Superlinguo

The Superlinguo 2012 Eurovision wrap-up There were the...

loztron — Mon, 28 May 2012 08:31:00 +1000

The Superlinguo 2012 Eurovision wrap-up

There were the obligatory white pants, smoke machines and flame throwers, as well as a rise in the popularity of female drummers, beards and women showing their knickers to the world. Eurovision 2012 had a very solid final and apart from Sweden’s breakout hit Euphoria (above, a genuinely good dance song with crab-walk dance moves and fake snow) it was difficult to guess who was going to place well.

Fortunately here at Superlinguo we’re not likely to judge a country on the quality of their bad pop, just what language they chose to belt it out in. Like last year it was a strong showing for English, but with the numbers being boosted to 26 finalists there was a bit more space than last year for some linguistically non-standard ditties to get in there.

The French and Spanish entries performed in their native tongue like they do every year (France deserving to place much higher than 22 for Anggun’s stunning performance). Albania’s Rona Nishliu looked like a character from an old series of Dr. Who, and managed to belt out an operatic number that, while in Albanian, largely fell back on wacky vocal acrobatics to convey the emotion of the song. We also heard songs in national language from Boznia & Herzegovina, Estonia and Serbia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were all ballads - an easy genre in which to depict emotion without worrying about details.

Pasha Parfeny from Moldova went for a Moldovan title Lăutar and then sang in English. Embarrassingly, I thought that much of the Can Bonomo’s track was in Turkish, but the whole thing was in English - I blame the raucous over-enthusiasm of our lounge room audience and too much cheese for that one.

There’s a growing trend in having a song in both English and a county’s national language. It makes sense to not have your performance too overwhelmed by misplaced English vowels, but still have a catchy hook everyone can remember without having to rely too heavily on fall-backs like ‘la la la’ and ‘boom boom boom’. We saw this from Italy’s Nina Zilli, Romania’s Mandinga, F. Y. R Macedonia’s Kaliopi (who used English to round out her militaristic power ballad) and the Russian Buranovskiye Babushki who belted out the verses in Russian before getting to the crowd-winning chorus ‘Party for everybody! Dance! Come on and dance! Come on and dance! Come on and… Boom! Boom!’

Although the competition was English-heavy there were three non-English songs in the topic five, with the Russian grannies, Serbian balladeer and Albanian time-witch placing second, third and fifth respectively. It lends weight to my general belief that the language of a song is secondary to a good dance routine, catchy riff or wacky premise.

Voting this year was once again an English-fest. Last year France were the only country to give their vote in French, but this year they were joined by the Principality of San Marino, a city-state perhaps attempting to differentiate themselves from Italy, which surrounds them. Several countries, including Denmark, Israel and The Netherlands threw in a smattering of their native tongues to live a local flavour to their votes.

So next year Eurovision is heading to Sweden! I can already say fika and min chef är dum i huvudet (‘my boss is stupid’… it’s a long story, and possibly not useful). Sweden is famed for its proficient English speakers so it’s likely that there will be an even heavier Anglo-presence next year. It’s a bit disappointing.

Just catching up on posting the regular Superlinguo Triple R...

georgiaporgia — Sat, 26 May 2012 15:47:32 +1000

Just catching up on posting the regular Superlinguo Triple R radio appearances - this segment appeared on May 4th on the Breakfasters program and our topic du jour was the word class known as intensifiers.

Some things I want to note after the fact, based on feedback from some very helpful listeners and my own “gah, I was wrong!” response when I listened back to the podcast version of the program:

“Sick as” is also heard regularly in Scottish English (thanks to the expat Scot Triple R listener who rang in to tell me!)

Another theory phoned in by a listener for the etymology of “sick as” - they think it derives of “sick as hell” or “sick as fuck”, but the expletive was dropped in polite company. This seems like a more solid theory than mine - I like it!

I spoke about the “as” intensifier not yet being applicable to adverb modification. But when I listened back, my adverb example “He runs fast as” was a poor choice. In that sentence “fast” could definitely be seen to be an adverb, and I reckon that sentence sounds true to the general use of “as”. Quick, fast and slow have long been adverbs without -ly so my on-the-run analysis during this radio chat doesn’t hold. I wonder though if “He runs superbly as” works - something to mull over further, because that one seems strange to me.

Hope you have a sick as day!

- Georgia

Sparkly unicorn punctuation is invading the internet

georgiaporgia — Sat, 26 May 2012 13:02:00 +1000

Have any of you noticed the way punctuation is creatively used in our interwebs these days?

