas of compression and decompression. Music is exactly the same thing. Compression and decompression of air.

The Ear

If both language and music are sounds, then the ear is the principal organ for being aware of either language or music. Of course, language isn't limited to sounds and the ear. Sign language works entirely with gestures and visuals, and writing works without any sound.

The Brain

With music and language both being sounds that are processed by the ear, then they must share some processes in the brain. Not only are they both processed by our ears and their corresponding neurons, they also are stored using common systems. The brain stores the underlying rules of both music and language, melodies and semantics, in the same system using the temporal lobes. The arbitrary information, however, is stored in independent systems for each.

Even though it uses the alphabet it goes from C to C...

A Written System

Both language and music feature systems in order to represent themselves visually. Languages have writing systems such as alphabets, abjads, abugidas, and logographic or syllabic systems. Music has sheet music, complete with staves, notation, key signatures, tempo, directions and anything else you might need in order to play the piece (instruments and/or orchestra not included).

The Words

Everything in the world is related to language in some way. We require a lexicon in order to name things, such as objects and abstract concepts. You'll find in music that most of these are Italian. Why? Put simply, Italians love music.

Here are twelve (the number of semitones in an octave) of our favourite musical terms and their origins:

A Capella: The meaning has altered slightly, but the idea of there being a group of people without instrument remains. From Italian for "in the style of the church/chapel".
Bass: From the Italian Basso, meaning low.
Cadenza: A solo part, usually improvised and ornamental. From Italian for "cadence".
Diminuendo: Getting quieter. It's the Italian word for "decreasing".
Encore: To be played again. From the French (for a change) word for "more" or "again".
Flat: Half a tone lower and finally an English word.
Geschwind: From German meaning "quickly".
Ma non troppo: This is perhaps the vaguest instruction ever, from the Italian for "but not too much". Use when asking for ice cream. (Though honestly, can one ever have too much ice cream?)
Presto: Very quickly. From Italian.
Quasi: From Latin and Italian for "almost".
Tutti: Italian for "all". When put with "frutti" you have a good bit of ice cream.
Wolno: From Polish, to be played loose or slowly.

You've just learnt the most important phrase
in Italian: "Tutti frutti, ma non troppo."