I know I’m late with this part, but click here for Christmas traditions from various countries.

How about New Year’s?  Click here.  Note: Jan. 1st isn’t considered the real “new year” in all parts of the world.  Most are aware, for example, that the Chinese New Year follows a lunar calendar.  That’s probably why Dec. 31st is usually pretty low key chez the FL Doctor.  His wife isn’t quite sure what all the hubbub is about….

For the record:  “Happy New Year” in many languages…

In this last semester of studying Cantonese, I admit I’ve been quite a bit more lackadaisical in reporting progress than I was in my Arabic study.  There are good reasons for that.  First, the study itself has been somewhat more lax than Arabic was.  This is both good and bad.  While I readily admit that I could be considerably more gung ho about my studies, at least it’s not elevating my blood pressure like Arabic class did.  Arabic was high stress and took a lot of work.  Cantonese has been a free-time pursuit, devoid of testing and any sort of outward motivations to improve my performance.  I always recommend to people who want to learn a language to join a class or a club or something that will give them some pressure to perform, because internal motivation usually will only carry you so far.  While this hasn’t become problematic for me thus far (i.e., I’m still quite enjoying the language — it hasn’t become “work” yet), if I were continuing my studies to a much higher level, I assure you that I would be in some sort of a formal learning environment.

As is, my classroom structure is thus: I’m learning from a DVD series + a grammar book that a friend got me for my birthday.  Every Saturday, a friend from Canton comes over and we go over the DVD dialogues together, and he quizzes me on vocabulary, and generally helps me along in my studies.  Of course, the fact that I already speak Mandarin has greatly accelerated my Cantonese studies, so instead of learning the entire language structure, I find myself essentially mapping the new Cantonese words to the Mandarin structures I already know (of course, taking note of areas where Cantonese grammar diverges from Mandarin).  I can’t call myself conversant, by a long shot, but I already find myself understanding a lot.

A few complaints about the DVD series that I’m using: while in general it’s pretty slick (if somewhat 1970’s-ish in appearance), I am a little annoyed by the fact that the Chinese character version of dialogue scripts are written in formal language (think Mandarin), which diverges significantly from what the characters are saying in Cantonese.  I realize that, being produced mainly for English speakers, the Chinese character version scripts are probably considered gratuitous, but it would make much more pedagogical sense to simply transcribe the dialogue — unique Cantonese characters and all.  The fact that written Cantonese “looks wierd” to most educated Chinese speakers is besides the point.  If you’re trying to learn the language, it’s important to reinforce the language as is via writing and speaking whenever possible.  My other complaint on the DVD is that it features exactly three actors, who play more than three characters.  Actors are filmed in what looks like a sound studio (against a black curtain), so there are no context clues to what’s happening in the dialogue.  Really!  How much more expensive would it have been to film the dialogues in the supposed locations, to have some actual acting, and thus to allow students to ascertain the meaning of dialogues from the context.  As is, I’m honestly unsure how students are supposed to be understanding it.  Personally, as I read Chinese, I just read the Chinese character version of the dialogue to discern meaning.  I suppose students are meant to use the English translation function, but it translates words literally, so getting the meaning of sentences from that function could still be difficult from time to time.

Nevertheless, I’m happy to be studying Cantonese, and I’m pleased with my decision to forego taking the class at the university, as I’m convinced that my friend makes a better instructor than the university-hired “tutor” would have been.  I look forward to continuing these studies at least through the spring, although it is likely that I will go ahead and buy the 2nd year materials to keep up my studies, as I’m hoping to someday get a job at a university in Hong Kong or Macau (and thus, some Cantonese proficiency would be tremendously useful).

A brilliant luminary in the field of child language acquisition and the wife of famed linguist Noam Chomsky has left us.  Please keep the Chomsky family in your prayers.

Carol Chomsky, a linguist and education specialist whose work helped illuminate the ways in which language comes to children, died on Friday at her home in Lexington, Mass. She was 78.

