Languages in the News: August 2016

Today we're looking back at all the language news that made the headlines throughout the month of August.

With the Olympic Games taking place from the 5th to the 21st of the month, it's hardly surprising that August was full of news stories about the games. The Providence Journal reported that American TV network NBC attempted to have the opening ceremony's official language changed from Portuguese to English in order to boost viewership. You can read the full article here.

Once the games started, organisers praised the multicultural South African women's football team's efforts of working through their language barriers. Read about their multilingual efforts here.

The beautiful Emerald Isle.

The Irish Times brought us news from Tajikistan, where journalists are being fined for using words that authorities deem "incomprehensible" in order to protect their official languages from contamination by foreign words. The article also covers ways of protecting Irish in Ireland, as well as covering how the Académie Française deals with foreign words making their way into French. Read all about it here.

The Guardian looked at Hawaii Sign Language (HSL), a language which was only discovered in 2013, has around 30 native speakers, and is not very well documented. HSL is in trouble, and Ross Perlin's in-depth article about the language can be read here.

Lauren Collins of The New Yorker spoke at length about love and languages. If you're a romantic at heart, you may enjoy her fascinating piece about learning language for your heart as well as your mind. You can enjoy the article here.

The Oxford Dictionary's blog, in keeping with all the sporting events going on in the Olympic Games, shared some of the words commonly used when talking about long-distance running. You can expand your vocabulary by reading the article here.

It may look like a planet, but it isn't.

Quartz was full of praise for the upcoming science fiction film Arrival, which features a linguist who is trying to communicate with an alien species as its protagonist (finally!). Read the article about the film here.

CBS reported that the Voynich Manuscript, which is in an unknown language, was to be published in order to give the public a chance at deciphering it. However, at nearly $10,000 a copy, this isn't a task for amateurs. Read the article here.

On NPR's website, Leah Donella discussed the terminology that was, is, and could be used when discussing people with multiple backgrounds, how the terms came about, and how it feels when these terms are used. Read all about the topic here.

If you have any other interesting news articles on languages, feel free to share them in the comments below. We'll try to share the best ones on our social media!

Luck and Languages: Superstition Around the World

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!

The Languages of Separatists in Europe: Part 1

Yesterday Scotland went to the polls to vote on their independence from the United Kingdom. We don't write this blog to promote a political agenda, just the agenda that languages are awesome and we love them. Since there are plenty of separatist movements in Europe, we thought we'd take a look at which ones speak a language different to the prominent language or languages spoken in the country that they are seeking to separate from.

While we're trying to keep language and politics apart, you'll quickly see how difficult defining a language is when politics gets involved. For the most part, we have attempted to go with a linguistic consensus rather than a political one, but if we've slipped up and missed something, please tell us in the comments. We're not indicating that every speaker of these languages is a separatist either. Finally, we're only covering a few select separatist movement in Europe with languages that fascinate us.

Albania

Northern Epirus is part of a historical region that is currently part of Albania. The people in this region speak Greek, which as you can guess, is not the majority language of Albania. That title belongs to the Albanian language.

The canal in Brussels, a battleground for Belgium's two separatist groups.

Belgium

As you may know, Belgium has two main languages. 56% of the population speaks Dutch or Flemish, while 38% speak French. However, the "separatist" movements in Belgium have another element to them: some wish to join other countries.

The Walloons, the French-speaking inhabitants of Wallonia, have a movement to join with France or to make Wallonia its own state. On the other hand, the Flemish and Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Flanders wish to separate from Belgium and make Flanders its own state, with a small minority wishing for the region to become part of the Netherlands.

Cyprus

The separatist movement in Cyprus already has its own sovereign state, if you happen to be the Turkish government. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is primarily inhabited by the ethnically-Turkish peoples of the region and considers Turkish its official language. The region declared its independence from Cyprus in 1983, though Turkey was the only nation to recognise it.

Denmark

The Faroe Islands are inhabited by the Faroese people, who also happen to have their own language, Faroese. There are around 66,000 speakers of Faroese in the world, with nearly three quarters of them residing on the Faroe Islands.

