Multilingual households: overcoming language hurdles from the earliest age

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Catalina Reid

A few years ago I recall meeting an Englishman who lived in the UK with his wife, who was German.  They had recently had their first child.  When asked if he would be teaching the child English or German, he replied ‘Both!’.

I remember my curiosity at the time.  Surely, I thought, teaching a child to talk is difficult enough without teaching them in two different languages?  How can a child differentiate between two languages and the variety of words?  Moreover, wouldn’t it become horribly complicated when the time came to pass on the rules of sentence structure, grammar and so on?

Now, however, I realise it isn’t at all uncommon to meet bilingual children these days.  It’s easier than ever before to travel, meet new people, move and work abroad.  As a result many parents believe that passing on two or more languages to their child in the early years can be very advantageous.  According to Deborah Ruuskanen, professor of English Linguistics at Vaasa University ‘It is entirely possible to teach an infant two, or even three, languages, and four is not unheard of.  In Europe, a great many toddlers learn four languages with little or no difficulty’ (Babyworld.co.uk: Bringing up a bilingual baby).

So how on earth would you begin approaching this seemingly monumental task?  There are two common approaches:

Split the languages across family members

Admittedly it might be quite confusing if one day Mummy is saying ‘pomme’, Daddy is saying ‘apple’ and big brother is saying ‘Apfel’ but it’s going to be even more confusing if the following day everyone is saying something ‘manzana’.  In the midst of such linguistic confusion you can’t possibly expect an infant to differentiate between multiple languages.  Could you blame a child for growing up saying things like ‘Je voudrais a baked Kartoffel’ (‘I would like a baked potato’)?  No, that approach would be more muddled-lingual than multi-lingual!

Instead, take a more structured approach:

-          Assign a language to each parent or family member so everyone knows which language they should be using in front of the baby

-          Try and ensure that, where possible, each person is using their strongest language

-          Try and anticipate questions and situations and be prepared for them:

  • For example, decide how you will react if you child says ‘Hola!’, when you’ve been saying ‘Hello!’?
  • Which language will you use at mealtimes or during family visits?
  • Can you get books and CDs in the languages you’ll be teaching?

Once you have ironed out the details, this method should ensure that your baby gets a balanced learning experience.  Support the learning with games, rhymes and songs to give your youngster even more exposure to your chosen languages.

Keep your ‘family’ language at home

In some cases you might find that one of the languages you would like to teach your child is not commonly spoken outside of your family.  In this case, you might choose to use the most common community language outside the home, whilst using your ‘family’ language amongst members of the household, family and friends.

There are some difficulties inherent in this method.  For example, if your time either at home or out in the community is limited in some way, your baby may end up with significantly more exposure to one language than the other.  A perfect grasp of French may be very useful in life but your child is probably not going to thank you for it if they only have an elementary grasp of the local language, such as Swedish.

Again, a structured approach is key:

-          Consider how much exposure your child will have to each language

-          Is there anything you can do to increase the time spent hearing and learning the community language?

-          Can you enhance their learning experience at home with language specific books or games?

If you feel that your baby is encountering one language far more than another, you may have to reassess your plan and try and provide a more balanced learning approach.  Alternatively, you may decide that you’re happy for your baby to develop more strongly in one language, provided they still have a basic grasp of the other that can be enhanced over time.

But be warned…!

Of course, as they get older there will always be other considerations.  Your teen, now fluent in Mandarin, Spanish and Italian, sets off to school braced to cope with any linguistic challenge!  They arrive home with their new books and you see that this year the school has dropped Spanish in favour of French.  Mon dieu!

Don’t panic!  Having mastered three languages, your youngster clearly has a talent for them and/or you have proved yourself to be an expert educator.  Skills they have developed whilst learning the other languages will transfer to this new challenge.  Be more concerned about the fact that despite teaching your beloved child the three languages you can speak expertly, they are now learning another language.  Moreover, a language that you don’t speak a word in!  Instead you will be able to sit fruitlessly by eavesdropping as she gossips to her friends in her new secret ‘code’.  What’s that?  You thought you heard ‘je t’aime Pierre’ and ‘mon chéri’?  Sadly as you are still stuck on ‘Je m’appelle Jane’ in your exercise book, her secrets will remain safe for some time!

Languages are a skill and, as such, are immensely valuable.  However, it’s important to remember that our children have years of skill building ahead of them.  Take advantage of their bright young minds to teach them the languages that will be important to them in later life but – don’t forget! – they are babies.  Make it fun, make it flexible, make it fabulous!  You may just produce a perfect polyglot.

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Don Quixote’s Neverending Language Quest

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Catalina Reid

The Spanish language is the third most spoken in the world behind Chinese and English and is the second most widely spoken, its distribution owing a lot to the colonisation spearheaded by Spain in the aftermath of Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492. Though colonialism had a big part to play, the Spanish language had a key player in the promotion of the language. Step forward Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), a foolhardy hero named Don Quixote de la Mancha and a squire named Sancho Panza.

