Devious Uses of Foreign Language Skills

Here at The Lingua File, we often promote learning foreign languages and using them for good. Communicating with other people, learning more about other cultures and even learning more about your own language are just a few of the great benefits of speaking a foreign language. What if you have ulterior motives or just a bit of a mean streak? We've compiled a list of a few naughty things you can do with your skills. Have your evil moustaches at the ready.
 

Avoiding People You Don't Want To Talk To

If you've ever been to any big cities, you know that there are tonnes of people around who feel the need to stop and hassle you for various reasons. Whether it's giving you flyers and other bits of rubbish that you don't want to carry, stopping you to talk about Jesus or convincing you to donate to a charity you've never heard of, using a foreign language can quickly help you distance yourself from those pesky marketers or religious lunatics. A quick "je ne comprend pas" or a "no entiendo" can work wonders in stopping those who only hinder you on your journey to the pub.

Bitching About Things

Sometimes you don't have anything nice to say, yet feel the need to say it anyway. If, for example, you exhibit a British level of politeness and don't want to say anything bad about a restaurant you're in, you could vent your disappointment in your foreign language without ever having to upset anyone. Does that dress actually make her bum look big? You'd be safer muttering it in Swahili than in her mother tongue. If asked, you can always say it means something poetic and beautiful.
 

Quiet cussing is perfectly acceptable.

Swearing 

There are few places in the world where a loud profanity won't go unnoticed. If you ensure that you swear in a foreign language avoiding obvious well-known expressions, you can probably get away with it. Screaming "joder" when you stub your toe is fairly acceptable in Manchester, just as shouting "bollocks" probably won't upset anyone in Madrid.

One-Night Stands

Even this one is a bit strong for us. However, if you're so inclined and you like the idea of never having them call you the next day, then think about pretending to be on holiday. Just make sure they don't live in your neighbourhood as you're bound to bump into them again and then you'll have some explaining to do.

Outing Racists

Not that bigots and racists should be allowed to hide. Finding them isn't necessarily evil but tricking them so that they reveal that they are errs on the side of devious. Using a foreign language can quickly help you find these people and let you know that you should never associate with them again.

E-Prime: To Be Or Not

When learning foreign languages, there are always a few verbs that are considered very important to learn first. Without a doubt, the most important in most languages is the verb to be and its many, many conjugations. It's especially important in English.

What would happen if you just got rid of the verb to be? What if you carried on using English without this seemingly indispensable verb? What you would be doing is operating under the rules of E-Prime.

Two bees or not two bees... that is the question.

E-Prime, which is short for English Prime is, to put it simply, English without the verb to be or any of its conjugations or contractions. It has been suggested that using E-Prime can reduce misunderstandings and help clarify language. That said, we are fairly sceptical of it.

The concept was devised by D. David Bourland, Jr. and was immediately met with criticism and controversy. Clearly scholars love the verb to be and won't allow for anything bad to be said about it. The system could have a few benefits, however. It could be used as a rule for drinking games amongst language nerds (anyone for King's Cup or Ring of Fire?) or just a bit of fun to test your mental faculties and linguistic abilities.

The main reason that E Prime was conceived was part of a continuation of the work in general semantics by philosopher Alfred Korzybski. The E-Prime system, though an idea with good intentions, seems to be so riddled with problems and criticisms that we wouldn't expect anyone to rush to adopt it. What it takes from the English language seems to be far greater than what it would add. It could make the language clearer, but that would take most of the fun out of English!

Film Club: Les Choristes

Following a suggestion from one of our Twitter followers we watched Les Choristes (The Chorus for you monolinguals out there!) and, needless to say, loved it.

There's a reason we're fond of French cinema. We rarely watch a French film that doesn't have an exceptional retelling of human trials and tribulations. On top of that, it's in French. We think (as native English speakers) that the French language sounds significantly nicer than English. Phonetically it's a more pleasing language and what a film to show it off!

"Difficult" boys deserve nothing but coal.

Without throwing out any real spoilers, the film centres around a school for "difficult" boys. "Difficult" meaning generally naughty. The protagonist is their teacher who eventually arranges to form a choral group with the students in his class.

Phonaesthetically speaking, the language works well with singing and the film passes through the classic no-frills approach of storytelling often found in most of our favourite French films. It mixes the good with the bad and comes out with a nice emotional range and a good pace that makes it very easy to watch.

We'd advise anyone who speaks French to definitely watch it. Given the subject matter, it's very universal so we reckon it'd be a good shout even with subtitles for those who don't speak French. Hopefully there are no dubbed versions out there because as we previously mentioned in our dubbing or subtitling post, subtitles are the way to go, especially in a film with audio as important as this one.

Have you seen Les Choristes? What did you think of it? Tell us below in the comments.

Which Is The Best Language To Learn?

So you're probably as hungover as we are... and you probably promised that you'd do so many things this year. What are they? Lose weight, quit smoking, see your family more? Learn a language is one of the most common resolutions... and we hope you picked that one! But which language should you learn?

