I realize that, by blogosphere standards, this is going to smack some as being way behind, but you must understand that this post was started and interrupted 4 times already…. 

It seems that some people just want to keep digging themselves deeper…  Reverend J. Wright’s recent comments, far from apologizing or distancing himself from the perceived racist/hateful invective that he has spewed from the pulpit, have poured fuel on the fire.

The bulk of his remarks addressed, however, different groups seeing each other as deficient. He acted out the differences between marching bands at predominantly black and predominantly white colleges. “Africans have a different meter, and Africans have a different tonality,” he said. Europeans have seven tones, Africans have five. White people clap differently than black people. “Africans and African-Americans are right-brained, subject-oriented in their learning style,” he said. “They have a different way of learning.” And so on.

After jokingly mocking the Boston accents of former Presidents John F. and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Wright said, “nobody says to a Kennedy, ‘You speak bad English,’ only to a black child was that said.”
Wright said that he believes “a change is going to come, ’cause many of us are committed to change how we see others who are different.”

Ed Morrissey makes the obligatory connection of the above comments to the controversy over The Bell Curve a few years ago.  I just wanted comment on the language-specific comments…

Wright gets it both right and wrong…  In a separate post, Ed points out:

Nobody says it to a Kennedy because the Kennedys speak English correctly, but plenty of white kids speak English badly, too. A language doesn’t have different rules for different ethnicities, although it certainly can have different dialects; American English is a different dialect than British English, but it still has rules of grammar, syntax, and spelling. Those rules don’t rest on the color of the skin of the speaker — and to claim that they do is racist in and of itself.Once again, some “yes” and some “no.”  Wright can legitimately complain that some black (as well as other minority) kids are stigmatized in school as speaking deficient English because they speak a “non-standard” dialect.  The divergence of rules of “Black English” (commonly referred to as BE) vs. standard American English have given rise to the popular misconception that BE is simply “lazy,” and that speakers are “ignoring the rules.”  In fact, BE is very-much a rule-driven system, just as is every other variant of English.  Also, to point, it’s not like BE sprang up ex-nihilo.  Many mistake BE as being derived from African tongues — and indeed some African words infused BE, and most of these loan words, in fact, have spread to standard English as well — however, this is erroneous.  BE has the same roots as most of the other major dialects to be found up and down the Eastern coast of the US.  Most of the divergent grammaticalforms have their roots in regional dialects from England, Wales, and Scotland.  If you consider the fact that, in early colonial history, many of the slaves worked side-by-side with white indentured-servants from poor rural areas in GB, the development of this variant of English makes perfect sense.  BE shares a lot of features with standard southern English which, while somewhat stigmatized in other areas of the country, is still not usually viewed by anyone as being simply incorrect.  There are certainly sociological factors at work, which I doubt would cause offense to anyone if Wright was merely pointing out the double standard by which BE is considered (by some) to be a mark of grammatical ignorance, while other dialects “scoot free” (I had to throw a colloquialism in there!).

However, where many go awry is to claim discrimination against public schools for attempting to ingrain a standard form of English on top of the dialect one learns at home.  The reason why discrimination claims just don’t wash is the fact that this happens to every single child who enters into the public education system.  African Americans are not unique in speaking a distinct dialect.  Every one of us speaks a dialect — we just normally don’t actually become aware of the fact until we encounter a distinct dialect.  One of the major jobs of the public education system is to instill a national language, which entails enforcing agreed-upon language conventions upon everyone in that society.  In English, this takes two forms: the first (and most noticeable) arena of language conformity is in writing.  Written English conventions are rather rigidly enforced (even when a linguistic rationale is notably lacking).  How many times have you heard an English teacher say, “you can’t write like you speak?”  — Right…

The other arena is in speech.  In the US, this effect is much less pronounced than, say, in Germany (where children enter kindergarten speaking dialects differing so much as to be mutually unintelligible, and by the end of elementary school, can all speak “standard German” — in addition to their individual, regional dialects), however we can still see the effects of speech classes and the like teaching formalized English for business, academic, and various professional uses. 

It is not discriminatory for a society to try to ingrain a lingua franca into its citizens.  Discrimination occurs when the government (in any agency) tries to forbid the use of local languages from all domains.  If the US government were trying to exterminate BE, Wright would have a point, but, to be frank, no one cares what dialect one speaks in private domains.  It is beneficial to the individual and to society at large that all young people be taught to express themselves in standardized English in the public sphere,but one always has the freedom to codeswitch into dialect (no matter how divergent) in private. 