Cervantes lived during the Spanish Golden Age (c. 1492 – c. 1659) when Spain enjoyed a boom in art and literature. Cervantes had served in the army and despite being struck down by illness he still fought with distinction for the Holy League in their naval victory over an Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Cervantes was badly wounded in the battle and lost the use of his left arm in the aftermath. Cervantes returned to the army the following year but in 1575 was part of a ship that was captured by Algerian corsairs and he spent the next five years in slavery until his family were able to ransom and bring him home. Cervantes’ eventful life didn’t stop there. Towards the end of the sixteenth century he was struggling financially and found himself imprisoned in 1597 and 1602 respectively. Cervantes was a long way away from his mantle today as one of the most important writers that has ever lived so what changed?

In 1605 Cervantes published the first volume of Don Quixote which told the tale of Alonso Quixano who is middle aged and loves works of chivalry. One day he sets out in search of adventure, believing inns are castles, windmills are deadly giants and that the world is in need of this self-professed hero. After managing to get an innkeeper to knight him, our protagonist who is now known as Don Quixote has a series of bizarre adventures, many with his squire Sancho Panza who is promised some land of his own to govern. The two characters often find themselves humiliated and beaten up in this first novel which is very much a satire of the chivalry that was once the heartbeat of Medieval society.

Cervantes published a second volume of Don Quixote in 1615 and though the same characters appeared again the book took on a more serious turn. Don Quixote was up to his usual tricks again but finds himself tricked by and embarrassed by those he meets and even Sancho resorts to fooling his master. Eventually this all becomes too much for our hero who recovers from his obsession with chivalry and turns his back on adventures. He permits his daughter to only marry a man who has no love of chivalry otherwise he will refuse any union. Don Quixote retires to a peaceful life away from the adventures and is able to see things the way everyone else does and no longer loses himself in fantasy.

Cervantes’ book may not sound like the most outstanding and exciting subject you’ve ever heard of but it is considered one of the first novels and paved the way for fiction to come to the fore as one of the staples of modern society. While Shakespeare was writing plays and sonnets, Cervantes was putting together a form of work that would in time eclipse poetry and drama as the dominant written form it is today. Don Quixote was immediately popular and translations of it began as soon as it was published. Cervantes who died in 1616 could never have lived long enough to see how important both he and Don Quixote would become not just to literature but to Spain and its language.

Don Quixote satirised chivalry that had been a prominent form of entertainment and replaced it with depictions of not just real-life society but also of language. Cervantes’ dialogue in his book was among its most appealing qualities and it would have seemed strange at the time to have general conversation that people were used to in a book. Translators at the time would have been exposed to Cervantes groundbreaking style as they looked to convey the same startling meaning into their respective languages. Cervantes’ influence at the time was so great that the globalisation of Spanish as it crossed the Atlantic to the colonies was known as la lengua de Cervantes or the language of Cervantes. He remains the most important writer in Spain’s history and in the 1990s that accolade was engraved with a fabulous honour.

In 1991 the Spanish government founded the Cervantes Institute (Instituto Cervantes) which you can read more about at http://www.cervantes.es/default.htm This organisation was introduced to promote and develop the learning of the Spanish language and culture. The Institute offers the Diplomas of Spanish as Foreign Language (DELE) which is the only qualification for non-native Spanish speakers that is accepted in Spain, so pretty important! Methods of teaching Spanish are frequently being addressed to maintain the high standards that the Institute demands and to make the language as accessible to as wide a range of people as possible. Spanish culture is also taught and the traditions kept alive and strong with the language through a variety of resources both on and offline.

Had someone told Cervantes at the time what his legacy would have been he would likely have struggled to grasp the magnitude of his achievements today. What Shakespeare is to England, Cervantes is to Spain and while his name is an emblem for the Spanish language today we must not forget the debt we owe to him as one of the pioneers of the modern novel.

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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Making Language Learning Fun

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Catalina Reid

Any form of learning can be daunting and, let’s be honest, sometimes having our heads in text books can be boring on occasion. Language learning is no different. It’s hard work. Every foreign word you face has to be memorised whereas a science or history text book will require you to get to the heart of the meaning without learning every single word. In that respect, language learning is up there with the toughest of them.

Making your learning experience more fun will also ensure you’re more likely to maintain your commitment. So, how do you vary the way you learn? Well, if you’re a big fan of technology there are many online resources which are easier clicking through than sifting through the pages of a language book. If you’re interested in Spanish then you may find sites such as www.cervantes.es and www.rtve.es useful to test your skills. More general sites of note are www.ihes.com and www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk but there are many more and future blogs will share these with you as we dig through our useful links and unearth further gems in our regular mining through the millions of Internet sites.