I feel like everywhere I look someone is adorning their tweet with :: or their blog header with ~~

I’ve also seen brands that integrate a cheeky // into all their headers and copywriting (sometimes where traditionally a dash might have been used).

To me, this trend is different to the emoticon craze (which is very much mainstream now) because the emoticon communicates a meaning or feeling, whereas these punctuation marks appear purely decorative.

Have you seen any other examples? Comment below and throw ‘em at us.

** :: Yours in spangly punctuation, Georgia :: **

PS. Lauren suggested a name for this trend: funk-tuation. Puntastic, no?

Superlinguo in your inbox

loztron — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:01:00 +1000

Things we wish English had is going to be wound-back to an irregular Friday feature a while as I knuckle down and smash out some serious chapter writing for my thesis. Lucid prose might also become an irregular feature from me - but Georgia will still be around and fortunately there is always an abundant supply of linguistics-based web-comic goodness.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is that we’ve implemented an email subscription list for those of you who want Superlinguo goodness delivered straight to your inbox. Just pop your email address into the box below our Twitter feed just to the right of this post!

Thanks to Zoe (who Tweets and Blogs at the excellently named Nepali Jiwan) for the suggestion!

Review: Hip Hop Othello at the Globe

loztron — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:52:00 +1000

I had the good fortune of having my visit to London coincide with the Globe to Globe festival, which was part of the Shakespeare Festival, itself a part of the bigger London 2012 Festival, which is all tied in with the Olympics and Royal Jubilee (it’s a rather crazy time to be visiting London!).

The Globe to Globe festival is showcasing every single one of Shakespeare’s plays in different languages from around the world, even the plays you never hear of like Coriolanus (in Japanese) and King John (in Armenian).

I also have the good fortune of having a friend who was organised enough to suggest we go see something. Of all the amazing languages the plays have been translated into (including Lithuanian, Mexican Spanish, Gujarati and British Sign Language) we ended up deciding to see Othello, translated into ‘Hip Hop.’

I’m not much of a Hip Hop connoisseur, nor am I very well educated in Shakespeare. I have to say there was an uncomfortable thirty seconds for me at the start where I was unsure if the premise was going to hold. I’ve seen enough cheesy Shakespearean ‘updates’ to know they can go horribly wrong, or can just feel like someone chose a play and chose from a random list of ‘adaptive’ techniques (Romeo & Juliet gender inversion! Macbeth set in the future! etc.). These guys clearly know their stuff and once we were extolled to throw our hands in the air I was sold. The plot isn’t changed, but the context is updated from the Venetian military to a modern day hip hop recording label (called ‘First Folio Records’ *chuckle*).

The Q Brothers (actual brothers) wrote the script and make up half the quartet of actors. There’s lots of character changing and cross-dressing which is all part of the fun. There’s still some classic Shakespearean English that pokes through, but the text is extensively rewritten, while staying true to the themes of race, power, jealously and love (also major themes in the world of hip hop). In an interview GQ (one of the two Q Brothers) explains that it’s a gradual process over several rewrites.

The audience reviews I eavesdropped on in the shuffle outside were all positive, and mostly along the lines of ‘more kids would like Shakespeare if it was done like this.’ It’s certainly an argument I have no qualms with - after all, I saw Ten Things I Hate About You before I saw The Taming of the Shrew. Although it’s debatable whether hip hop is a ‘language’ it’s clearly a style of its own, and one that has a lot in common with Shakespeare’s penchant for novel rhymes and playful banter.

But for me it wasn’t the updating of the language itself that was most important to the accessibility of the play; a good bunch of actors and some selective editing can make most of his work sufficiently accessible. For me what made it really zing was the updating of the allusions and pop references. Nothing kills a joke like having to look it up in a footnote - but references to Dungeons and Dragons, Andre Agassi, and the Beastie Boys all made sense for the audience and allowed them to connect with the story.

I had a great time; I laughed, I hollered, I got teary and yes, I threw my hands in the air. It’s probably the only play I’ve seen where the performers returned to the stage to high-five the audience. If the Q Brothers are ever in your hood go check them out!

