T i f f a n y H s u

The other day Daniele and I were talking about languages as we let ourselves get distracted from our task at hand.  We sometimes go over the Michel Thomas Mandarin lessons together as we've found it useful for me to explain or clarify certain parts of the lessons.  Before long I sent him a link to one of my favorite sites for language introduction, the BBC Language page.  I was happy to see they've expanded past the usual romance languages and now include many of the world's major languages.  We got a kick out of each language's language fact page, zeroing in especially on tongue twisters, longest words, and false language friends (words that sound like something words in English but have a completely different meaning).  Another fact we liked to see for each language was the jokes section, it's interesting to take a peak at how each culture looks at humor.

Here are a few facts from the BBC, check out their page for more language lessons, who knows, you may find yourself in love with learning about a language you never considered before.

FRENCH

The French would probably tell you their longest word is
anticonstitutionnellement, a long adverb meaning ‘in a very unconstitutional way’. It contains 25 letters but is hardly ever used!


In a foreign language, you can easily find yourself in embarrassing or funny situations. For example, if you want to thank someone, you could say Merci beaucoup, Thank you very much. Take care with the ou and try not to pronounce it u, otherwise you could be complimenting somebody on their ‘beautiful bottom’!


ITALIAN


If you ask Italians, they would probably tell you that the longest Italian word is precipitevolissimevolmente, extremely quickly, with 26 letters


Arguably this is the most difficult tongue twister in Italian:
 Trentatré trentini entrarono a Trento tutti e trentatré trotterellando
Thirty three people from Trento entered the city, all thirty three waddling


If you’d like pepperoni on your pizza, don’t be too surprised if you end up with peppers instead. The Italian word peperoni is the plural of  peperone, which is a pepper, so to make sure that you get the spicy sausage that you’re after, ask for  salame piccante


CHINESE


This is a great tongue twister for practising the tones, which are marked above the vowels. (I remember this from my childhood!)


 吃葡萄不吐葡萄皮，不吃葡萄倒吐葡萄皮。
Chī pútao bù tǔ pútao pí, bù chī pútao dào tǔ pútao pí.
When you are eating grapes, you don’t spit out the skin, but when you are not eating grapes, you do spit out the skin.


ARABIC 


Tongue twister


  مشمشنا مش مشمشكم ومشمشكم مش مشمشنا، لما مشمش مشمشكم، ما كان مشمش مشمشنا
[Mishmishna mish mishmishkom w mishmishkom mish mishmishna, lamma mashmash mishmishkom, ma kan mashmash mishmishna.]
Our apricots are not the same as your apricots, and your apricots are not the same as our apricots. When your apricots were ripe, our apricots were not ripe yet

Via Libraryinjonesboro.org

I was listening to a report about how many of the fast paced programs geared towards children are suspected of doing more harm than good.  As opposed to shows with a slower pace and emphasis on repetition that has been showed to increase comprehension.  An example of a show that I remember studying (I can't recall if I studied it for a child development class or for my own knowledge years later) is Blue's Clues.  Though to an adult viewer, there is nothing more dull than watching such a slow paced show, it has meticulously created using what researchers know about early childhood learning to be more conducive to child development. 

With that in mind I thought about what my favorite programs were when I was a young child.  I never missed an episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (perhaps this explains my love of cardigan sweaters) and Shining Time Station (ah, now I understand my adoration of trains), especially their juke box band segments.

While showing clips from Youtube to my Italian boyfriend, I was reminded of a commercial I would see constantly growing up.  Anyone else remember Muzzy?  It was a language learning program for children created by the BBC.  While watching the clips on Youtube my boyfriend and I quickly had stuck in our heads the songs for learning French vowels and French numbers.  Très amusant!  Check out the commercial below...ah what fun to take a trip down memory lane.

I love languages.  Though I am not a polyglot by any means, I love learning about the subtle ways language frames cognition.  Call it my nerd personality, but there is such satisfaction in understanding how a language works(same with religion, same with culture, same with just about everything), the way a culture thinks is greatly influenced by language and communication, and vice versa.

Our world view is colored by the words we have to describe it.  An example is how children's cognition changes as they develop language skills.  To go from, "I love dogs," to "I love the way my dog runs to greet me, the excited way he wags his tail, and the look of overabundant joy that enters into his eyes whenever he knows I am around."  Having a way to describe those thoughts gives more notice to the reasons why someone may love their dog.  To have the words to describe gives our brain the ability to recognize (which came first is still a debate).