You may want to go further and look at something like the Nintendo DS. I have a copy of a Learn Japanese game for the DS and as well as the standard lessons briefing you on different aspects of the language there were mini games to help facilitate your learning. The best of these was undoubtedly one which involved giving you an English word and you had to search for the Japanese translation (either in romaji, hiragana or katakana) amongst a row of holes with little animals (gophers or moles if I remember right!) popping up with a word on their heads. Your task was to hit each correct one as quickly as possible before the mole/gopher disappeared. Speed was essential and certainly tested how fast your mind worked.

Among my language learning experience a great method I came across was in Kristine Kershul’s Japanese in Ten Minutes a Day. You would simply have small cards with a word or phrase on one side and on the other side would be the translation. I would spend many hours laying the cards down on the floor and going through them in turn trying to recall that translation. Initially daunting, I found in the early stages I was getting few of the translations right but perseverance saw me through. I was quite cruel to myself in the respect that any cards I got correct were placed to my right and any I got wrong would be placed to my left. Seeing 40 cards on the left side and about 5 on the right left me downcast at times but when I was facing about 3 on the left and all correct on the right I knew I was remembering the language. This is probably my favourite way to learn.

I mentioned in a previous blog about improving your vocabulary by literally pointing (maybe looking if you’re out and about!) at objects you see and doing a quick translation in your mind. Walking along a street I may be passed by an otobai (motorbike), stop to let a onna no hito (woman) with her inu (dog) by, before saying tadaima (I’m back) to my wife, Donna, as I arrive home. Even something as simple as counting in your chosen language if doing exercises or brushing your teeth can keep your mind focussed.

Other fun games I’ve come across are crosswords, word searches and even multiple choice questions. You can find some of these on the Internet but why not design some of your own as you work your through a new language. Of course, being able to recall words at will is one thing but don’t forget to design yourself some conversations that you are able to translate. Imagine yourself in a scenario where you have to converse in your chosen language. What are you most likely to encounter? Buying tickets at a train/bus station, being in a shop, asking for directions, phone conversations etc. Having a basic idea of the structure for a conversation is more essential than just memorising a specific example. If necessary write your conversation with some blank spaces in so you can insert a variety of words at will. The possibilities are endless.

Learning languages can be made fun whatever your preferences. If you want to use pictures to make it more exciting, then do so! Try a crossword or word search, how about those cards, and steal moments in your busy lives to just run over different parts of the language. Anything as simple as greeting someone, just remember how you would do the same in your foreign language. In Japanese you have variants dependent on the time of day e.g. ohayo gozaimasu (before 10 a.m.), konnichiwa (after 10 a.m.), konbanwa (evening) and don’t forget to say oyasumi nasai (goodnight) before going to bed. Keep your learning as varied as possible and it becomes a pleasure rather than an ordeal you feel like bypassing each day.

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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The Art of Learning Foreign Languages

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Catalina Reid

Hello/bonjour!/konnichiwa!

Most of us will have encountered foreign languages at some point in our lives and the chances are they’ll have come up at school. In my secondary school we had six classes in each year and three were given French and the other three German to learn. I drew the French straw and had five years en francais for GCSE and ended up with a B which was something of a shock. My teacher predicted C but she was happy to take the credit for my undoubted language genius! At school I spoke of many things in French and during that exam my spoken test was to answer a handful of questions then just describe a holiday I had been on. That last bit was pre-prepared and it was just a case of recounting it all from memory. How’s my French today? Je suis le not so good!

Learning a foreign language is tough. I’ve been trying to learn Japanese on and off for the last few years but I’m still no further than being able to order a drink, ask where the toilets are and warn people of danger (hopefully not all three at the same time!) Seriously, I know a bit more than that! There are many ways to learn languages and to learn them well but there are a few general rules that you should try to abide by. The first is fairly obvious but try to learn your chosen language on a daily basis. You don’t have to commit a lot of each day to your learning but have a small chunk designated to immerse yourself in a foreign language and your mind will stay fresh and in tune with that language. If your language isn’t daily you have a chance of being a bit rusty when you next pick up your language book.

Whether it’s school or guidebooks you’ll normally have the language split into lessons with instructions to master one lesson before moving onto the next one. Even when you’ve mastered say lessons 1 and 2 don’t forget about them. Go back and make sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Get into translation habits when you’re alone. If you see something such as a bus think of the equivalent word in your chosen language. For example, using my English and Japanese here, I might see one of my six cats (neko), a table (teburu) or a passing car (kuruma). Little steps like that can keep words and phrases fresh in your mind.