Following a study by George Weber in 1995, languages were evaluated based on six factors, ranging from number of speakers to how influential the countries where they're spoken are.

If you're learning a language to find love, then perhaps you should be playing the numbers game and picking one with the most speakers. Or one that would find you the best jobs. Without further ado, here they are:

English

We all knew English would probably be in this list. It is our mother tongue here at The Lingua File, and its influence across the globe in terms of film, literature and television helps it top this list. It's also used as a lingua franca in many places and tends to be learnt by most people in the tourism industry, probably because its native speakers tend to be terrible at learning other languages.

It's hard to find a nicer place than Nice!

French

French is a beautiful language and France is a beautiful country. If you needed more reasons to learn the language you can also consider that it is spoken in Canada, principally in Quebec, as well as many nations in Africa thanks to France's imperial past. France and Canada are both first-world countries and French also features heavily as an official language for organisations such as the United Nations, the European Union, the International Olympic Committee, FIFA and many others.

Spanish

Spanish would be pretty good. The language is rich with pretty sexy nations. Spain and the majority of South American countries speak Spanish. The language comes with a rich culture, great films and great party music. 

Russia has also given us matryoshka dolls.

Russian

The language of the world's largest country is not only incredibly interesting, but also incredibly useful. Russia has a decent economy and is still considered one of the world's major powers. Plus you can watch spy films where the bad guys are Americans!

Arabic

With so many oil-rich nations in the Middle East and Arabic being the main language, having a good grasp of Arabic will help you along. If money isn't your thing then you should consider that Arabic is a macro-language spoken from North Africa to the Middle East and is awash with history and culture.

We also have the Chinese to thank for fireworks.

Mandarin Chinese

Chinese has plenty of native speakers and would be a good place to start. With China becoming stronger and stronger economically, it's always going to be a useful language to speak. Although in the past Chinese businesses have had to speak English, things are starting to turn around.

German

As one of the strongest economies in Europe, Germany is a good place to be, and as a result, German is a good language to learn. Knowing the language of Europe's economic powerhouse can't possibly hurt when it comes to finding jobs or generally planning your career.

Japanese

Aside from Japan being one of the coolest countries we can think of, Japanese is useful due to a large number of native speakers and Japan's economy. Plus you can always watch loads of cool animé films without dubbing or subtitles!

Brazil also has beautiful beaches full
of lovely people.

Portuguese

With Brazil having one of the world's largest economies, Portuguese has found itself as one of the most important languages in the modern world. If you already know any other Romance languages you should take the plunge and invest your time in Portuguese.

Hindi

India is going from strength to strength economically and the most-spoken language in the sub-continent is always considered a good one to learn. The culture in Hindi is massive so you'll never be short of materials to help you learn.

If after all this you can't decide or are still not sure, why not pick a language from the easiest languages to learn?

2012: Year In Review

We've been having some fun looking at Facebook Stories and seeing what the world has been talking about most this past year. Since Facebook is American, they've dedicated several sections to the past year in the U.S., including memes, songs, books, movies, events and almost everything in between. We're having a look at the most talked about things from several countries around the world.

Australia: One Direction

It seems the Aussies can't get enough of the English-Irish pop group. They've also been fond of reality TV, the London 2012 Olympics and the globally-famous mummy porn, 50 Shades of Grey.

Here's 9 shades...
you'll have to get the book for the rest!

Canada: The Hunger Games

The Canadians spent the year talking about The Hunger Games, the box-office smash featured in the Top 10 for most countries. They also enjoyed The Avengers and the TV series The Walking Dead and a few films and books that were also popular in Australia. Mitt Romney also made an appearance on their list.

France: François Hollande

Given that France could be said to have invented modern politics, it's no surprise that their new president, François Hollande, would feature at the top of the list. Sports were on the tip of everyone's tongues as Chelsea Football Club, FC Bayern Munchen and Swedish footballer, Zlatan Ibrahimovic all featured in the list.

Germany: BVB

BVB, or Borussia Dortmund was on most Germans' lips for 2012, as were FC Bayern Munich, Chelsea Football Club and Cristiano Ronaldo. Reality TV star Daniele Negroni was also being talked up by the Germans.

Europeans sure love their football!

Italy: Terremoto (Earthquake)

The earthquakes in northern Italy in May and June were the main talking points of the year for most Italians. There was widespread destruction across the affected areas, including 26 deaths. Technocrat Mario Monti came in second and the same football teams from the Champions' League final, Chelsea and Bayern Munich pop up too. Footballers Mario Balotelli and Gianluigi Buffon were popular as well.

Spain: Trabajo (Work)

Spain's year was dominated by the economic crisis. Trabajo, meaning "work" was the most talked about topic and huelga, meaning "strike" was second. The rest of the list mentions Rajoy (the current prime minister of Spain) and the crisis económica (economic crisis). The Spanish national football team, La Roja, the Eurocopa (Euro 2012), Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo all also feature.

United Kingdom: London 2012 Olympics

The Brits were banging on about their Olympics all year, and Usain Bolt was an often mentioned athlete. The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II was also talked about, as was 50 Shades of Grey and box-office smash The Avengers.