[This post also appeared on Fully (sic)]

The monolingual mindset isn’t just an Aussie problem: A Kiwi case

loztron — Mon, 21 May 2012 07:12:20 +1000

Across the Tasman last week the NZ Herald reported on a recent research paper looking at the use of non-English street signs in Auckland. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find a copy of the paper, ‘The Cosmopolitics of Linguistic Landscapes,’ from Massey University’s Robin Peace and Ian Goodwin, but it doesn’t matter because as far as I can tell it looks like NZ Herald reporters Lincoln Tan and Hayden Donnell didn’t actually get around to reading it either.

The article starts out acknowledging the research has been done and then Dr. Peace is indirectly quoted as saying ‘Some New Zealanders responded with “annoyance” or “repugnance” when faced with a space that did not make immediate, translatable sense.’ This is then a springboard for an online poll of their readers (not a representative sample of Kiwis), where 39% of the participants said signs should be in English only. As though this wasn’t already a problematic enough way to represent that ‘New Zealanders’ attitudes towards non-English signs they also conducted interviews with ten people ‘in the street.’ It’s from these very impressionistic ‘polls’ that we get the scare-line that Kiwis are apparently ‘uncomfortable’ living in a multilingual society. Then we have a quote from the Auckland Mayor and Auckland Chinese Community Centre chairman, giving proviso-filler endorsement to the signs to give the impression of balanced journalism and round out the piece.

It makes me wonder why we bother even doing rigorous peer-reviewed research at all if the media just pull a quote from a phone interview or media release and then twist it to suit there own agenda (in this case fear-mongering). Choosing to conduct an online poll instead of actually discussing the results of thoughtfully designed and executed research is like choosing to watch your mates race each other around the block over getting premium tickets to the 100m sprint final in London; sure, they’re both running races, but you know that one is going to be a much greater display of aptitude and planning than the other.

Not only is this article a poor performance in objective reporting, but it’s also another sign of the dangerous re-enforcement of the ‘monolingual mindset’ that is a bit passe as far as the team here at Fully (Sic) are concerned. Dr. Peaces quote hints that in the research there is a variety of opinion, not just some misplaced and undefined fear. The article gives the impression that shop owners have something to hide by appealing to non-English-only demographics, instead of helping people to understand that it’s actually a common phenomenon in cosmopolitan cities the world over, and usually a sign (pardon the pun) of a linguistically and culturally vibrant society. Being monolingual isn’t actually a problem (the usual disclaimer: I spent most of my life only being able to speak English), the problem is that people are taught to fear other languages, instead of accepting and celebrating the benefits that diversity offer.

While it would be easy to brush this off as just poor journalism in another country, this article has similar themes to the kind of English-only rhetoric that pops up in Australia too. Hopefully we’ll eventually get to see someone write something that actually reflects Peace and Goodwin’s research, and I’ll happily wager that the pictures a lot more interesting than the NZ Herald portrays.

[This post also appeared on Fully (Sic)]

Things we wish English had: Some souvenir words from my trip

loztron — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:38:00 +1000

I’ve had a fun month of wandering throughout Europe - a lovely mix of catching up with family and friends, library adventures, meeting up with some amazing linguists and a bit of sightseeing on the side. I have a suitcase full of Euro-goodies to take home, but I think that ideally I’d like to souvenir a couple of words from some of the countries that I’ve visited. Of course, you can capture all of these ideas in English, but there’s something really nifty about wrapping it all up in a single little word.

Fusy n. Polish It’s a word that captures both the grounds left in a coffee pot and tea leaves left in a tea pot. It doesn’t have the same negative extension that ‘dregs’ carries. Given that we’re a pluri-beverage household we’re always dealing with fusy when it comes to washing up time.

Fika n. or v. Swedish This is the kind of word that always gets wheeled out in ‘why doesn’t English have a word for X’ articles - and for good reason, because it really is a lovely concept. Fika is the combination of a non-alcoholic beverage (usually coffee) and some kind of cake (usually outrageously sweet) and taking time to chat with friends/family/colleagues. It’s not entirely dissimilar to how the word ‘coffee’ is used as a verb in my lab, but I really like the emphasis on the social aspect (and the cake). Needless to say I made the most of every fika opportunity while in Stockholm.

Syrah n. French/English Ok, this one always existed in English. I always thought it was some obscure little grape variety. Turns out that it’s the French name for what Australians and New Zealanders more often call shiraz. In what can only really be a classic case of sound symbolism, if you’d asked me to describe these grapes before I knew this crucial fact I’d have said that shiraz is bolder and more peppery. This trip I’ve learned a new (for an Aussie) wine word, and made sufficiently sure to drink enough syrah to ascertain that it is just as peppery as a shiraz.

