I’m not a fan of Huntsman — I’ll say that up front — and I don’t think he has any conceivable path to the Republican nomination…. But,  after many years of listening to political candidates speaking in fumbling, highly accented Spanish, isn’t it about time to hear Chinese get the same treatment? Why, yes it is….

Exit question: How many candidates (Obama included) do you think are studying how to say, “please extend more credit, exalted masters” in Mandarin?

I’ve heard for years about the plight of Korean children who, willingly or forced by parents, undergo oral surgery in an effort to increase their English proficiency. It’s silly, it’s a waste of money and pain, and it doesn’t work…  But some doctors are definitely laughing their way to the bank. The idea that clipping some of the connective tissue under the tongue is a prerequisite for improving one’s accent in English is patently offensive, as it is based on issues of national exceptionalism which are rampant in Korea. To wit, many Koreans believe that they have particular genetic conditions which prevent them from speaking English with all the ease of, say, your average Dutchman…  To that, I’ve always pointed out that Korean Americans seem to have no problem whatsoever speaking English. It’s not the shape of your tongue which determines accent — it’s the extent and quality of your exposure to the language. Simply put, if you really want to develop a good accent in any language, the key is LOTS of exposure to and practice with the sounds.

I thought that this was a viewpoint which was restricted to Korea, however. Surely other people groups aren’t crazy enough to fall for surgical hype…

Mega-SOB!!!!

Rhiannon Brooksbank–Jones, 19… struggled to pronounce certain sounds in Korean.

It was blamed on Rhiannon, of Beeston, Notts, having a slightly shorter than average tongue, caused by an unusually thick lingual frenulum – the flap of skin that joins the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth.

Her parents agreed to her having a lingual frenectomy, a 15–minute operation under local anaesthetic that involved an incision in the flap of skin. Rhiannon admitted that it was “agony at first” but her tongue is now about 1cm longer and she can say words that were impossible before.

While, ultimately, if Rhiannon is happy with the results of the surgery,one can’t complain too much, still this story struck a nerve. Physical handicaps to speech do occur, however most such impediments would strike equally across all languages. The article doesn’t note any sort of problems in English, so I can’t shake the suspicion that some surgeon or surgery provider merely took young Rhiannon for her money. Simply put, how many people actually believe that, if Rhiannon had been born and raised in Korea, she would have any difficulties with Korean pronunciation.

I wish Rhiannon well with her studies, and hope that she does have the opportunity to go to Korea at some point, but I also hope that no one reads this story and thinks that surgery will be the instant solution for all language-learning woes…

with their sunny dispositions and their ever-so-humble acceptance of whatever life may bring….

Errr…  Maybe not… (emphasis mine)

A couple of French language ‘extremists’ have won an £8,000 payout after airline staff spoke to them in English.

Michel and Lynda Thibodeau sued Air Canada for not respecting their right to be served in their mother tongue during a flight from the country’s capital Ottawa.

Despite speaking fluent English, Mr Thibodeau complained that he was not greeted in French when the pair checked in for their flight or at the airport’s boarding gate.

Mega-sigh….

Why do I care?  Well, first off, I’m a Canadian citizen (born there), so I have some degree of interest.  Look, we all know that Canada’s laws demand service in the customers’ choice of the two national languages: French and English. Still, this type of intentional confrontation from someone who manifestly speaks fluent English. This type of enshrinement of language in national law is meant to be a protective measure to prevent speakers of other languages from being denied service due to inability to speak another language. It’s not designed to be a lottery ticket for uppity linguistic “trolls.” If M. and Mdm. Thibodeau lacked the requisite English ability to avail themselves of services, I’m sure the airplane staff would have happily helped them in French. While I’ve seen no video of the pair, and thus have no basis for evaluation of accent, it’s worth noting that many Quebecois francophones have little/no discernible accent in English, which would make it even easier for airline staff to respond in English, even if addressed in French. If they considered it something of a “put on,” I would completely understand.

