Which Language Should I Learn?

A guest post by Michael J. O'Neal, author of Crazy Bett, a historical novel published as an e-book by Smashwords.

Here's a column I wrote for the local newspaper that's applicable to Speaking in Tongues:

Before I proceed, let me establish my bona fides. I’m a language guy, with college majors in English and linguistics. I took a doctoral exam in French. I studied German in Austria. I’d love to be fluent in a foreign tongue. I’ve always regarded the ability to speak a foreign language as a mark of an educated person. I remain, though, an ignoramus, since over the years my French has gone the way of trigonometry, my German the way of complete bladder control.

So OK, I’ll learn Spanish, as President Obama recently recommended, but if you’re like me, over the hill without ever having reached the top, that’s a tall order. Despite what the folks at Rosetta Stone say, learning a foreign language for most of us is a demoralizing task. You can’t really learn a language until you need it, like when you need to pee and have to ask where the bathroom is. The problem with “learning a language” is that to get beyond asking where the bibliothèque or baño is, you can’t be bilingual unless you’re bicultural. The peoples of Europe are all somewhat bicultural because their foreign-language-speaking neighbors all live in each other's back pockets. But if I launched an effort to learn another language, on whom would I practice it? What community of speakers could I join that would make learning the language meaningful rather than just an ephemeral exercise in brute memorization?

And another question: Why Spanish? Clearly, a good many Spanish-speaking immigrants live in our country, but so do a good many Asians and Africans. The larger point that Obama was making is that he is embarrassed that furriners can all speak English, but we can’t speak their languages. Of course we can’t. Take Finland. Like Minnesota, Finland has a population of about 5 million. They all speak English (the Finns, not Minnesotans). A Finn bristles with offense if you suggest he doesn’t. What would be my motivation for learning Finnish?

There isn’t any. Throughout history, cultures have communicated with one another through what’s called a lingua franca—a common tongue that’s not native to either culture, like Latin. In modern life, English has become the world’s lingua franca. It’s an official language not only of the usual suspects—New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Nebraska, etc.—but also of (I’m going to overwhelm you with facts here to demonstrate erudition, and to annoy the copyeditor) Botswana, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritius, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, the Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. And of the United Nations. The literary language of the African Tonga is English.

English is spoken by a wide and weird assortment of peoples: Christmas Islanders, the people of the Kiribati islands, the Nyamwezi tribe of Africa, the Circassians of Israel, the Southern Sudanese, as well as in Bahrain, Cameroon, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Somalia. In the worldwide Science Citation Index, 95 percent of the indexed articles are in English.

Still, though, I want to learn a language. So which one? There are 5,000-plus to choose from (7,000 by some counts). China’s star is rising, so maybe Chinese. Except that “Chinese” comprises 13 languages that are by and large mutually unintelligible. India is a developing nation (if you consider call centers a sign of development), so maybe an Indian language. But which one? Among India’s 415 languages, 29 are spoken by a million or more people, 122 are spoken by 10,000 or more. Odds are that two guys from India can’t communicate in their native vernacular, so they communicate in English. Maybe Arabic? Fair enough. But “Arabic” includes 27 sub-languages, most of them mutually unintelligible. Maybe because of Iran I should learn Persian. Which Persian? Lari, spoken in Iran? Hazaragi, spoken in Afghanistan? Darwazi, spoken in Afghanistan and Tajikistan? Dehwari, spoken in Pakistan?

I give up. But the next time I’m on Qo’noS, the Klingon planet, and I have to pee really bad, no problem. I’ll just ask, “NuqDaq ‘oH puchpa”e’?”

See, I am an educated guy. (And the copyeditor is really annoyed.)


Michael J. O'Neal
Author of Crazy Bett, a historical novel published as an e-book by Smashwords
See my Smashwords profile at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mjoneal
Sample or purchase Crazy Bett at
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/609
Print version coming soon.

Lost in Translation - Language Translation Software

What occurs when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages?

Translation software is nearly good enough to turn grammatically correct, slang-free text from one language into grammatically incorrect, hardly readable guesses in another.

Recall the old game of "Telephone"? I’ve come across a neat little tool called that shows us this effect.

You can experience this effect using this cool site, "Cross-language Computer Translation Using Software".

LexiBlog Added to Alltop

We have some great news to announce.

LexiBlog has officially been added to Alltop. What the heck is an Alltop you ask?





Alltop is an online magazine rack of popular topics started by the well-known venture capitalist and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

LexiBlog has received the great privilege of being selected to join the Linguistic section for Top Linguistic News.