There are some key things to bear in mind with your foreign language. One of the earliest lessons you should master is the art of pronunciation. Many languages have words that can sound similar so if you’re not careful you may walk into a shop to buy a bottle of water and end up being escorted round the back to take ownership of a goat named Jeffrey! That’s an extreme and unlikely example, of course (I’m hoping so anyway!), but similar misunderstandings may occur if you don’t work on your pronunciation. Coming from Barnsley in South Yorkshire my accent is very distinct but if I work hard on my pronunciation then I can shrug off such characteristics.

Building your vocabulary is pivotal to your learning of course. The greater your range of vocabulary, the greater your chance of understanding language. With a wide range of words at your disposal you’re almost there. When remembering foreign words you may use an image that links the definition to that of your mother tongue. In Japanese we were told the best way to remember dog (inu) and cat (neko) was via the symbols ね (ne) and ぬ (nu) which formed the outline of a cat and dog respectively. I’d need a blackboard to show you properly! Ne hence becomes neko and nu becomes inu. When studying French I remember fish being poisson which isn’t far from poison in English. A strange association you might say but one that worked for me. I’d just need to remember this carefully if in France and I was handed a plate of fish!

If you know your vocabulary and are pretty adept at your pronunciation there’s still the issue of putting all those words together and herein lies grammar. Languages don’t follow the same rules here and it’s important you grasp the layout of sentences in your chosen language. In essence this should be the part that you learn and never forget. You may forget the odd word from your extensive vocabulary which is fine but always try to remember the grammatical rules otherwise you could find yourself in a spot of bother with Jeffrey the Goat again when trying out your foreign language. The other factor which may come into play when learning a language is the alphabet. English speakers learning European languages will be relieved to find many have the standard alphabet they are used to but take in Chinese or Japanese for instance and you’re faced with a series of complex symbols. It isn’t imperative you know these if you’re not interested in reading the language but by avoiding them you’re certainly reducing your learning options.

There are a plethora of useful language resources out there. Many language books are catered for travellers who just want to get by while on holiday but many will teach you the language in depth. I have two Japanese books, one is a very detailed guide, the other is from the range of language books by Kristine Kershul which professes to teach you the basics of a language in 10 minute daily chunks. Her books cover the likes of Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, German, Italian, Norwegian, French and Arabic so may be worth a look while you’re choosing your preferred language. There are many online word translation services which are useful for checking the odd word you’re not sure about but for large bodies of text you can’t beat our language heroes – the translators themselves. The Rosetta Stone website is considered the no.1 language software site on the Internet so is always worth a look if you’re seeking assistance online.

The important thing to remember is that with daily commitment to your chosen language you will learn it. Some people can learn languages quicker than others but at the end of the day it isn’t a competition. The beauty of languages is that once you’ve learned them you may not use them for a while but they will come back to you very quickly once you are in an environment where there is a need for them. I can recall more French than I led you to believe at the start of this blog but our school wasn’t teaching us that language daily and for that reason many of us will have forgotten a lot of what we learned. My recollection of Japanese is much better than my French as I have studied it daily in the past and what I have managed to learn I haven’t forgotten. The same will be true of you too. All that’s left for you to do now is choose your language. I’ll leave that one to you. Think carefully, you’re certainly not short of choice!

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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Why do you Need to Master a Foreign Language?

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Catalina Reid

There are many hundreds of languages in the world but the majority of us will only ever speak our mother tongue/s. Some countries have more than one primary language such as English and French in Canada and for most of us it is enough to just know what we grow up with. When it comes to foreign languages though, is there a need to learn any? Is it okay to just be content with our mother tongue? There are no right or wrong answers, of course, but I’ll let you know what I think.

Whenever I go travelling I am always self-conscious that I am a guest in a foreign land and that I must abide by the laws, rules, customs and culture of a particular country. It would be easier for me to be ignorant of these things but I’d never forgive myself if I was. By making the effort for the countries you visit you’ll most likely find they’ll make more of an effort to accommodate and treat you well. When I spent a month visiting Singapore, New
Zealand, Australia and Thailand, I had a myriad of things to comply with, none of which led to any complaints from me. Strict food laws were waiting for travellers when entering Australia and New Zealand, while in Thailand there was a great emphasis on people not having their bare legs on display or wearing shoes when entering temples. One lady in our tour group didn’t abide by the dress code and she was collared by security armed with very big guns! She protested at being forced to have her legs covered but there was no way she was going to enter the temple we were visiting without doing as she was told. Personally, I would not have argued with a man wielding a very impressive gun as this gentleman was!

Every country is different and it’s important we do our homework when visiting new places. I can only speak for my fellow countrymen here in the UK but I do feel some of us are quite ignorant when we go abroad. It’s all about sunbathing and drinking lots of alcohol without consideration for anyone else. When I’m abroad I don’t sunbathe but do like a drink but always in a more reserved manner to home. With some people in the UK not making the effort to consider a foreign country’s style of living, comprehending even speaking their language is generally taboo. This isn’t everyone in the UK, you understand.
A good many of us do make the effort to learn some of the language and I personally like to know a few phrases but will admit I could do a lot better. My last holiday in Germany with my wife, Donna, largely comprised of her doing most of the talking and she had the right approach because even though she knew many of the German people could speak English she chose to speak German first and foremost. I admire her approach greatly, the German people did as well, and it’s something I’m striving to do in the future wherever I visit.

