Star Wars Day: The Languages Of Star Wars

If you didn't know, today is Star Wars Day. As it's May 4th, (May the 4th be with you), we thought we'd look at some of the languages used in the world's best and worst Sci Fi trilogies. Obviously, the three original films are the best.

In a risky endeavour we'll be looking at the languages as they appear in just the first film, from memory. No doubt we'll end up with plenty of fans correcting us. Arguably the second-best film in the series (Empire is the best - fact), Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope introduces us to the series, in which we immediately hear our first language:

One of many Star Wars sets left in the Tunisian desert.

Galactic Standard

Whichever language you're watching the film in is effectively Galactic Standard. However, since the films were made in English, we can assume that Galactic Standard sounds exactly like English with a slightly altered lexicon and different idiomatic expressions. You scruffy nerfherders!

R2-D2's beeps and whistles

Not technically a language but more of a machine code, R2-D2's form of communication certainly warrants a mention given that despite having no lexicon or grammar, the entirety of R2's communication conveys emotion without words.

Jawaese

The language of the Jawas is nothing more than squeaky nonsense. It is lacking any degree of sophistication in terms of constructed languages.

Bocce

The language of merchants is referenced by Luke's uncle when looking for a protocol droid, effectively a robot translator. It is imperative that the droid, C-3PO, speaks this language.

Shyriiwook (Wookiespeak)

The almost impossible to emulate Shyriiwook is the language of roars, grunts and groans used by Han Solo's furry companion, Chewbacca.

If you can vocally replicate Shyriiwook, we take our hats off to you.

Some think that this rock formation in Arches
National Park looks quite like Jabba the Hutt...

Rodese

The language spoken by Greedo, the green guy who does not shoot first, is in fact a simplified version of the South American language Quechua. It should be noted that the indigenous speakers of Quechua bear no resemblance to Greedo.

Huttese

The language spoken by the infamous Jabba the Hutt was considered superior to Galactic Standard, and though the Hutts could actually speak the language, they preferred to use their own instead. It should be noted there exist no pleasantries such as "please" and "thank you" in this language. Typical!

There are clearly millions more languages in the Star Wars universe, but we'll leave them for now before we get too geeky. Tell us your favourites below in the comments. Bib Fortuna's language was a personal favourite of ours.

May 3: World Press Freedom Day

Today is indeed World Press Freedom Day, an international celebration of, you've guessed it, freedom of the press. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are, in essence, the same thing. One refers to spoken language and the other to its written form.

What will we use for art projects when
all newspapers are replaced with websites?

Unsurprisingly, countries with little or no democracy tend to have a poor record when it comes to freedom of the press. Of course, non-democratic political systems, dictatorships and despots require a high level of control over the press and free expression as these interfere with propaganda and their efforts to maintain absolute power.

The fact that the freedom of the press is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of the UN is cause to celebrate. In fact, the UDHR is the world's most translated document. UNESCO's Index Translationum lists the most translated authors and most common language pairings.

It's one thing to feature an ideal and another thing to uphold or even enforce it. The phone-hacking scandal in the UK showed that freedom of the press can't be left unchecked, and that the term "freedom of the press" isn't an excuse for the media to do as they please.

The press, for all their foibles, do occasionally spread news. When they're doing things morally they should certainly be supported.

The Etymology Of Mayday And Voice Procedure

With yesterday being May Day, which annoyingly is not a holiday in the UK or the US, it got us thinking about the origins of the term mayday, as used in distress calls.

We had heard that mayday comes from the French expression venez m'aider (come help me), which when you think about the distress signal, makes a lot of sense. When using mayday, the actual distress signal is repeated three times as "mayday, mayday, mayday" to avoid confusion with someone merely discussing a mayday signal.

US Navy air traffic controllers aboard the USS Iwo Jima

Just like the NATO Alphabet, there are several key terms and phrases used in radio transmissions, in particular by the military, mariners, and those in aviation and emergency services due to how much they rely on radio communication. The protocol for using particular code words that are more intelligible by radio transmission is known as a voice procedure and today we'll be going through a few of their origins.

Just like mayday, there is pan-pan which also comes from French. It's an Anglicisation of the French word panne, which can mean broken. Again, this is repeated to avoid confusion with messages that are not the distress signal itself. Pan-pan signals are less severe than mayday.

Securite, which is pronounced like the French word sécurité, is used for safety information.

Most of the other terms used come from English. Common words like yes and no are replaced with affirmative and negative. In aviation, affirm is preferred as otherwise both words end with -tive, which could lead to confusion.

Portuguese Naval ship Sagres

In addition to affirmative, words and expressions such as ten four, copy, and roger all confirm that a message has been well received, and wilco, a portmanteau of "will comply", means not only that the message has been received, but that any new orders will also be followed. Contrary to popular belief, roger and wilco are never used together, unless that is your name.

The terms over and out are also never used together, since over means that the speaker is finished sending and will be expecting a reply, while out means the speaker is finished sending and will not be expecting a reply because communications are finished.

Aside from all their practical uses, radio procedures can also be useful if you're playing "cops and robbers" or pretending to be army soldiers in the park.