France

It appears that almost every minority language spoken in France has its own separatist movement. The movement to make the Basque Country a sovereign nation is complicated as it is currently an international region that is part of both France and Spain. Of course, Basque, the language isolate, is the main language of this movement.

The separatist movement in Brittany has the Breton language, a Celtic language more closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Irish than the national language of France, French.

The official language of the Catalan separatism movement is Catalan, a Romance language. The proposed nation that unites Catalans in this group is made up of the Països Catalans, an international region in northeast Spain and southwest France, the Rousillon region in particular.

Germany

The Bavarians in Germany have a separatist movement to make the Freistaat Bayern its own sovereign state. The Bavarians also have a few dialects and languages of their own: Bavarian, Swabian, and East Franconian German.

East Frisia has ambitions of becoming its own nation. The native language of the region is Saterland Frisian, a language in decline with an estimated 1,000 native speakers.

Italy

There is a movement for independence on Italy's island of Sardinia. The island is home to the Sardinian language, which while being a Romance language, is incomprehensible to speakers of Italian.

Certain people in Veneto also feel the region would be better off if it was its own sovereign state. The Venetian language has around 2 million native speakers in Veneto, the surrounding regions, Slovenia, and Croatia.

Netherlands

Much like East Frisia in Germany, Frisia in the Netherlands has both a language and a separatist movement that seeks to make the region independent from the Netherlands. In addition to the Saterland Frisian language spoken in East Frisia, the Frisians in the Netherlands speak the other closely-related varieties of the Frisian language: North Frisian and West Frisian.

We'll be back after the weekend with more separatist movements and their languages. If there are any fascinating languages favored by European separatist groups that we missed, please tell us about them in the comments below.

Languages in the News: February 2014

As we enter March we're looking back at some of the language news stories that were hitting the headlines in February, and the very end of January. While most headlines were dominated by news of the Sochi Winter Olympics, the month ended with the Washington Post covering an interesting story from the US claiming that a legislator in New Mexico wanted to count programming as a foreign language skill.

The Week ended the month with the story of how Netflix managed to alienate its deaf customers, through a variety of bad subtitling practice.

Is French important? The countries that make up this flag
would say so.

One of the most controversial series of language stories stemmed from a piece in The New York Times stating that the French government is a big advocate of French language programmes in New York. This led to an article in New Republic telling us to stop pretending that French is an important language, claiming that Spanish and Chinese are more important languages for New Yorkers to learn. While this may be true, it divided opinions due to its dismissive nature of French as an important language, rather than simply stating that the other two languages are more important.

Business Insider provided a rebuttal by giving us 7 reasons you should teach your children French, showing us that French isn't as unimportant as the New Republic article would have us believe.

The Guardian gave us an interesting article on untranslatable words, and though none of the words were technically untranslatable, the article was more focused on difficult to translate words. Elsewhere in The Guardian there were concerns at the drop in language students in UK universities, an ongoing problem that doesn't seem to show any signs of being rectified under the current government, but we'll leave politics for a politics blog.

The BBC asked the question whether English still borrows words at the start of the month and in mid-February was decoding the signs left my construction workers on pavements.

The Register explained an interesting issue surrounding Google Translate. It just so happens Google Translate is terrible because Google Translate is terrible. This is due to people using the machine translation for websites and other documents then publishing them online. This leads to Google using these translated documents as sources to train the programme, meaning that Google accepts these poor translations as real translations and effectively makes itself dumber.

A piece in The Week looked at common words in English that people can't agree on how to pronounce. 

The island of Ireland, the home of Irish.

Meanwhile The Irish Times reported on a march for language rights, though they did have some good news later on as South Dublin council launched a programme promoting and celebrating the Irish language.

The Economist explained the difference between a dialect and a language, after Hong Kong claimed Cantonese was not an official language but rather a dialect of Mandarin.

The Oxford Dictionaries Blog gave us the lexicon to understand freestyle skiing at the Sochi games and Buzzfeed, in a surprise turn, gave us a list, albeit a list of 21 Victorian slang words that we should be using.