Perspective is an amazing thing when considering an argument. If tourists come to your country and don’t speak your language then you may frown upon them for not making the effort. Some English speakers will grumble that it would be simple if we all just spoke the same language i.e. English. While that may be true I prefer that we have our own languages, our own nationality and identity. It would be dull if we were all the same,
wouldn’t it? If anyone has frowned upon a tourist for not speaking their language then ask yourself would you learn the language spoken in their country before visiting. If the answer is no then you have no right to complain about them. I think we all need to make more of an effort for each other and that includes me most of all!

I intend to visit Japan one day and have been learning the language though it’s far from easy. One of the attractions of learning Japanese is a former teacher once told me that if you go to Japan and speak some of their language they will be absolutely delighted. If we want to really immerse ourselves in foreign countries then surely knowing some of their mother tongues is the best way. You can see a lot without knowing another language but you’ll never get to the heart of a place, be able to impress the locals as much with the effort you have made, and there’s no danger of anyone grumbling about you and assuming you don’t know what they’re saying! Surely that one alone is a good reason to learn other languages. I sincerely doubt there will ever be a time when we all speak the same language so we should all aim to understand each other better. Misunderstandings can often have negative consequences so let’s all try harder to understand one another. If you’ve worked hard to understand the country you’re visiting, to learn their language and crucially know how not to offend them then what better guest could they possibly hope for?

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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Can You Have Enough Resources?

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Catalina Reid

When researching for projects – be it writing articles or translating books – it’s important to have the right resources at your disposal. How to choose the correct ones depends on the person and on the project. When I was at university I wrote a dissertation on 13th century Scottish rebel, William Wallace, exploring various aspects of his character and representations of him in historical sources. The dissertation was around 50 pages and three of those pages made up the bibliography! I drew on a small amount of websites for my research but a vast array of books, contemporary and historical records. History demands a wide range of source material, ensuring you know both sides of the argument and having the evidence to back up those perspectives.

As a writer of fiction and a fan of history, my research is often an enjoyable experience, but when it comes to languages and translation there may not be as great a need for books. When faced with foreign languages I find that the dictionaries vary in length and size. If you are going abroad for a holiday then a small dictionary or phrasebook may suffice if your stay in that country is a week or two. If you are on a business trip for a similar amount of time, you may need something more substantial if in depth meetings are involved, but there may also be interpreters present to cater for all speakers. A translator would certainly not need a small dictionary, they would likely need the largest available which covers as much of the language as possible. Should a translator rely on just one book? The answer is surely no. Having at least two in-depth dictionaries would probably be better to ensure consistency in the translation. Mistakes can easily be made. Translators should also have at least one book about language structure, covering all aspects of the punctuation and grammar of their second, third and even fourth languages. Shifting between different grammatical rules in languages is never an easy thing. A trustworthy book of this nature will help keep the translator focussed. Although translators are fluent speakers they will still need to check certain words and grammatical rules at times. Translation isn’t just about changing the text to another language, but changing it with the best possible range of words, and that’s not always easy to do without a little help from resources.

The Internet is the most valuable resource today but it is easy to trip up with over-reliance on it. Although you can find whatever you need at the click of a button it doesn’t mean that the information is accurate. Wikipedia, with articles on seemingly anything, is a friend or foe dependent on the user. Articles written by volunteers could be argued as put together with no care or consideration but I’ve often found the site useful in my own writing. I do a lot of research when writing blogs and some articles I write quite regularly such as film reviews. For those types of blogs I have located a standard set of resources which are the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and Wikipedia which offer facts and figures about the films I review and some background to their production. Those resources I find are ample for those types of blogs but IMDB in particular is a site I can trust to have accurate information given its good reputation. If I used just a handful of random results through Google and believed their content then I would be failing both myself and my readers by not doing my homework.

Translators need not just the know-how about their languages but there is the subject matter of the work they are translating. If they’re translating an essay about chemical elements then having some resources on that subject is useful. An expert knowledge is not necessarily required but you will have to understand everything about the work you are translating. In this instance a combination of Internet resources but definitely science books would be the best bet for the translator. Accuracy and retaining the original meaning of the content are the main aims of the translator.

