In February 2011, students started telling me they thought English was a "really difficult language to learn" and that German was "much easier". Comparing languages based on their perceived degree of difficulty for the learner is clearly a subjective and relative concept. In his fascinating book Through The Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages, on page 108, author Guy Deutscher makes the point that the relative difficulty of learning a given foreign language crucially depends on the mother tongue of the learner concerned. Most people would rightly assume that learning Italian is easy if your mother tongue is French, for example. But German and English also have many similarities. So in a bid to enthuse my disillusioned students, and thinking back to my 14-year-old self discovering similarities between the two languages; I designed a fun lesson on cognates – words used in different languages that derive from the same form.
So without going into the High German consonant shift (also called the second sound shift) or the first sound shift (also called Grimm's Law, after the linguist and editor of fairy tales Jacob Grimm), charts available online show that English and German are full of cognates. The most obvious of these are the ones whose spelling is essentially intact in both languages: hand (German: die Hand), finger (German: der Finger), ball (German: der Ball), salt (das Salz), pepper (der Pfeffer), light (German: das Licht). The list goes on and on but you get the general idea.
Now, my reason for drawing attention to the similarities was to show that in lots of ways, by sharing many of the same words, functions and ideas; many languages are not as different from each other as they seem. So you can imagine my delight at reading this morning that researchers in New Zealand looking into cognates – using analyses more commonly employed in evolutionary biology – have discovered that the origins of English, along with those of other languages in the Indo-European family of languages (comprising around 449 of the world's languages), were first present around 5000 years ago. The use of a family-tree theory about language is not new. The technique was first conceived by German linguist August Schleicher in 1853. Though having applied it in this new way using 207 cognate words, the team at the University of Auckland now believe that this Indo-European family is rooted in the Anatolian region of what is now Turkey, and as a result is actually around 8000 years old.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, we are aware that language is subjected to many different influences such as loan words from other languages, semantic shifts and cultural change. However, this new research suggests that cognates can be seen as 'linguistic DNA', such that cognates describing key concepts in the physical or natural world (such as body parts) are much more resistant to change over time. As a result, they may prove to be more reliable indicators of a language's origin.
Saturday 25 August 2012
Sunday 19 August 2012
The price of being posh
This week I read that the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch had apparently been complaining that he was only ever offered 'posh' roles on account of his background and private education. The origin of the word posh is unknown. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the attractive folk etymology that it is an acronym of 'port out, starboard home' – supposedly indicating the more expensive, preferred cabins on a ship travelling east – popularised for people of mine and Cumberbatch's generation in the 1968 film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Several dictionary definitions do, however, record the word as pertaining to the upper class.
And there it is, the dirtiest word in the English language: class. So the journalists were queuing up to analyse whether or not we have a problem with 'posh-bashing' and inverted snobbery. Cumberbatch got to Harrow on a scholarship after attending a fee-paying preparatory school. I mean, he's one of us, isn't he? He's just like all the other Benedicts we know. If it really is all so unfair on the poor chap, Hannah Betts of The Guardian thinks that maybe he should move to America because it's 'classless'. So classless, in fact, that US audiences can't get enough of class-conscious English dramas like Downton Abbey (described by Cumberbatch himself as "atrocious"), Gosford Park, as well as anything with even the faintest whiff of the House of Windsor.
But while exploiting and bemoaning Britain's class divisions is something of a national sport, I'd say that we're all missing the point focussing on upper class pretensions when the real issue is one's accent and what an albatross it can be. Let's face it, if Hugh Grant didn't play up his accent in every role, we'd finally recognise just what a fantastic actor he is, wouldn't we? But we should also take note from Stephen Fry, a man who seems to be universally liked but who clearly recognises the advantages of his own accent:
"My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses."
In my first term at university in 1994, in one memorable seminar we were required to take part in a demonstration of a classic sociolinguistic experiment. We listened to a variety of UK accents and were asked to make judgements about the ages, statuses and backgrounds of the speakers of each accent. Having completed this exercise (called the matched-guise test), we were forced to confront our own prejudices when it was revealed that all the accents had in fact been recorded by the same actor.
So I can't help thinking that maybe if Benedict Cumberbatch were similarly able to demonstrate his versatility as an actor, and take on a role that was out of character and required a different accent (i.e. not his own); perhaps he could eventually avoid the kind of typecasting he currently finds so unfair. Numerous surveys of the most prestigious, preferred and pilloried UK accents have been conducted over the years. So if RP's days really are numbered, then surely actors from all backgrounds should be getting their tongues round an array of regional varieties as a means of guaranteeing a range of different roles in the future.