If you know any more voice procedure terminology or expressions, leave them in the comments below complete with a definition!

Queen's Day: The Languages Of The Netherlands

The Dutch are famous for tulips...
Not to mention another plant.

Yesterday the Netherlands crowned a new king, its first in over 100 years. It was also Queen's Day in the Netherlands, and the coronation of Willem-Alexander being held on this date was no coincidence. As of next year though, Queen's Day, or Koninginnedag in Dutch, will be moved a few days forward to Willem-Alexander's birthday, the 27th April, and appropriately renamed to Koningsdag, which of course means King's Day.

In honour of the Dutch, we thought we'd look at the languages of the Netherlands. We won't be looking at Dutch however, since we will have a language profile for it in the coming weeks. Instead, we'll take a look at some of the lesser-known "native" languages of the Netherlands.

Limburgish

With roughly 825,000 speakers, Limburgish is the second most-spoken minority language in the Netherlands. The language has no official status in Belgium or Germany, where it is also spoken, but does hold regional language status in the Netherlands.

Due to political reasons, Limburgish was not granted any official status in Belgium because it met with resistance from Flemish groups due to fears that it would weaken their political power. The Dutch were much more relaxed about the situation. Well done!

West Frisian

The language of Friesland is a Germanic language like German, English and Dutch. There are around 350,000 speakers in the Netherlands and the language holds official status in the region of Friesland.

There are also speakers of the language in Germany, where it also holds an official status. In the Netherlands the language is regulated by the Fryske Academy, whereas in Germany there is no official regulatory body.

Frisian and English were once closely related and still remain so. The only living language more closely related to English is Scots.

The Netherlands is also home to large numbers of speakers of other languages, but as we like to feature languages in their native settings, we'll save those for our language profiles or country-specific posts!

Get It Right: Who And Whom

Knock knock!

Who's there?

To...

To who?

It's to whom, actually...

There's truth in this terrible joke. Despite not being commonly used, "whom" is not only a word, but a word that should be used. More often than not, the word who is used in place of whom. Today we'll be explaining the correct (and therefore best) way to use these troublesome words.

Owls don't follow the rule either!

Who

Who is a pronoun and the subject of a verb. 

E.g. "Who brought all the beers?"

We can't say it much simpler than that.

Whom

Whom is almost identical to who, with the main exception that it is the object of the verb.

E.g. "He brought all the beers for whom?"

If you recall all the word categories then this shouldn't pose a problem. If you can replace the word with "I", "he", "she", "we" or "they", then you should be using the word "who". If you can replace it with "me", "him", "her", "us" or "them", then "whom" should definitely be used.

Of course there are very few people who still observe the rule and even fewer who are bothered by its misuse. If you are losing sleep over it, now you know!

Language Learning Methods: Choral Drilling

Having already covered language immersion in our previous post on language learning methods, today we'll be covering a method that most will be very familiar with, choral drilling.

It's choral drilling.

The method is almost as old as time itself. Put simply, choral drilling involves repeating, almost ad nauseam, the words or phrases you are trying to learn. While most learners of English will remember having to repeat the conjugations of the verb to be, they can take solace in the fact that pretty much every learner has had to suffer through choral drilling at some point.

Rarely anyone's favourite activity, choral drilling methods have proven to be beneficial when it comes to learning conjugations and vocabulary. Nothing helps embed something into your memory like repeating it over and over and over and over...

When it comes to phrases, however, we wouldn't recommend choral drilling. It makes the learner inflexible and when you speak a language you can never expect the sentences to always be in the same order. Learning a language should be fun, don't make it a tedious endeavour by learning it the same way you'd learn the pledge of allegiance.

Use this method sparingly for new vocabulary, verbs and expressions. Just don't overdo it! There are so many better ways to learn languages.

Happy Birthday Benjamin Lee Whorf!

Since today is the 116th birthday of Benjamin Lee Whorf (he's not actually 116 as he's dead), we thought we'd pay homage to one of the great linguists of the 20th century. If you can subtract 116 from 2013 you will know that Whorf was born in 1897. What that sum will not tell you is that he was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts, where he also grew up.

Whorf was initially a fire prevention engineer, having graduated from MIT in 1918 with a degree in chemical engineering. It was his religious interests that first led him to studying linguistics. His analysis of Biblical texts eventually directed his focus towards the semantics and grammar of Biblical Hebrew.

Given that it borders the Atlantic, Whorf's hometown
of Winthrop, Massachusetts likely has a wharf.

Following his work with Biblical Hebrew, Whorf studied the Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico and the Western United States. His work eventually culminated in applying for a grant to conduct a field study in Mexico, where he documented Nahuatl dialects.

After his time in Mexico, Whorf found himself heading to Yale and enrolling in a graduate programme. It was at Yale where he met Edward Sapir. Sapir would drastically change the way Whorf looked at linguistics. Eventually, they created the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as the Whorf Hypothesis, which tells you who did most of the work!

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, named in part as a pseudo-homage to Einstein's theory, explained that language affects the way you think and see the world around you. If this is true, which we like to think it is, then every language you don't know is limiting your ability to see the world around you! Get out there and learn some more!