Time spent on the Internet makes one savvy about what’s a good and trustworthy resource. Sites with more adverts than content are suspicious and one should be wary of spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. If the writers on the site can’t be bothered to get things right in their spelling then what’s stopping them from taking their foot off the research gas and doing a basic job rather than the detailed and professional one that is required. Having an affiliation with your local library is not a bad thing. If your research involves the likes of science or history books which you have to purchase then you could find yourself making little money from your work. A good library provides a wide range of books, journals and Internet access, pretty much everything you need really. Can you have too many resources? Definitely not, but you can have a selection of good and bad resources, which is never an effective mix. There are no correct answers as to how many resources you should have but quality should be at the forefront of your mind and using books and the Internet voraciously will ensure you have the knowledge you need in whatever project you undertake. How many resources did I use for this blog? Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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Chaucer’s Canterbury Texts

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Catalina Reid

History is a fascinating subject that many people sadly neglect. Personally, I love discovering the origins of countries, technology and indeed languages. English is my first language and the most widespread in the world but over the centuries it has undergone some peculiar changes, transformations which have become typical of many other languages as we become more innovative and our language adapts to accommodate the many advances we make.

English can be divided into three types going back through history. Old English or Anglo-Saxon began around the 8th century and continued until the 12th century. Latin and French, the latter owing a lot to the Norman Conquest, left English floundering in England when the 12th century came round. The language then took on the form of Middle English which continued to live in the shadow of French and Latin but the language was given a big boost thanks to Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400). Considered the father of English literature, Chaucer’s work embraced the Middle English form and made huge strides in setting the benchmark for the poetic form including the use of rhyming couplets which was embraced by later poets. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, a series of stories told by pilgrims on a journey to London, became his most famous work and had the honour of being one of the first works to be embraced by William Caxton (1422-91), founder of the printing press, in 1478. Chaucer’s work was instrumental in taking the English language forward in literature but another writer two centuries later was waiting to have his say.

Modern English began in the early 16th century and the greatest writer from this period was William Shakespeare (1564-1616) whose seemingly endless array of plays, poems and sonnets often go unappreciated by many students, myself included, at school, college and university but as we mature it’s hard not to appreciate the work of Shakespeare. Around this time the earliest novels began to appear with Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605-15) being considered one of the first. Not that the English were far behind with the likes of Defoe (1660-1731) and Fielding (1705-54) while Samuel Johnson (1709-84) published the first English Dictionary in 1755. The days of French and Latin being dominant in England were well and truly over.

As the years have passed the English language has continued to adapt to its zeitgeist. The “thee” and “thou” of Shakespeare gave way to novels and plays set in every echelon of our societies and reflecting the different manners, customs and ways the English language was and still is spoken. The twentieth century has seen some of the biggest changes with the polite manners of Victorian society giving way to greater freedom of speech, rights and rules of language. I can fondly remember reading Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962), which depicted a form of street talk for teenagers using combinations of English with elements of Russian to form a new type of slang. Although Burgess’ vision didn’t completely come true we do have a very different way of speaking at present and a lot of it is down to modern technology.

The onset of the Internet and mobile phones has made communication across the globe not just easy but instantaneous. It seems every innovation we introduce leaves us having to devote less and less time to our way of expression. Novelists once reliant on pen and paper were firstly given typewriters which were a big improvement so long as you didn’t make a mistake but computers were an even greater leap forward. With the ability to delete, copy and paste in word processors we can write faster and without as much care and precision as we would have had with typewriters. Despite these advances the English language retained much of its essence but mobile phones and social media such as Facebook and Twitter have changed that.

Text messages have a limited amount of characters as most of us know so our words and sentences required condensing to meet such requirements. The famous abbreviations such as “lol” (laugh out loud or lots of love), “2” (to) and “c u l8r” (see you later) have entered the consciousness of most mobile phone users and some of the terms have even entered the Oxford English dictionary such is their importance today. Text talk could be interpreted as laziness or ingenuity given our limited space to communicate with modern technology. Twitter gives the user 140 characters only when tweeting a message. Abbreviations such as #FF (Follow Friday) and #WW (Writer Wednesday) are terms exclusive to Twitter but the usual “lol” and “:)” creep in as well. It seems there’s a new abbreviation appearing every day and it’s not always easy to keep in the loop. I read an amusing story some months back where a teenager was horrified to find his father had joined Facebook. He wrote, “My father is on Facebook. WTF (what the f**k).” The boy’s father responded with “What’s WTF?” to which his son cleverly responded “Welcome to Facebook!”

Where the English language will go from here is hard to say. The youngest generations seem to be using words like “innit” a lot these days which makes me feel old and I’m not even 30! What Chaucer and Shakespeare would make of all this is hard to say! “To be or not to be,” becoming “2 b or not 2 b innit” would leave Shakespeare dumbfounded but that’s one of the wonderful things about not just the English language, but all languages throughout the world. If they want to survive they need to adapt as we continue to improve our lives and find new ways to express ourselves.

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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The Four Elements of Language: Speaking

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Catalina Reid

We round off our tour of the four elements of language with speaking. Probably the most important form of communication, speaking encompasses not just different languages but also dialects, accents and tones. It is extremely complex and worth many blogs but I’ll try to do it justice with just the one.