So go ahead and check it out, we're the new addition at the bottom of the page. Spread the word, Leximo FTW! :-)

Linguistic Documentaries

I've come across some cool linguistic documentaries that would be great for all language lovers out there.


Speaking in Tongues

"Alone among the educated world, the U.S. remains resolutely monolingual, despite how decidedly international the world has become. Speaking in Tongues explores this little-discussed aspect of globa..."

The Linguists

"David and Greg are "The Linguists," who document languages on the verge of extinction. In the rugged landscapes of Siberia, India, and Bolivia, their resolve is tested by institutionalized racism and violent economic unrest."

How to Say 'I Love You' in 14 Different Languages

With today being Valentines Day, Leximo would like to share with you 14 ways to say 'I love you' in different languages.

The English form of 'I love you' translates to the following:

1 - French - Je T'aime


2 - Spanish - Te amo


3 - German - Ich Liebe Dich, I mog Di ganz arg! (Suebian: South German dialekt.)


4 - Chinese - Wo ie ni (Manderin, Cantonese)


5 - Bengali - Ami Tomay Bhalo bashi


6 - Hindi - Mai tumse Pyar karta hoon (to Female), Mai tumse Pyar karti hoon (to Male)


7 - Russian - Ya Vas Liubliu


8 - Portuguese (Brazilian) - Eu Te Amo


9 - Japanese - Kimi O Ai Shiteru


10 - Urdu - Mujhe Tumse Mohabbat Hai


11 - Arabic - Ana Behibak (To A Male), Ana Behibek (To A Female)


12 - Italian - Ti Amo (Relationship/Lover/Spouse)


13 - Swahili - Naku Penda (the person's name follows)


14 - Tagalog - Mahal kita

17,000+ Visitors for Leximo - Viva la Leximo

I've been receiving several questions about how successful the Leximo revolution has been so far. So I would like to share with our readers some of Leximo's traffic analytics.

Leximo opened up invites for testing in December, and followed that by fully opening Leximo for everyone in the 3rd week of January.

Some things to take from our analytics are:

1- Blogging has been crucial to our success. It's allowed us to have a channel of communication with other language learners all over the world. It's a shame that in only two months, we've already had more blog posts than some dictionary sites. We hope they learn from our efforts and start to have two-way conversations with their users.

2 - 90% of the 17,000+ or rather 16,000+ unique visitors came to Leximo in the month of January. Thats considering we opened up the site on the third week of January. The month of January was fun for us, especially having our Erin Mckean blog post hit Digg's Front Page. We're obviously excited with the wonderful reactions and support Leximo is receiving and we expect to double these numbers in the next couple of months.


If you have any suggestions, questions or praise for Leximo go ahead and share it with us on our feedback and help forums.

Leximo FTW :-)


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Leximo in the Daily Colonial

Leximo did an interview with The Daily Colonial Newspaper.

“We’re not just building a dictionary. We’re building a community around it,” said Balina, a computer engineering major. “The number one thing people want to do online is talk to other people, so we’re basically trying to bring that aspect to Leximo and dictionaries because we think that people want to interact together, instead of just by themselves.”

For the full article, head here "Rewriting the Dictionary, One Post at a Time".

Do You Journal?

I’ll go out on a limb and say that most avid travelers probably keep a travel journal. Depending on the time spent traveling, this may be some thoughts and itineraries scribbled into a notebook or detailed pages of experiences and memories. My journals tend to overlap in both categories. When I am busy and having a great time – little is recorded. Ironically, when nothing is happening and I have a lot of time on my hands – I end up with detailed pages that go on and on about how crappy the hostel is or what I ate for dinner.

Going back through travel journals is quite a journey in itself; I recommend it to anyone who kept their battered books. You re-live the good times (if you managed to eventually write them down) and you even think fondly of the lonely, bad times (when you wrote so many pages that now you’ll never forget them).

Here was one of my favorite journal entries from travels past. I wrote this on 5/14/06 while I was volunteering at a NGO in rural Minas Gerais. This was what happened when a friend and I went to a local soccer game:
“I truly feel the machismo* that is Brazil. I don’t know what I was thinking about Brazilian men before I came here. When we weren’t being bothered by the nasty drunkards, boys up on the top of the fence were throwing rocks and clay at us. At first I thought maybe it was the girls sitting behind us because they kept giggling. Then I realized it was the boys. I don’t know why they think it is so cute to be such assholes.”