And there it is, the dirtiest word in the English language: class. So the journalists were queuing up to analyse whether or not we have a problem with 'posh-bashing' and inverted snobbery. Cumberbatch got to Harrow on a scholarship after attending a fee-paying preparatory school. I mean, he's one of us, isn't he? He's just like all the other Benedicts we know. If it really is all so unfair on the poor chap, Hannah Betts of The Guardian thinks that maybe he should move to America because it's 'classless'. So classless, in fact, that US audiences can't get enough of class-conscious English dramas like Downton Abbey (described by Cumberbatch himself as "atrocious"), Gosford Park, as well as anything with even the faintest whiff of the House of Windsor.
But while exploiting and bemoaning Britain's class divisions is something of a national sport, I'd say that we're all missing the point focussing on upper class pretensions when the real issue is one's accent and what an albatross it can be. Let's face it, if Hugh Grant didn't play up his accent in every role, we'd finally recognise just what a fantastic actor he is, wouldn't we? But we should also take note from Stephen Fry, a man who seems to be universally liked but who clearly recognises the advantages of his own accent:
"My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses."
In my first term at university in 1994, in one memorable seminar we were required to take part in a demonstration of a classic sociolinguistic experiment. We listened to a variety of UK accents and were asked to make judgements about the ages, statuses and backgrounds of the speakers of each accent. Having completed this exercise (called the matched-guise test), we were forced to confront our own prejudices when it was revealed that all the accents had in fact been recorded by the same actor.
So I can't help thinking that maybe if Benedict Cumberbatch were similarly able to demonstrate his versatility as an actor, and take on a role that was out of character and required a different accent (i.e. not his own); perhaps he could eventually avoid the kind of typecasting he currently finds so unfair. Numerous surveys of the most prestigious, preferred and pilloried UK accents have been conducted over the years. So if RP's days really are numbered, then surely actors from all backgrounds should be getting their tongues round an array of regional varieties as a means of guaranteeing a range of different roles in the future.
Saturday 11 August 2012
Dedication, that's what you need
When I was 16 and struggling with Maths at school, I had private tuition for eight weeks prior to the final exam. I worked hard and passed the exam with a B grade. But more than any vital life-skills of decoding simultaneous quadratic equations or working out how high a window cleaner's ladder extended up the outside wall of a house, it was the Latin aphorism that the tutor – a retired headmaster – had displayed in calligraphic letters in his study that stayed with me:
Meret qui laborat (He is deserving who is industrious).
Now as a teacher myself, I recently taught two students – both aged 16 – for a year on a course to prepare them for the Cambridge First Certificate exam in English. They both also passed their exam with very good B grades. The course wasn't a breeze, and the two of them had to work hard over many months. One of them is now beginning an apprenticeship to become a watchmaker. I'm sure he'll be excellent at it.
All of this set me thinking about how we measure success. It seems to me that in the UK over the last 15 years or so, from an educational perspective, people have been preoccupied with quantifying achievement. Former UK prime minister Tony Blair famously wanted 50% of young people to go to university. This policy has proven to be a damaging experiment in social engineering which, in our tougher economic times, is confirmed by the lack of appropriate career opportunities for thousands of graduates. Secondly, tuition fees, debt and the resulting market in tertiary education really are causing many young people to consider whether a degree is worth it. Factor in the recent worrying stories concerning vocational training and employment schemes and you might begin to wonder who actually cares about young people and their potential.
Yet over the past fortnight, we have marvelled at people's potential and achievement in London. Some media outlets have looked into the backgrounds and/or education of Team GB athletes (55% of them are currently at university or are graduates). Others prefer to draw up a medals table of the UK further education and higher education institutions attended by athletes. I could understand if people were using such statistics to highlight potential problems concerning the equality of opportunity for athletes, though in the case of the medals table at least, this doesn't appear to be the motivation.
So what about the medalists from more modest backgrounds? Jade Jones is 19 years old. Is her Olympic gold medal worth less because she left school at 16 to take up taekwondo full time? Is 20-year-old Laura Trott less deserving of her two Olympic golds because she also left school (a specialist sports college) and seemingly went straight into cycling? We need to focus more on people's individual achievements rather than where they came from. For me, the lasting legacy of London 2012 is simply that in spite of their backgrounds, in sport or elsewhere, young people can achieve anything if they have the support of their families, friends and communities – and if they have the desire and determination to succeed.
Meret qui laborat (He is deserving who is industrious).