With that in mind, when looking at other languages, the world view of a given culture can be found in the words they emphasize versus the words they lack.  When I lived in China, after a month or two, I found myself switching between thinking in Mandarin and thinking in English.  The way I acted differed based on which language I primed my brain to think in.  When in Mandarin, I gave more of an emphasis on how people and things related to each other and to myself.  Which is no surprise as China has a culture that us centered around relationships.  In English, well, it's harder to say exactly, since I think of English as my modus operandi.  Even now, back in the States, it's not uncommon for me to think of the perfect phrase in Mandarin but not be able to convey the correct meaning in English.

For example, the phrase for "goodbye" in Mandarin is, "zhi jian."  Which literally translates to, "see you again."  This gives the idea that to leave is not permanent.  In Arabic, "ma salama" for goodbye translates into "God be with you."  Giving the learner an insight into how heavily religion influences Arabic language.  It also has nomadic connotations.

Then there's getting into the written language which adds another dimension into how things are viewed.  For example, the character for "mother" is the same as the character for "horse" only with the character for "female" on the side.

Mom = 媽

Horse = 馬

Female = 女

This gives some insight into how traditionally the role of a mother was viewed.  If anyone finds themselves in Xi'an, China and you can drag yourself away from the Terracotta Warriors long enough (still one of the most breathtaking attractions I've ever seen), check out the Forest of Stone Steles Museum.  They have tablets that show the progression of Chinese characters.  I was interested because my dad  loves to talk about how the Chinese written language progressed from pictorial to symbolic. Really, once you get into the reasons for the symbols used in each word, it's hard not to see the Chinese as very systematic and logical when it came to creating language.  Some say Mandarin is all about memorization, but within each character there are clues to the pronoucation and meaning of each word or combination for phrases.

I know this just shows how much of a language nerd I am, but it's worth repeating, you can learn a lot about a culture based on how they use language, if there are variations used for different group of people, and the types of vocabulary they have, etc... Ok, language and food(really, if you think about it, with these two categories, you can learn so much about a culture including the type of climate they live in, their body composition, how they view the world around them, if they value community over individualism, how they view the elderly, children, and/or women, etc...) :)

And one more thought for all language learners.  If you find yourself using newly acquired language skills with native speakers who do not understand you, do not always assume it is the fault of your skills.  Keep in mind everyone is primed to have certain expectation when they meet strangers.  For example, when I lived in China, I met a very lively American woman who had been living in China for 10 years. Her Mandarin vocabulary was much more varied than my own, and I remember spending time cooking and debating the proper situations for the different variations for "pardon me"  (Dǎrǎo, Dǎjiǎo, Máfan, etc...).  Well, usually when we would take a taxi or talked to strangers in a restaurant or shop, she would speak in perfectly understandable Mandarin, but she would get blank stares and the stranger she spoke with would direct their attention to me and ask me what she said.  So keep in mind, if a person is not primed to expect a certain language to be spoken by someone, it makes it harder for them to be prepared to understand.  I've seen it happen when I tutored English in Spain, even watching my Italian boyfriend interact with my friends, or listening to him learn Mandarin is a reminder of how much priming affects comprehension.   Each time he visits me in California, he has to mentally prepare himself to listen to English.  And now with Mandarin, I need to warn him ahead of time if I am going to speak to him in the Mandarin he has learned, otherwise he doesn't comprehend words he already knows.

I've been helping my boyfriend learn Mandarin and we've been using the Michel Thomas method.  I used it before with Arabic and really liked how you learn sentence structure and from there can build on the complexity of the sentences.  He's almost done with all 8 Mandarin cd's and after spending many skype sessions going over the lessons with him and helping to clarify a few pronunciations and reasons for usage of one phrase over another, I think he has the sentence structure down pretty well.  It's what I love about Mandarin, it's pretty logical and there are few, if any, exceptions to rules.  He was doubting his progress with Mandarin, but I told him since he has a good grasp of sentence structure, he knows a good number of verbs and other basics, it mostly is a matter of learning vocabulary now.  After he gets through those basics of Mandarin, it is his choice whether or not he wants to continue on to learn the other more subtle nuances of the language.  But really, after a month of self taught language learning along with clarifications from me, he can pretty much just go to Google Translate to find the vocabulary he wants and create basic to somewhat complex sentences.

Idioms and subtle meanings, the correct way to approach the language based on situation and custom, now that's another story.

The basic sentence structure of Chinese is:

Subject - Time - Place - Prepositional Phrase -Object

A note on time.  Depending on whether you want to emphasize the time or subject, time can go before or after subject.

So a sentence like, "I want to go to Beijing tomorrow with my boyfriend" is ordered as, "I and my boyfriend tomorrow want to go to Beijing."

Whenever my boyfriend is confronted with more complex sentences, I remind him to break the sentence apart and follow the sentence structure and he always can find his way.