Part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

United States: Barack Obama and the Presidential Election

There was plenty to talk about in the United States this year, but the top story was the seemingly never-ending presidential election. Barack Obama was the most talked about politician and public figure, and lucky for him all that buzz helped secure him a win. Like their northern neighbours, Americans became obsessed with The Hunger Games, as they devoured the books and headed to cinemas to see the first film. Instagram became a favourite tech tool that is no longer just used by hipsters, and the meme TBH (to be honest) was often seen at the end of opinionated posts. Americans also became fanatics of the band Fun., whose song We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monáe) was #1 in the charts for six weeks and was heard everywhere from Super Bowl commercials to being covered on the show Glee.

Happy New Year!

The Easiest Languages To Learn

If you're hoping to learn another language and you're lazy, busy or just don't want to overexert yourself, we have a list of a few of the languages considered to be the easiest for speakers of English to learn.

Dutch

Often rated as the easiest language for any English speaker, Dutch enjoys a lexicon with many similarities to English. These Germanic languages share a large number of cognates, and unlike the French, the Dutch haven't resisted the adoption of English words, which makes your job that much easier! They also share similar stress and intonation patterns as well as sound systems. Best of all, Dutch is said to have simple and consistent spelling rules, unlike our ridiculous language. Just think about the English words knife and through.

Norwegian

Some argue that Norwegian is much easier for English speakers to learn than other Germanic languages. It also has many lexical similarities. Its grammar is easier to learn, plus its word order is more similar to that of English than Dutch or German, for example. Norwegian is also full of words that are not quite the same, but with a bit of creative thought you can uncover their meaning. A great example is snikskytter. Try saying it out loud, and you might find that it sounds a bit like "sneakshooter"... and what is the English word for a person who shoots sneakily? An assassin. Fun, right?

Learning Norwegian will also give you an excuse
to visit Norway and see its beautiful fjords!

French

Since the Normans came to Britain and started throwing their words all over the place, English has taken on board many words of either Latin or French origin. The shared lexicon means that a good number of French words will already be familiar to English speakers. Especially if you like food.

Afrikaans

Dutch's cousin in Africa is supposedly very easy for English speakers. Both Dutch and Afrikaans share a good number of similarities with English. In fact, the sentence "my pen was in my hand" is written exactly the same in Afrikaans and means exactly the same thing. It is, of course, pronounced differently.

There's no gender in Afrikaans either, so that makes it a little easier than Romance languages.

Spanish

Fans of Rolf Harris will enjoy the "say what you see" approach to the orthography of Spanish. Rarely does a word not sound how it looks. If you learn how to say each letter, you can pretty much say every word you come across. It makes it very easy for understanding people when they speak Spanish as well, with the added bonus that you'll immediately be able to spell any word they say and jot it into a notebook to look up or use later.

Drinking sangria will make the learning process
much more enjoyable as well!

If you haven't worked it out, there's a pattern here. The more similar a language is to your native tongue (in this case English), the easier it is to learn. Stick with any language similar to your own and you're on for an easy ride. If English is your native tongue, your best bet is to learn either a Germanic language (such as Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and German) or a Romance language (such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian). English speakers are lucky to have so many options given the great number of similarities shared between Germanic and Romance languages in the past!

Franco and Linguistic Fascism

It's probably safe to say that Francisco Franco wasn't a very nice man. His oppression of linguistic freedom in Spain wasn't the worst thing he did, but we do write a blog about languages so it's obvious what we'll be focusing on today.

Franco was a dictator and, like most dictators,
did some very bad things.

Despite being from Galicia, where both Galician and Spanish are spoken, Franco's hatred of the minority languages in Spain stemmed from a paranoia that the minorities would shatter his idea of a unified Spain and could communicate under his nose.

The Second Spanish Republic had recognised Catalan, Basque and Galician, but Franco abolished the statutes in favour of Spanish (or Castilian), which became the only official language of Spain. Under Franco, schooling and the media were always in Spanish. The minority languages became even more threatened as the number of speakers they had dropped.

The red area is where Spanish is currently spoken.
Other colours indicate the minority languages of Spain.

The Basque language was threatened and could have been extinct by now had Franco's regime continued in Spain. Towards the end of his tenure as dictator "by the grace of God", the minority languages were almost never spoken in large towns and cities and were severely under threat in smaller settlements such as villages.

Under Franco, Spaniards would be punished if found to be not speaking in Spanish. In Catalonia,some citizens would speak Catalan in their homes although it was punishable under law. However, Catalan was rarely spoken in the streets, at least not whilst under the watchful eyes of Franco's men.

The Falangist movement can be considered
to be different from fascism.

The effects of Franco's regime are still visible in Spain and the minority languages are still in a state of revival. Fortunately, neither Catalan nor Galician are considered to be endangered, while Basque is only considered to be vulnerable according to UNESCO. They would, however, be faring much better had it not been for Franco, his regime and the heavily-centralised and monolingual policies he enacted.