The Smithsonian showed us that "huh?" is an almost universal utterance and a fascinating piece by Ben Faccini in Aeon explained why he wanted his children to be bilingual.

The Guardian was back at the end of the month and asked whether musicians are better language learners.

Aside from these news stories, we also discovered James Chapman's Tumblr, which includes many lovely drawing of onomatopoeia in various languages.

That's all the news we had for February, but if there are any we missed that you feel deserve a mention, tell us about them in the comments below.

Rhythms and Culture in Languages by Anne Mason

Have you consciously tapped into the rhythm and pulse of a culture and language? I noticed the effect one day when I landed in the UK from a trip to Ireland. It was tangible, and felt like electricity moving through my body. A new awareness emerged, like I was awakening to something that has been happening in the background, like a running program. At first it felt strange and unusual, like I was a stranger to the place, even though I had spent most of my life in Britain. I noticed then that something was leaving me, feeling the pulse and rhythm of Ireland, the country, the language and culture I had left, as an identity that had become part of me, moving away. When I put my feet on the ground in the UK, it was like shedding this skin. Then a sense of familiarity and then I remembered what it felt like to be in the UK. 

From this new observance, I wondered about how much of our communication with others was coloured by this. I had been exploring my desire to meet others, learn languages and speak to others, a lifelong dream and Ireland had been part of this. I felt held by the country, after living there for a while, like it didn’t want to let me go. Yet when I arrived in the UK, it felt like this was my new place and the feeling of Irish culture I had experienced was moving from me.

I am a member of an internet based social media called SpeakTalkChat.com, whereby you can search for other people, based on your shared interests and languages and thought I could explore this new realisation of mine, using my PC or mobile phone. Just to see what happened when I connected to other people, their languages and their cultures from a distance as it were. I log in to SpeakTalkChat to use it as a tool to practise my language skills and to learn from others. I can search for others, make appointments to chat, and video chat freely, meeting others face to face via my PC. Would I be able to feel this rhythm and connect to it, when speaking to another in this way?

I noticed then, I was indeed moving from a different perspective, like an archetypal 'English' woman, talking to another. I wanted to meet and practise my language skills using SpeakTalkChat. This UK pulse was influencing me and my approach to another. I then listened in a different way. So as an example, I made an appointment to talk to a member in Ireland, to practise my Gaeilge. The time spent with my friend in Ireland was lovely, via SpeakTalkChat and helped me to find some of the sounds I was looking for to pronounce key phrases. I have been working on the Conemara dialect. However, from my new perspective I realised something I hadn’t felt before.

There it was an energy I could see for the first time. Ireland, a beautiful country with lovely people, with its own music, and this lyrical language enclosed in some way, like a bubble of energy, around the culture. I then realised I too felt this surrounding me, I now had a different experience of this chat with my friend. Flowing underneath or around us the real language and culture it was like listening to a beautiful composition and delightful dance. I was no longer just ‘learning’ to speak Irish.

I got excited. SpeakTalkChat is available globally. I could reach out, take myself to anywhere in the world, meet new people, learn the new ‘street’ language and see how it felt to tap into the flow of the culture and the people. Wow. Off I go, why don’t you join me?

Anne Mason has a life-long interest in languages and culture, in particular the way language brings us together as people. She is concerned by the loss of languages and the domination of mono-culture. Her love of languages stemmed from music and a desire to sing and play her cello. She wanted to not just learn the words, but to understand the meaning of the music and the words and the 'flavours' of it all.

Follow @speaktalkchat

The Best Multilingual Cities In Europe: Part 2

Yesterday, we started our search for some of the best multilingual cities in Europe. Today we are heading from France into Belgium as our first point of call.

Belgium

Brussels - It's only natural that the capital of Belgium and the administrative home of the EU would be multilingual. Aside from Brussels being the capital of a country that has both French and Flemish speakers, the EU's main working languages of English and German are also prominent in the city.

Germany

Berlin - Though the German capital has only one official language, Berlin is another one of Europe's most ethnically diverse cities with a large percentage of the population speaking Turkish.