*machismo is the Portuguese (and, I think, Spanish) word for sexism

Come visit http://lindseysbrazilblog.blogspot.com/ to see more past journal entries and post one of your own. I’m sure you guys have some funny stuff – get those old journals out and share the laughs.

Take a Tour of Leximo...in High Definition

The Leximo Revolution has started. Add your word today and spread the word.

P.S. Best watched in Full Screen.

Check it out...today was the National Day for the Sami peoples of the Arctic

During the opening ceremonies of the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, I was fascinated by references to the Sami people in the region. Being only 11 at the time, I promptly forgot about these mysterious (well, mysterious to me) people.

Then today an AP article caught my eye. Apparently, the Sami peoples in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia today held their National Day today.

The Sami are one of the earliest inhabitants of the Arctic region. They may share a common ancestry with the Basque and Catalonian peoples. Their language is part of the Finnic family of languages. Today, after centuries of persecution, efforts are being made to preserve the language.

And the Sami's traditional occupation as reindeer herders may have contributed to the modern image of Santa Claus. Who knew?

Leximo is Growing Up

Ever since Leximo opened up to everyone 2 weeks ago, we've been receiving a lot of coverage all over the internet.

Leximo has been recognized by TradeVibes, a website forecasting site, as the 2nd most popular website profile on their site for last week. We would like to thank all of our users for their support. This is just the beginning.


We would like to share with you some of the sites that love Leximo's vision.

Killer Startups



Webbfeber




Feed My App




Ziipa (Web 2.0. directoy) Rated




TradeVibes



New School Web 2.0 Technologies



wwwhatsnew.com


Free Tech 4 Teachers



Caronte Web


Lo que Sea

This is just a short list, we will post other sites and blogs that cover Leximo periodically.


Leximo FTW! (For the Win!)

Finding the right words

I've spent a lot of time studying languages. The sad thing is I've spent much of that time studying languages incorrectly -or inefficiently, which is just as bad. Whether from poor instruction or my own stubborn insistence on sticking to poor study methods I've wasted hours upon hours on language tasks that I won't remember or would be useless if I remembered them anyway.

Wasting time is common in all language learning tasks but especially when it comes to vocabulary, where the question is not only how to learn, but what. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains around 650,000 entries and the average college grad comes loaded with about 60,000 vocabulary items in his head, much of which is stored away never to be used again. Admittedly, the greater part of the OED is archaic but the point stands that the greater lexicon of any language is obsolete or uncommon. The problem is that not all learning materials make strong attempts to present the most practical set of vocabulary. For example, one textbook I used to learn Japanese presented "inferiority complex" well before I could confidently order food at a restaurant or talk about the weather.

Finding out which materials are going to give the best preparation for authentic conversation or reading can be tricky: to a non-native speaker it is not always clear which words are worth learning as concepts common in one culture are often obscure or obsolete in others. Publishers are fortunately becoming increasingly aware of this problem and are trying more and more to tailor textbooks, dialogues, and vocabulary lists to drill students in versatile vocabulary.

In some languages this is easier than others. The Japanese government has long published a set of "common use characters" that provide an outline for gainful vocabulary study and a number of publishers have used this framework to create materials that quickly prepare students for everyday tasks as well as the nationally administered Japanese Language Proficiency Test. These materials range from the excellent flash cards produced by White Rabbit Press to a wide array of online vocabulary-building sites. As far as having an official vocab list goes Japanese is a rarity. Chinese, although it uses a similar set of characters for reading and writing, does not have an analogue to Japan's "common use characters," but sinologists have made efforts to identify and categorize the most important characters from a variety of authentic source material and for most other languages a similar process is in progress or completed.

At any stage in the language learning process it can be difficult to discern where your priorities should be. When it comes to concentrated vocabulary study this is especially true. So the next time you're thinking of picking up a new textbook or cramming your head with vocab from the latest-and-greatest online aid make sure you're getting what you need or you'll find your head full of unnecessary baggage that you won't use and will soon forget.

In other words, read the introduction, the about page, or what have you, and make sure the people who made what you're using are every bit as serious as you about finding the right words.

(Oh, and unless you absolutely have to, don't spend those hours and hours making flash cards when you could be getting your study on - in most cases, be it online or in print, someone's already done it for you.)

Language is One of the Greatest Powers of the World

Marylaine Louise Viernes of the Manilla Times wonderfully describes language:

"Language is also one of the greatest powers in this world; it can never be contained for it is diverse and fluid. It can move, inspire, destroy and build with just a few words unleashed. That is why it is something that can be used to our advantage—only if we know how to do so".

Here's the full article, Do you languish, or language.