Now this is interesting…

To be honest, I’m not much one for Indian art.  At the risk of offending the entire western half of the U.S., I find it quite silly to see white people who collect bead-work and dream catchers.  However, the native American languages are simply gorgeous — both to listen to and in their intricacy and complexity.  Linguists love to take examples from the various tongues of the peoples who were once the majority inhabitants of this land.  Additionally, I’m an absolute sucker for the tune “Amazing Grace” (at least when it’s sung well– my dad or brother singing it can be an entirely different experience!).  I saw the movie by the same name   a couple weeks ago, and I’ve gotta give it a strong thumbs-up.  Very uplifting story of the fight to outlaw slavery in the British Empire….  Quite moving…  Enough blather — please enjoy the music!

No, not me, this time… (but a year-in-review article on Arabic learning will be forthcoming soon enough)

Recently, I decided to go for a new linguistic adventure, to try something harder. I am 47 and I thought it’s time I challenge my brain a bit, put it through some exercise while learning a whole, totally different language than the ones I know already, namely: English, Spanish and Portuguese.

I chose Arabic.

Quite ambitious.  Read with an eye to the learning practices the writer has employed to date.  As it seems the author was pretty-much on his own, as far as learning Arabic went, it’s got some good advice on self-learning techniques.  He sounds some correct notes on searching out material and tapping distant resources.  The problem (which I’m afraid the author will probably encounter soon enough) is that this type of self-directed learning is entirely driven by intrinsic motivation, and thus, is quite easy to give up when it “gets hard.”  My recommendation for Mr. Rix, and for others who similarly find themselves “linguistically stranded” is to try one’s best to manufacture a situation wherein one can enter into free exchange with native speakers of the language.  This can be done via travel, or penpals (email-pals), or finding a nearby community (however small) of native speakers with whom one can interact.  It is this progression of taking the language from a “theoretical construction” to a mode of communication with real benefits that will provide the motivation needed to get past the dry (and difficult) spells in language learning.

Live Mocha, a language learning site I’ve described earlier, has now added 4 more language platforms for courses in Russian, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese.

Click the link and see what’s all about!  It’s a pretty cool system!

A bit of a palate-cleanser from the Chinese selection… I actually like love this song, though admittedly it is still more teeny-bopper-style music. Hamasaki Ayumi is kind of the Britney of Japan. She is THE pent-ultimate pop singer (with all implications of media coverage and general IQ that that implies)… but she’s smokin’ hot, so we can forgive all that, right?

Hamasaki Ayumi - Appears Lyric

Koibito tachi ha totemo shiawase sou ni
Te wo tsunaide aruite iru kara ne
Maru de subete no koto ga umaku
Itte ru ka no you ni mieru yo ne
Hontou ha futari shika shiranai

Hajimete no denwa ha juwaki wo
Motsu te ga furuete ita
Ni kai me no denwa ha rusuden ni
Message ga nokotte ita
Nana kai me no denwa de ima kara aou yotte
Sonna futsuu no mainichi no naka hajimatta

Koibito tachi ha totemo shiawase sou ni
Te wo tsunaide aruite iru kara ne
Maru de subete no koto ga umaku
Itte ru ka no you ni mieru yo ne
Hontou ha futari shika shiranai

Juu kai me no denwa de futari
Tooku he dekaketa yo ne
Te wo tsunaide arukou to suru
Watashi ni terete ita yo ne

Sore kara nan do me ka no yoru wo tobi koete
Kaeri no kuruma no naka de kiss wo shita yo ne
Shiroku kagayaku yuki ga totemo daisuki de
Soredemo kyonen ha hanarete ita yo
Kotoshi no fuyu ha futari shite mireru kana
Sugoseru kana ieru kana
Ienakatta merry christmas wo

Kusuri yubi ni hikatta yubiwa wo ittai
Nan do kurai hazusou to shita? watashi tachi
Koibito tachi ha totemo shiawase sou ni
Te wo tsunaide aruite iru kara ne
Maru de subete ga sou maru de nani mo ka mo
Subete no koto ga umaku itte iru
Ka no you ni mieru yo ne hontou no
Tokoro nante dare ni mo wakaranai

Ayumi Hamasaki - Appears (English Translation)

The lovers, seemingly happy,
hold hands and walk.
It looks like everything is going perfectly, but
only they know the truth.

At the first phone call, the hand
with which I held the receiver trembled.
At the second call a message
was left on my machine.
At the seventh call we decided to meet.
It all began on that ordinary day.

The lovers, seemingly happy,
hold hands and walk.
It looks like everything is going perfectly, but.
only they know the truth.