We begin our early lives listening and observing before our first words come to us. Quite often a child will utter some unexpected word first rather than “mummy” or “daddy” but once that word has been uttered the rest soon follow. I’m not sure what my first words were but I sadly doubt they were “language comprehension.” As we grow up and learn to structure words into sentences we naturally pick up the accent that is prevalent in our home town. This is an area of special interest and amusement for me.

I herald from the English town of Barnsley which you’ll find in South Yorkshire. A former mining town, Barnsley inspires much humour in my fellow Englishmen with stereotypes of flat caps and whippets being prominent. In fact as soon as they hear the word “Barnsley” they feel compelled to say it back to you in what I think is supposed to be an imitation of the Barnsley accent but leaves me rolling my eyes every time. England is home to many accents of course whether it’s the Geordies, Scousers or Cockneys. We’re all in essence speaking the same language but the differences in our accents can often make it feel like different languages. The Queen’s English certainly seems to take a backseat at times. Our neighbours in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also speak English and their native tongues but again the differences are striking but the accents are what defines nations and towns. It is possible for accents to change, of course. I spent seventeen years living in Barnsley before moving a short distance to Huddersfield. After a few years there my family told me my accent had changed slightly and in two separate incidences I was asked if I was from both Nottingham and South Lancashire, whereas previously there was no doubting I was from Barnsley! The influence of our environment on our speech is remarkable. At university one of my lecturers was born in Germany but spent a few years teaching in America. Consequently he offered us a combination of a German and American accent which I have to say I hadn’t come across before.

I don’t know if this is the case today but I once read Chinese was the most spoken language in the world (even though it is broken down into many variants), while English is the most widespread language in the world. I’ve visited English-speaking countries such as the US, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia and although there are variants in the way the language is spoken we were all able to understand each other, overcoming our differences in expression. The same would be true of a Spanish speaker on holiday in South America who would be able to get by despite some striking differences between the South American countries.

Our ability to speak isn’t unique, of course. Many animals are able to communicate via their own versions of speaking, though their vocabulary is vastly limited in comparison to ours. There are so many layers to speaking. While accents can change we have different tones to reflect our moods and to offer subtle messages to the recipients of our words. We may stutter if we’re nervous, we’re prone to unfortunate outbursts once dubbed “Freudian slips” which we can’t explain, we express all our emotions such as anger, grief, joy and happiness too but can we gain full mastery of our first language? Languages change too frequently for it to be possible, I feel, especially with the likes of text speak coming to the fore in the digital age. What we know of our language is more than enough to get by but there are those of us who can go beyond the boundaries and speak more than one language, opening themselves up to a wider ocean of language possibilities. The majority of people who master another language can probably speak two fluently but there are those of us who are simply unique and juggle many languages. I hope to master another language one day but given the many layers of complexity there are to just speaking English I have my hands well and truly full for now!

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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The Four Elements of Language: Listening

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Catalina Reid

We now come to the third of our four language elements: listening. Rather than just a straightforward definition of hearing the words or sound of another and understanding them, listening befits our language elements in its complexity.

On the face of it you can say we speak at least one language and if we hear that language then we’ll understand it. Well, the circumstances in which we hear words determine whether we are able to interpret them or not. Speaking to someone in person would normally be straightforward but it all depends on the level of background noise that may interfere such as road traffic, loud music etc. Also imagine a scenario where you’re listening to someone speak and they use a word you’re not familiar with. With me this could go one of two ways. I may become so fixated on that unusual word that I lose the thread of the conversation. Alternatively, I may just be able to block the troublesome word out and hear the rest of the sentence and gauge its meaning. It really depends on the word. Mishearing just a fraction of a sentence or conversation can cause all kinds of problems.

Listening to foreign languages is a huge test and I certainly found at school that I was often shrugging my shoulders trying to find the answers. When I studied French as a GCSE it was broken up into reading, writing, speaking and listening. The latter saw the students seated in the usual exam conditions with a tape recorder resting on the stage ahead of us. I remember that exam being really tough and I wasn’t even sat near the back of the room. We were supposed to be seated within what was considered a good range to decipher the conversations on the tape but it was still hard work. Strangely enough, I found studying German for a year to be simpler than French and that included the listening comprehension tests we had to do.

My study of Japanese didn’t involve listening comprehension but I’ve certainly tried some at home when watching my collection of world cinema DVDs. How did I do in those tests? Not especially well. One of the problems we face when listening to another language are the lack of concessions for those of us that are a bit slow in grasping meaning (I include myself in that group.) My Japanese films don’t contain characters that speak the language slowly. At times words seem to leave their mouths faster than bullets from guns and I can only make out the odd word such as konnichiwa and arigato. The same applies with French and German films I’ve watched as well. With any listening comprehension it’s very difficult to pick out every single word but if we can yield most of the sentence from our listening then we’re likely to be able to understand the overall meaning. Thankfully, listening comprehension can extend to people who are hard of hearing. Sign language has opened up another channel of communication but even more impressive are those people who are able to lip read, effectively listening just as well as everyone else.