Some Barbary macaques atop the rock of Gibraltar.

United Kingdom

Gibraltar - Despite its location, Gibraltar is part of the UK and has been responsible for heightening tension between Britain and Spain for many years now. Thanks to being slap-bang on the bottom of Spain, Gibraltar has some elements that make it feel like any other British city, except for beautiful weather and a large number of free-roaming monkeys. You can also hear English, Spanish and a mix of the two known as Llanito, which is like Andalusian Spanish peppered with an English lexicon.

Cardiff - Within Wales' capital you can find street signs in both English and Welsh. The Welsh name for the city is Caerdydd, and though the Welsh language has declined since its peak in the 13th century, over 1 in 10 inhabitants of Cardiff still speak it.

London - Despite an embarrassing number of monolingual speakers in the UK, London can thank its immigrant population for making the capital one of the most multilingual cities in the world. There's barely a language that can't be heard somewhere in London.

Ireland

Dublin - Though the capital of Ireland is mainly English-speaking, there still remain a good number of Irish speakers. The capital also boasts a higher number of Irish language schools than anywhere else in Ireland. It is the capital, after all!

If there are any multilingual European cities you feel we've missed, let us know in the comments below.

The EU And Its Languages: Part 2

Yesterday we saw a brief history of the EEC which later became the EU, the countries that formed it and the languages they brought with them. Today we'll be continuing our little history lesson with the Maastricht Treaty, the formation of the EU and countries that became members and brought their cultures and languages with them.

The Colonel Building in the
Dutch city of Maastricht. 

The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 and formally created the European Union. Three years later Austria, Sweden and Finland all joined the club. Austria had little to no worries when it came to linguistic recognition as German had been a permanent fixture since the creation of the EEC. Sweden and Finland, however, led to Swedish and Finnish being added as official languages.

It would take another nine years before the EU would allow any more nations into the community, but when it did it would be the largest expansion to date. On May 1st of 2004, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia joined, as well as seven former members of the Eastern Bloc: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene all became official languages.

Three years later in 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU member states and Bulgarian and Romanian became official languages. Irish also finally gained its official status, no less than 14 years after Ireland joined the EU.

With five years having passed since the last the enlargement, Croatia is due to accede at some point this year and will no doubt bring with it its native language, Croatian.

Irish and Saint Patrick's Day

Dia duit! Although we have a language profile once each week, we decided that the best way to select languages would be by starting with the language with the most native speakers and working our way down the list. This means that we may never get to some minority languages and that's just wrong!

Since today is St. Patrick's Day, one of the most popular, if not the most popular saint's day in the world, we're going to take a brief look at the holiday itself as well as the Irish language. Thanks to Guinness and the popularity of being Irish, the day is celebrated worldwide and, in particular, in the US.

In Chicago they go so far as to dye the Chicago River green!

It's clear Americans are very fond of their heritage and those who have the tiniest bit of "Irish blood" in them love to use this fact as an excuse for alcoholism on the 17th of March each year, though celebrations are often moved to another day when it falls on Sunday, such as this year.

Though St. Patrick's Day is technically a religious holiday, it has long since been observed thus and most consider it an excuse to pretend to be Irish and get drunk on Guinness or anything they than colour green, the Chicago River included.

Something that isn't too often observed, much to our disappointment, is the promotion of the Irish language! Many Irish descendants are happy to drink their Guinness, wear green and generally make a mess of things. They are not, however, very interested in celebrating a huge part of Irish culture, the language.

Irish is one of the oldest languages in Europe and has around 133,000 native speakers, most of which, unsurprisingly, live in Ireland. It's the official language of Ireland and is recognised as a minority language in the UK, mainly thanks to Northern Ireland's inclusion as part of the union.

Despite its small number of native speakers, Irish is also recognised as an official language of the EU. The translation of EU documentation into Irish has an estimated cost of €3.5 million which we would imagine is probably the most expensive per capita.

So today or tomorrow when you don your green attire and raise your glass to celebrate Irish culture and heritage, don't forget the language! Sláinte!