At the 10th call, we
went far away together.
As we held hands and walked,
I felt a little shy.

And the nights flew by.
On the way home, in the car, we kissed.

I love the white, shining snow.
Nevertheless, we were separated last year.
This winter, we’ll try together.
Will we make it? Can I say?
The Merry Christmas I couldn’t say before.

How many times have we tried to take off
the rings shining on our ring fingers?

The lovers, seemingly happy,
hold hands and walk.
It looks like everything is going perfectly, but
no one knows the truth.

As penance for the lack of posts this week, as well as for the lack of Japanese and Chinese lessons last week, I’m posting the following karaoke video for your amusement/practice — complete with English translation. This is true penance as I absolutely LOATHE this (Taiwanese -rah!-) group and the song. It’s more teeny-bopper fare, and I’m too old to get into it I guess… Though, in the interest of boosting my street cred with the kiddies, I did see them once signing autographs at the mall. I politely declined one organizers fervent attempts to get me up front with them for what I’m sure he was thinking would be a killer photo to demonstrate the “international appeal” of the group… I’m normally not all that contrary to making a fool of myself like that, but, like I said, I simply abhor these girls’ music, and plus, I was running late for a movie.

Please ignore the not-so-subtle racist implications of superiority of Chinese culture. Also, to be frank, the seeming assertion that Chinese is going to replace English as the world lingua franca is quite premature. Nonetheless, it’s notable that Chinese learning by non-Chinese ethnics is on the rise, and when it really comes down to it, what sells records better than a good ole’ dose of nationalism?

Appallingly, it’s been a full week since the last post.  I have to beg some indulgence as the end of the semester hits.  It’s been rather touch and go here with lots of deadlines coming up.  To be honest, any free time that I find currently is more likely to be devoted to my long-suffering wife than to this blog.  I’ll try to pop in a comment from time to time, but it’ll probably be less than daily until mid-May…

Another day, another bilingual baby school…  (though click the link — this one, at least, has amusing video of the kids speaking.)

We’ve been through this quite a few times…  Yes, kids have some natural advantages in learning language phonology, and they might even have better memories for new vocabulary, so teaching second language early makes some intuitive sense, BUT… they are not the little “language sponges” that they are made out to be.  Kids work hard to master language.  The fact that they are still mastering their parents’ language seems to disguise this, but, other than mastery of phonology, they don’t enjoy any appreciable advantages over older learners.  Still, all in all, I have no objections to parents who use these schools to foster a bilingual environment for their children to learn a second language — as long as the parents realize that the second language input needs to continue through adulthood.  Too many parents think that bilingual preschool is a “magic bullet” that will make a child “fluent” (even though they still speak their first language imperfectly — hmmm), and don’t think to continue the language past kindergarten, and, in effect, end up wasting their money.  This would be a great opportunity as long as your children continue with the language long term; otherwise, don’t waste your $$$.

postnote: I wonder…  One potential limitation to this type of learning: does the fact that the parents don’t necessarily speak/understand the language that the kid is studying effect the child’s ultimate language fluency?  In the video, the mother’s Mandarin (when prompting her daughter to speak for the camera) was… err..  less than great…  Would non-native input affect the child’s pronunciation?  If they get a wide range of native input, evidence has shown that deficiencies in some sources of input make no difference, but if one has limited input (such as only coming from one teacher/parent) would this still hold?  Also, think about the social aspects.  When the child is older, he/she might resist the language if a real connection to his/her life and goals cannot be made.  This is part of why so many second-generation immigrants speak their heritage language poorly — even with parental input in the heritage language.  They simply don’t identify culturally with “the old country” and resist speaking the heritage language back to parents (peer pressure can also influence this — especially when the language is low prestige in the community where the child lives).

Like Spanish, French has a number of irregular verbs.  Unlike Spanish, they are difficult to divide into neat categories.  Some subdivide the irregulars based upon the endings (-er, -ir, and -re), but the stems themselves keep changing.  It’s probably best to simply start memorizing.  Fortunately, most of the irregulars are high-use words, so they’re actually easy to remember once you get them.  Here’s a basic list…

Important one to learn early: Aller (to go) ==>

je vais
tu vas
il/elle/on va
nous allons
vous allez
ils/elles vont

Like in Spanish, the infinitive has little seeming relation to many of the basic forms in the present indicative mood.  Don’t mess it up…

Apparently, there’s more connection than one would think, apparently there is a link between language learning and color perception.

Just for fun: any connections between the above and the Stroop effect?