Listening comprehension is certainly not easy. Aside from the potential difficulties of grasping meaning in foreign languages, spoken at a standard pace, we have plenty of problems with our first languages. The environment we find ourselves in when listening and the length of time we’re listening without responding can both have an impact. Anyone remember Chinese Whispers from school? Surely this was listening comprehension at its cruellest, especially if you’re listening to someone who not only whispers very quietly (if that’s possible!) but quickly as well. Before anyone asks, I was rubbish at Chinese Whispers. Let’s also not forget those people, and we all know at least one, that seem to be in their own worlds whenever we speak to them. Listening comprehension is something we will never fully master, there are too many obstacles to overcome, but it needs no justification in being one of our four key elements of language.

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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The Four Elements of Language: Writing

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Catalina Reid

Next up in our four elements of language is one that is very close to my heart: writing. As a writer of fiction and a frequent blogger I can say I know a little about the written word but would never blow my own trumpet about it.

I can’t recall the first word I ever wrote but thinking back I do remember being at primary school and learning all about handwriting – joining letters together to form words and all that. Worryingly, my writing assignments at primary school contain some embarrassing memories of one sentence including the word “the” three times. That might not seem bad but then you didn’t write “the” three consecutive times and try and pass it off as a sentence! I also once wrote a page about a subject I don’t recall – probably how to write a sentence properly! – but the teaching assistant handed it to me with a smile and said if she read it aloud she would die due to the pages being unblemished by commas or full stops! There’s a lot to learn when it comes to writing and we face some difficult lessons as we go along.

As with reading, writing requires us to not only understand the words we’re writing but to put them in an order that mirrors whatever meaning we’re trying to convey. Our good friend – punctuation – helps facilitate the writing expression process but if we don’t have a full grasp of their lengthy portfolio then we can make some pretty bad mistakes. Can I shoot Clive? and Can I shoot, Clive? could lead to catastrophic consequences for Clive in one instance. Being masterful with punctuation and writing isn’t always straightforward of course. James Joyce didn’t use traditional speech marks (“ ” or ‘ ’) when writing dialogue in Ulysses, the use of “and” after a word is considered by many to be sacrosanct and it shouldn’t be used at the start of a sentence, while some writers love that semi-colon (;) but others simply abhor it. Finding a main path through the minefield of writing expression debates isn’t possible so we each have to seek out a side road of our own choosing.

The rise of the Internet and mobile phones has put an even greater emphasis on writing. Previously we had letters which many people still use, of course, but with computers they can type rather than write them out by hand. For some of us this is a blessing as handwriting is unique to the individual even though we’re writing in the same languages and, let’s face it, some of us have better writing styles than others. I don’t know if this true on a global scale but certainly in the UK we regard doctors as having awful handwriting and that association is very much in the public consciousness. I’m not one to preach about good handwriting given that I can barely read my own at times and I have to work hard to avoid making a “5” look like an “s” and vice versa. Modern technology may have made things easier in terms of writing but a lingering problem comes with having to interpret the tone of an email or text message. This doesn’t happen all the time, of course, but depending on the subject matter it can be very difficult deciphering if the person you’re communicating with is being agreeable or argumentative. Writers of books and articles have more time to convey their meanings whereas texts and emails, though you can ponder over them, do not require the same meticulous checks and redrafting.

Writing in your mother tongue has many obstacles but when faced with foreign languages the problems are accentuated. In my Japanese evening classes I had the pleasure of writing the many symbols and spelling out my chosen Japanese name (Shuya, in case you were wondering) and a few simple phrases. Even more so than writing letters of the English alphabet, Japanese symbols require a careful hand to avoid mistakes. We were taught to write the symbols in stages as if using a paintbrush which is easier said than done when clutching a biro. I think writing French and German didn’t pose as many difficulties as Japanese as their languages still used letters of the alphabet I was used to. However, they did offer complexity in pronunciation and their use of punctuation such as accents over letters.

As with reading, writing wasn’t always valuable to a wide range of people. Only the most educated scholars, theologians, rulers etc could write in our distant history but today the ability is shared by millions and millions of us. With modern technology the way it is, writing will continue to be a vital commodity for our society and for me personally it’s often more preferable to speaking. I’ve always believed I can express myself better through writing than through dialogue, being a shy person that I am, so as long as I breathe I’ll be championing writing as the key language element in our group of four. After all, once our spoken words have been uttered they are gone forever while our written words can live on for centuries.

My World Seen through Dave’s Looking Glass: A Joint Collaboration between David Brown and Catalina Reid.

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