Dinner time can be a challenge if you’re using exotic...

georgiaporgia — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:21:00 +1000

Dinner time can be a challenge if you’re using exotic imported ingredients like this fregula sarda (a type of Sardinian cous cous) and its cooking directions aren’t in your native language.

This pack is in Italian, i.e. “standard” Italian. Phew. My dinner is on track tonight because I studied Italian all through school (there are many Italian migrants in Australia from the 50s and 60s, and I was lucky enough to learn from a couple of native speakers at school). I then continued my Italian at university, and spent six months in Bologna on a study exchange.

If it had been in Sardinian (sardu or limba/lingua sarda as it’s known there) I would’ve been in trouble - it’s quite a different language to Italian. The language we know as “Italian” now is a descendent of a Tuscan language or dialect, and for socio-political reasons it has been adopted as the official national language.

But across the peninsula that we currently know as the nation of Italy, there are many dialects and distinct languages. According to the UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, there are 31 endangered languages in Italy.

I’d better check to see if my fregula sarda is ready…

Language Landscape

loztron — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:56:00 +1000

Today I’d like to share a great project that aims to reflect the linguistic diversity of our modern world. Language Landscape aims to offer a taste of what languages are spoken where, and what they sound like. With a simple interface it’s possible to wander a map looking at recordings that people have uploaded from all over the place. So it might be no surprise that there’s German in German, but there’s also Mekeo (from PNG) in The United States, Swedish in Australia and I got to find out about Tundra Nenets language, spoken in Northern Russia.

The site is still currently in beta-mode, but it will hopefully grow as more people get on board. The reason that I like this project is that it really reflects where languages are spoken. So often we get caught up on the fact that Irish is spoken in Ireland, Polish is from Poland and Dinka is a language of South Sudan. But the other week in London I heard more Polish than I’ve heard in a long time, there’s a solid enclave of Irish speakers in New York, and Melbourne has a sizable population of Dinka speakers. Although a language may have its origins in one place, the world is a wonderful landscape of migration.

You can participate too! No matter what language you (or your friend, grandfather or mother-in-law) speak, and where you live, you can help build a dynamic picture of the linguistic diversity in your neighbourhood. There are even some great tips for making recordings if you’re a novice.

[Click for original… it’s much much longer that...

loztron — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:03:00 +1000

[Click for original… it’s much much longer that this, and awesome]

It’s a bit of an epic linguo-comic today. Apart from a brief education about an awesome and unfortunately neglected genius you also get a great list of douche words, about 9/10ths of the way down.

Review: Barry J. Blake, 'Secret Language'

loztron — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:02:28 +1000

In between the usual Easter activities of cross-stitching, baking, eating and talking nonsense with my family, I finally got a chance to get to Secret Language, which had been sitting on my bookshelf begging me for attention for a few months now.

It was a perfect holiday geek read. The tone is very conversational, but more of the kind of after-dinner-somewhere-rather-nice than chatting-with-your-mates-in-the-pub. Blake does a good job of wending his way though an impressive array of topics, explaining things clearly and providing often entertaining examples, but never dwelling too long on any one topic.

The subtitle of the book (Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols) is unnecessarily misleading - I picked it up expecting it to be full of ciphers, codes and modern encryption techniques. Instead this book takes a delightfully wide view of what counts as secret language, from anagrams, cryptic crosswords, riddles and codes to people looking at secret messages in the Bible, magic, taboo and slang, politeness, euphemisms and literary allusions.

The chapters are all sufficiently free-standing, so if the secret language of the kabbalistic traditions of medieval Europe doesn’t do it for you, or if you just want a refresher on some of the more common cryptic crossword techniques, there’s nothing stopping you plunging in briefly or skipping over bits.

Blake draws upon an amusing array of sources for examples - from the Bible, to Old English riddles, opera and The Lion King. He also provides some great examples from Indigenous Australian languages, as one would expect from someone who edited the Handbook of Australian Languages. Secret Language full of interesting factoids and delightfully written - it’s the kind of book you could happily read yourself and then lend it to your grandparents, and if there’s one thing I like more than a geek-read it’s a geek-read with intergenerational appeal.

Barry J. Blake, ‘Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols’ is printed by Oxford University Press.

Superlinguo co-presents Cherchez La Femme: FEMINISM AND LANGUAGE

georgiaporgia — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:59:24 +1000

For those of us who are in/around Melbourne, we are thrilled to announce that Superlinguo will be co-presenting the next Cherchez la Femme event.