Ultimately, however, I find myself wondering how on earth they managed to procure a positive judgement, as their entire case rests on the Official Language Act,  which, as I understand it, asserts that Canadians have the right to procure goods and services in either language, but that right pertains only to procuring goods and services from government agencies. While Air Canada used to be a Crown Corporation, I was under the impression that it was privatized in 1988, and, as a private corporation, it would not even be bound by the OLA. There’s got to be some sort of legal nuance that I’m missing — my knowledge of Canadian law is fairly shallow….  Anyone know how this suit even managed to get into court? Would this hold up on appeal anywhere outside of Quebec?  Inquiring minds want to know…

Researchers have identified a language new to science in a remote region of India.

Known as Koro, it appears to be distinct from other languages in the family to which it belongs; but it is also under threat.

Koro was discovered by a team of linguists on an expedition to Arunachal Pradesh, in north-eastern India. 

The language is in the Tibeto-Burman family, and is only spoken by somewhere between 800 and 1200 people, so don’t expect Koro to become a trade language of note; however, speaking as a linguist, the excitement felt at the discovery of a new language is intense.  It’s much like discovering relatives whom you didn’t know existed.  You didn’t even know you were missing them previously, but once you know, there’s an instant emotional connection.  The vast panoply of human languages reflects the stunning variety of human thought, expression, feelings, art, and the like.  Each discovery of a new piece of this “human puzzle” enriches our understanding of what it is to be human.  Documentation of these small (and thus, oft endangered) languages allows for broader dissemination of the particular people group’s unique contributions to humanity, and preserves their wisdoms for future generations.  Finally, the extinction of languages (proceeding at an alarming clip at the moment) should, in its own way, sadden us all, as unique human creations are snuffed out forever, never to be appreciated again…

Ultimately, some linguists and computer scientists argue, technology will collapse the world’s language barriers. Imagine walking down the street in Cairo, speaking English into your cell phone, and having your words come out in Arabic.

That future might not be far off. Reliable and ubiquitous translation technology “is really only a matter of time,” according to Nicholas Ostler, author of the forthcoming book, “The Last Lingua Franca: English until the Return of Babel.” Yorick Wilks, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield, is more specific, predicting in an email that adequate machine translations “will almost certainly be available as phone apps within a decade.”

That prospect is understandably alarming to many educators, who point to a mountain of persuasive studies showing that bilingualism bolsters creativity and cognitive development, as well as cultural awareness and sensitivity.

One of the more shocking aspects of Japan to first-time visitors is just how low-tech the country really is.  While most of us imagine Japan as a neon-jungle, of sorts, replete with robots, and almost unimaginable electronics prowess, the truth is that much of the country’s infrastructure, as well as many government (and private!) bureaucratic processes have barely changed since the 1960’s.  Personally, I was completely shocked by the wide-spread computer illiteracy back 12 years ago.  While the population has gotten a lot more internet-savvy in the meanwhile, they are still playing catch-up with the rest of the region.  Additionally, certain main-stays of Japanese life, such as lack of central heat/air in most houses, the lack of standardized addressing systems (which, mind you, has become a lot more bearable now that GPS is available), and the fact that ATMs close for nights and weekends tend to strike foreign visitors as surprisingly backwards for a nation known for pushing the envelope in robotics technology (not to mention the ever-so-important advances in toilet technology — the toilet in my house has a motion sensor to automatically raise the lid when you come in, auto flush, seat warmer, bidet, etc. — I am not making this up!).

Police stations without computers, 30-year-old “on hold” tapes grinding out tinny renditions of Greensleeves, ATMs that close when the bank does, suspect car engineering, and kerosene heaters but no central heating.

A dystopian vision of a nation with technology stuck in an Orwellian time warp? Not at all. These are aspects of contemporary, low-tech Japan that most visitors miss as they look around the hi-tech nation that its government, electronics industry and tourism board are keen to promote….

Many of Japan’s older men - who are those most likely to run a business - have a marked preference to stay offline even in the office, says Tokyo-based entrepreneur Terrie Lloyd.

“There is a clear cut-off for Japanese bosses who know how to use PCs and mobile web-capable devices and those who don’t,” he said.

“The easiest way to tell is whether they have an e-mail address on the all-important name card. If they’re over 50 and don’t have an e-mail address, it’s a dead giveaway that you either use the phone or forget about contacting them.”