A nationally recognized authority on the acquisition of spoken and written language, Professor Chomsky was on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1972 until her retirement in 1997. In retirement, she was a frequent traveling companion of her husband, the linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, as he delivered his public lectures.

The Boston Globe offers tribute:

Brilliant and accomplished, Carol Chomsky taught for many years at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and wrote oft-cited articles about how young children learn to read. And yet, she possessed talents that didn’t easily fit on a curriculum vitae.

“She was a pretty remarkable person,” said Judith Chomsky of Philadelphia, who is married to the younger brother of Dr. Chomsky’s husband, Noam. “She was very athletic, and, until she was ill, she was fishing and water skiing and doing things people wouldn’t normally associate with her. She played the accordion. She could fix a car. She was mechanical. I mean, she was the one who fixed everything at the house.”

Travelocity will now offer its customers Livemocha’s online Travel Crash Course with 70 hours of instruction in six popular languages for a combined price of $29.95 at Travelocity.com. Travel Crash Course students will also receive MP3 audio for 500 travel-related words and phrases to help build their foreign language skills. In addition to this travel-specific content, Travelocity customers will also have access to Livemocha’s engaging social learning environment, where customers can immerse themselves in new languages and cultures through interaction with native speakers prior to visiting a travel destination. “At Travelocity, part of our mission is to inspire our customers to see the world, and Livemocha’s Travel Crash Course is an innovative way to do that,” said Cady Wolf, Vice President, Partner Marketing, Travelocity. “As the world’s largest language learning community, Livemocha provides a great resource for people who want to enhance their travel experience. Knowing how to interact with the locals while you are traveling can make the difference between a good trip and a truly amazing trip.”

A good idea, although I’m a little skeptical as to how much of their market is going to take advantage.  Everyone says they want to study a little of the language before going to another country, but relatively few do more than buy a phrasebook (often once they’ve landed in the airport) and point to the desired phrases within.  70 hours of instruction is not likely to take you very far — even if you completed all modules (which few would do), but much better than nothing.  Even a couple hours of learning basic phrases would be useful.  I spent an afternoon in a Korean airport a few years ago (on route to China), and the whole time I was desperately trying to remember how to say such simple things as “thank you.”  I could remember “Merry Christmas,” but that time being June, that expression was not very helpful…

In China at least…

Educational Testing Service (ETS), makers of the TOEFL(R) (Test of English as a Foreign Language(TM)) and TOEIC(R) (Test of English for International Communication(TM)) tests, joined with Nokia today to launch English learning courses specially designed for Nokia phone users in China.

Designed by ETS teaching and testing experts, the courses are comprehensive, useful and easy-to-learn. They contain English tests, business English and survival English packages. Nokia phone users can download the courses through Nokia’s Mobiledu to enjoy an enriched English learning experience.

A smart coupling of pedagogy with youth trends.  This could well lead to expanded modules for learning multiple subjects.  Could cellphones come to replace heavy bookbags?  Dare to dream…

They.can.not.be.serious!

The Tucson Unified School District Governing Board made the only fair decision it could when it decided Tuesday night to end a graduation requirement that every high-school student had to take two credits of a foreign language.

It wasn’t a good decision in the sense that it was beneficial to students or a wise move — it was a decision made necessary by the realities of public school life in Arizona. Qualified and certified foreign-language teachers are too hard to come by and funding is too tight to allow for such a forward-thinking graduation requirement.

Bull puckey…

The sad truth is that foreign language programs are always  amongst the first to get axed in times of budget crunch.  Only drama departments (and occassionally music) are more prone to budget “trimming” with a chainsaw.  But God forbid TUSD (or any other N. American school) would ever think to cut money from the football budget…

Are FL teachers hard to come by???  For some languages, certainly, but come on!  In my experience, roughly 20% of Arizona residents speak Spanish as well if not better than most Spanish teachers in other parts of the nation.  Teacher recruitment is not the issue if we’re talking about a department-wide cut.  If that were the deal, we would simply see programs like Chinese and Russian folding up while Spanish expanded, but that’s not what’s happening.