Cherchez La Femme is a monthly digest of popular culture and current affairs from a feminist perspective, held on the first Tuesday of every month at the Gasometer Hotel in Collingwood. Follow cherchezlafemmo.tumblr.com for info about these monthly events.

In this next installment, we’ll take a look at how language is gendered, both literally and sneakily, and how we can ask probing questions of this thing we do, every day, and what our verbal communication has to do with our feminism.

Regular host Karen Pickering will be joined by:

Georgia Webster (Superlinguo) - broadcaster, communicator, linguist, feminist
Lauren Gawne (Superlinguo) - PhD student, teacher, linguist, feminist
Julien Leyre - polyglot, translator, artist, activist, feminist

The usual excellent food and drink will be available from our charming hosts at The Gasometer Hotel, on the corner of Smith St and Alexandra Pde. Here’s what you need to know:

7pm - 9pm Tuesday 5 June
$10 / $5 (or whatever you’ve got)
The Bandroom at The Gasometer
484 Smith St, Collingwood

Hope to see you there!

Want to know more? superlinguo(at)gmail(dot)com

11 Obscure Regional Phrases We All Should Start Using

georgiaporgia — Sat, 12 May 2012 15:54:36 +1000

nevver:

  1. Stew the Dishrag
  2. Feel Like a Stewed Witch
  3. Vomiting One’s Toenails
  4. On the Carpet
  5. Sonofabitch Stew
  6. Democrat Hound
  7 & 8. That Dog Won’t Hunt / That Cock Won’t Fight
  9. Buck Beer
  10. (Not Enough Sense to) Pound Sand Down a Rathole
  11. Whoopity Scoot

[Definitions here]

We thought we did a pretty good line in obscure phrases here in Australia, but these ones from the US are great. (Looking at the fridge’s contents this weekend, a Sonofabitch Stew may be on the cards.)

Things we wish English had: nasalised vowels

loztron — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:01:03 +1000

This post is entirely prompted by being in France, but I think there’s something really cool about nasal vowels. To make a nasal vowel start by making a ‘normal’ or ‘oral’ vowel. Then lower your velum (it’s the smooshy bit at the back of your mouth that opens and closes the air flow to your nose). It feels a bit weird if you’re not used to it, but you’ll know if you’re doing it right because your voice will sound nasal (big surprise there!).

French has a few nasal vowels, they’re tough to get your mouth (and nose) around at first if you’re an English speaker! There are lots of languages with nasalised vowels; in a sample on WALS 64 out of 244 languages had nasal vowels as well as oral vowels. There are no languages that I know of with only nasal vowels and no oral vowel.

The funny thing is that English doeshave nasal vowels. They often occur before a nasal consonant (m, n, or ng). So if you listen carefully to someone saying ‘tuna’ or ‘piano’ in a natural way it’s likely they’ll nasalise the vowel. The thing is that we’re not trained to hear this difference, because it doesn’t change the word, so we don’t ‘hear’ it!

Google Beatbox

georgiaporgia — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:01:02 +1000

While some internet translators are not quite up to scratch, we can definitely endorse the translation that Google Translate gives when you enter this with the “from” language set to German, and hit the audio button:

pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bsc…hk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk pv zk bschk pv zk pv bschk zk bschk pv bschk bschk pv kkkkkkkkkk bschk bschk bschk

Labovian Sociolinguists take up carpeting after retiring. [I...

loztron — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:01:00 +1000

Labovian Sociolinguists take up carpeting after retiring.

[I took this photo while in Edinburgh last week. Unfortunately I think it has more to do with the shop being near the river Forth than anything to do with experiments about sociolinguistic variation.]

[Click image to see it at SMBC] It’s a week of...

loztron — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:58:00 +1000

[Click image to see it at SMBC]

It’s a week of linguo-comic madness!

It’s true that English speakers use glottal stops all the time without realising it (Cockney or not). It’s not the tongue that makes the closure though - it’s actually the vocal folds that close - they’re the flappy bits that make sound as the air passes over them, and they’re located in your glottis (hence glottal stop).

[The phonetics ninjas have clearly gotten to Zach Weiner and he’s updated the panel to be factually accurate - hurrah for factually correct phonetics comics!]

HT to Superlinguo buddy Hugh for the link, and a shout out to my friends in the greatest linguistics-themed band to never perform; Uh Oh and The Glottal Stops.