Like every Chinese child, Li Hanwei spent her schooldays memorising thousands of the intricate characters that make up the Chinese writing system.Yet aged just 21 and now a university student in Hong Kong, Li already finds that when she picks up a pen to write, the characters for words as simple as “embarrassed” have slipped from her mind….

There is even a Chinese word for it: “tibiwangzi”, or “take pen, forget character”.

A poll commissioned by the China Youth Daily in April found that 83 percent of the 2,072 respondents admitted having problems writing characters.

As a result, Li says that she has become almost dependent on her phone.

“When I can?t remember, I will take out my cellphone and find it (the character) and then copy it down,” she says.

This is actually not a new problem — it has been around since the widespread use of PCs — but it gets booted around in the East Asian press every few years.  An interesting related problem is that Chinese/Japanese people who study abroad often end up temporarily forgetting large swaths of characters due to the lack of continual passive enforcement from the environment.  While such is easy enough to rectify (usually by lots of free reading in one’s L1, or by going home), it can cause for embarrassing moments, such as when a Japanese friend in my college days came by my room to borrow a Japanese dictionary from me… to be able to understand a letter he received from his parents…  Seriously…

Linguists all over the world have yet to live down the ill-informed ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf, who 70 years ago claimed that language constrains thinking to the point of some cultures/people having no ability to conceptualize time lines, for instance.  The hypothesis was all-the-rage for a while, until common sense prevailed, and it became apparent that: 1) speakers of languages without overt tense markers nevertheless quite ably distinguish between present, past, and future; and 2) the evidence upon which Whorf based his hypothesis was often faulty and/or lacking.  Nevertheless, the idea managed to penetrate popular culture to the extent that I still come across this idea amongst laymen (which usually just makes me want to smack my head against a wall, but fortunately, a bit of gentle dissuasion is enough to get people to give up on the notion).  Still, it’s an intriguing notion, and has some intuitive appeal.  Given the vast diversity of human language, it would seem that the way we express ourselves verbally would at some level shape the way we see the world… Some support for this idea has come from studies on color perception (e.g., blue and green are seen as the same color in many, many languages) and the like…

Today’s must-read article is somewhat of a (toned-down, thank goodness!) revision of the hypothesis.  Guy Deutscher offers up the intriguing thought that language does indeed shape some aspects of thought, but instead of acting as a limitation on conceptualization, it acts to dictate what is and isnt necessary to express…

Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they mayallows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about. convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language

Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so.

He makes a good case, and regardless, it’s an interesting article.  Read it all!

Your weekend treat: everything you ever wanted to know about dating in Japan. The fun comes, of course, from the fact that everything here has a kernel of truth in it. Starts slow, but stick with it….

 Happy news for Arabic learners at the American University in Cairo (which will soon include one of my current students!), via The Chronicle…

Downtown Cairo isn’t the easiest place for foreign students to get used to. It’s crowded, noisy, and polluted; the traffic is dangerous; and women face sexual harassment regularly. But students at one of the most prestigious Arabic-language programs in the Middle East have insisted that this bustling, sometimes uncomfortable experience is exactly what they want.

The Center for Arabic Study Abroad—a premier language program financed primarily by the U.S. Department of Education—has just relocated to the American University in Cairo’s downtown campus….

In 2008 the center moved to the university’s new $400-million, 260-acre campus, located in a developing eastern suburb of Cairo. There students found all the amenities that were missing from the crowded downtown campus, including an Olympic-size swimming pool and a state-of-the-art library.

But, says the center’s director, Martha Schulte-Nafeh, “From Day 1 the CASA students said: We don’t want to be here.”

At issue here is the fact that it’s an English-language campus, which works against those who go there to study Arabic.  We have the same issue amongst Japanese learners at my current university (i.e., students come to learn Japanese, but, as the university is English-medium, it can be difficult — especially for lower-level learners — to find real opportunities for practice with non-English speakers.  These issues of use in a multi-lingual community are simply up to the individual to negotiate (e.g., one of my students related that she and her foreign roommate trade off each day on which language they communicate in), but it’s nice to see that AUC is being proactive in trying to offer the most efficient learning environment possible for their students.