No Child Left Behind has actually had tremendously negative impact on language teacher recruitment, by significantly upping the requirements for certification to teach foreign languages.  While I, for one, respect the spirit of the law (and, mind you, I’m probably about the only former high school teacher on record who’ll say anything remotely positive about it), as it wanted to ensure a high level of quality in FL education, it also worked to prohibit many completely capable people from teaching languages they know well.  To use myself as an example:  I graduated from college a decade ago with a degree in French, and minors in Spanish and Japanese.  I also got a K-12 teaching credential in the state of my alma mater, which at the time could easily allow me to become certified to teach any of those three languages in most of the states in the union.  Post NCLB, I can now only be certified in French.  The “fun” part of this is that my Spanish and Japanese have significantly improved since then (having lived in Spain and Japan, respectively), and I’ve got a teaching endorsement from the Japanese Ministry of Education.  However, as I only have minors in the two languages, I don’t have enough upper-division credit hours in the languages.  Never mind that I speak them better than a lot of people with bachelor degrees in the languages.  The same is true with Chinese, which I have no credentials whatsoever in, yet I speak fluently, have been paid (privately) to teach, and which I will soon (after finishing the PhD) will be paid to essentially teach others how to teach it….  Basically, I would argue that if one is certified to teach one language, one should be able to qualify to teach others via a basic language competency exam.  The pedagogy is largely identical, and especially at the K-12 level, where you’re teaching basic conversation and writing, a knowledge of literature is not likely to come into much play…

Via CNN, this gem in an article on how to productively use your free time when unemployed:

Learn a new language. Spend 30 minutes every day learning a foreign language, suggests Jill Keto, author of “Don’t Get Caught with Your Skirt Down: A Practical Girl’s Recession Guide.”

“Job skills of people with U.S. experience are in high demand in emerging economies around the world,” Keto says. With a foreign language under your belt, you’ll be in an excellent position to climb the ranks when the U.S. economy rebounds.

Ummm….  1) 30 minutes a day isn’t going to get you very far unless your jobless stint spans entirely too long; and 2) this, quite frankly, reads like very black humor…. When downsized during a recession and fretting how to pay bills and to support their families, I seriously doubt most people’s first thought would be, “you know, this could be the chance I always wanted to study Swedish….”

If you’re in the Marine Corps…

The Corps is providing Marines a free way to acquire valuable language skills via Rosetta Stone, a popular computer-based language-learning program. Marines can access it via the Corps’ distance learning Web site, according to Marine Administrative message 661/08.

Regular readers have noted a slow-down in blog output over the last couple of weeks…  As is usual, the end of semesters tends to get to me, as several months of accrued deadlines all come due, and I find myself under the gun, work-wise.  Historical standards have taught me not to realistically expect much of an uptick in blog writing once the semester ends in a couple of weeks, as then time will be devoted to holiday prep.  In short, it’s a busy time o’ year (still thoroughly enjoyable, though).

I would like to point out the ad links in the upper right-hand side of the blog.  If you’re looking for something specific in terms of courses or materials,  you very well may find your solution there.  That, and every click helps to fund and support this blog (translation: pizza money for me!)..

Some things to look forward to in the near future: I’ll be giving an end of semester wrap-up on my efforts in Cantonese, some exploration on a timely topic by Kelly Translates, and some notes on holiday traditions and variations around the world.

Merry Christmas to all, and to my fellow students, good luck on the upcoming exams!

Hmmm… Looks interesting… I downloaded the basic program, which comes with geography flashcards, but I don’t want to plop down the green to review the Chines-learning software…. I wonder if they’d be interested in sending me a copy for review/advertisement purposes???

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