Now as a teacher myself, I recently taught two students – both aged 16 – for a year on a course to prepare them for the Cambridge First Certificate exam in English. They both also passed their exam with very good B grades. The course wasn't a breeze, and the two of them had to work hard over many months. One of them is now beginning an apprenticeship to become a watchmaker. I'm sure he'll be excellent at it.
All of this set me thinking about how we measure success. It seems to me that in the UK over the last 15 years or so, from an educational perspective, people have been preoccupied with quantifying achievement. Former UK prime minister Tony Blair famously wanted 50% of young people to go to university. This policy has proven to be a damaging experiment in social engineering which, in our tougher economic times, is confirmed by the lack of appropriate career opportunities for thousands of graduates. Secondly, tuition fees, debt and the resulting market in tertiary education really are causing many young people to consider whether a degree is worth it. Factor in the recent worrying stories concerning vocational training and employment schemes and you might begin to wonder who actually cares about young people and their potential.
Yet over the past fortnight, we have marvelled at people's potential and achievement in London. Some media outlets have looked into the backgrounds and/or education of Team GB athletes (55% of them are currently at university or are graduates). Others prefer to draw up a medals table of the UK further education and higher education institutions attended by athletes. I could understand if people were using such statistics to highlight potential problems concerning the equality of opportunity for athletes, though in the case of the medals table at least, this doesn't appear to be the motivation.
So what about the medalists from more modest backgrounds? Jade Jones is 19 years old. Is her Olympic gold medal worth less because she left school at 16 to take up taekwondo full time? Is 20-year-old Laura Trott less deserving of her two Olympic golds because she also left school (a specialist sports college) and seemingly went straight into cycling? We need to focus more on people's individual achievements rather than where they came from. For me, the lasting legacy of London 2012 is simply that in spite of their backgrounds, in sport or elsewhere, young people can achieve anything if they have the support of their families, friends and communities – and if they have the desire and determination to succeed.
Friday 3 August 2012
Fish on a Friday
Today I've been wrestling with another of life's great linguistic mysteries. No, it's not the question of why 'valuable' and 'invaluable' are often misused to mean the same thing in English (you can usually put a price on the former, though not on the latter). Nor am I jumping on the pedantic bandwagon of asking whether former athlete Denise Lewis understands what the word 'literally' means. My question is simply this:
What's the difference between a prawn and a shrimp?
The link above leads to a rather informative, if confusing picture of how we go about naming things (onomasiology). The source goes into some detail about their biological differences and respective habitats. How great would it be if things were always named based on their respective size? In a game of linguistic Top Trumps®, no-one would ever want the shrimp card. And the translator's nightmare comes when we read that the two terms are often used interchangeably. Depending on your preferred dictionary, throw in the fact that both terms can be translated in German as either die Krevette or die Garnele and we have one crazy cocktail – and that's just for starters!
We also learn that British English favours 'prawn', while American English favours 'shrimp' and its associated forms (e.g. 'black tiger shrimp'). This surely proves conclusively that size isn't everything. The choice between different Englishes in translations is usually determined by the client. Though clients often stipulate British English while also specifying that a number of American English conventions be used. Zzz...
In this particular case, however, information online about the specific product made the final decision for me – the shrimp won. On some occasions, I do highlight potential misnomers for different audiences reading a text. But since trade, the Internet and the movement of people have all gone global, and people may or may not be writing text in their native language for monolingual speakers; errors and/or gradually accepted changes in meaning – especially in web content – will become increasingly frequent. We just have to try and keep up!
What's the difference between a prawn and a shrimp?
The link above leads to a rather informative, if confusing picture of how we go about naming things (onomasiology). The source goes into some detail about their biological differences and respective habitats. How great would it be if things were always named based on their respective size? In a game of linguistic Top Trumps®, no-one would ever want the shrimp card. And the translator's nightmare comes when we read that the two terms are often used interchangeably. Depending on your preferred dictionary, throw in the fact that both terms can be translated in German as either die Krevette or die Garnele and we have one crazy cocktail – and that's just for starters!
We also learn that British English favours 'prawn', while American English favours 'shrimp' and its associated forms (e.g. 'black tiger shrimp'). This surely proves conclusively that size isn't everything. The choice between different Englishes in translations is usually determined by the client. Though clients often stipulate British English while also specifying that a number of American English conventions be used. Zzz...
In this particular case, however, information online about the specific product made the final decision for me – the shrimp won. On some occasions, I do highlight potential misnomers for different audiences reading a text. But since trade, the Internet and the movement of people have all gone global, and people may or may not be writing text in their native language for monolingual speakers; errors and/or gradually accepted changes in meaning – especially in web content – will become increasingly frequent. We just have to try and keep up!
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