[click image for the original] If you’re like the person...

loztron — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:20:00 +1000

[click image for the original]

If you’re like the person above and can’t decide what to do for a university major then do what I did and study linguistics. You can do historical linguistics, socio-linguistic, psycho-linguistics, there’s lots of great cross-over between computer science and linguistics, and phonetics can get all physics-y and there’s growing interest in applying economic theories to linguistics. Not to mention smatterings of language learning, anthropology and biology!

(n.b. no linguistics department has paid me for my unashamed endoresment of the discipline… but they’re more than welcome to.)

Language death a not-so-exotic problem, Lauren's piece for Fully (sic)

loztron — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:02:25 +1000

There was an interesting piece that popped up on The Age on the weekend about the state of the Toto language in India. Speakers of Toto, living in India’s isolated Himalayan foothills, have to face a future where the fate of their language is precarious. It’s a context that’s familiar to me - I work with speakers of another language who live in the shadow of the Himalayas, on the Nepal side (more about them later).

The Toto speakers may live with relatively minimal outside contact, due to a lack of infrastructure, but there’s still a sense that their language is at risk. As Ben Doherty reports:

“…there is a battle going on in Totopara, a quiet war being waged to retain a sense of community, of identity and of culture, against the forces of economy and the pull of conformity that grips so many of the world’s small cultures. Totopara’s is a fight to keep a language alive.”

Doherty does a great job of showing the increasing encroachment of other languages for educational and economic advancement, of the sensitive links between language, culture and identity and the grim future of catastrophic lost of linguistic diversity in the coming century. The strangest thing about the story for me was the need to set it in India. Doherty didn’t even need his passport to tell the same story, he could have just hopped on a plane to any number of isolated communities in Australia where exactly the same thing is happening.

Take, for example, Kayardild, spoken on Bentinck Island in North West Queensland. There a fewer than eight speakers of the language left, and no one under the age of 60 can speak the language. In Australia there were once more than 500 native languages. The most detailed estimate is Claire Bowern’s, with 491 languages listed, but there were likely more that we never even found out about. Today there are fewer than 150 of those languages left, and of those only 10% are being passed on to children, and therefore likely to survive. Policies like the Northern Territory’s limitation of native language and bilingual education not only limit the spread of traditional languages for the next generation but hamper children’s current educational development.

Perhaps it’s easier to observe the tragedy of stories like these when it’s not on your own doorstep. Only a couple of days after The Age published a piece about the lost of linguistic diversity in India, there was a piece about native language loss in The Philippines reported in The Hindu, a major Indian news service.

Compared to many Australian languages, and many other languages of the India area, Toto is relatively healthy. Although a thousand speakers doesn’t sound like a large community, population is not the only indicator of the vitality of a language. Attitude of the community is of primary importance, and most especially the attitude towards passing the language on to children. With 80% of children speaking Toto, according to the article, the language looks to be safe for at least the next generation. Now is the time for Toto speakers to pass their language on before it begins to attrite, and also to teach their children the importance of the language and culture so that they can continue to pass it on. For many of the languages of Australia and across the globe the link between generations is broken and it’s already too late…

[If you’d like to read more then full article is up on Fully (Sic) over at Crikey]

Things we wish English had: Emphatic pronouns

loztron — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:01:03 +1000

I had a great few days in Edinburgh earlier this week. I put the computer away, did some sightseeing and caught up with some friends who moved here recently. Said friends introduced me to BBC Alba, a Scottish Gaelic language television station, and we sat around watching a program for children that I don’t think would have made any sense even if one of us spoke Scottish Gaelic.

There are over 50,000 speakers of Scottish Gaelic in Scotland, although the majority of speakers are located to the north-west of the country. There’s not much Scottish Gaelic spoken in Edinburgh, but BBC Alba made me curious about the language.

One of the coolest features of the grammar I noticed on the Wikipedia page is that Scottish Gaelic has emphatic pronouns. That means that it has a set of ‘normal’ pronouns and an ‘emphatic’ set for when you want to emphasise or contrast. So the normal ‘you’ form is thu andthe emaphatic form is thusa. So if I said ‘you have the cake’ using the emphatic form I’d be stressing that I mean you, and not anyone else.

We can emaphasise a pronoun in English, or any noun for that matter, by placing more stress on the word (‘no you hang up first’), but I think that using grammar instead of phonetics to do the same job is rather neat!