The film “The Linguists” is about a year old, granted.  It came out to great fanfare and there was even a screening at my university which was heavily touted by my department, but I had a scheduling conflict at the time and missed it.  Fortunately, it ran on PBS tonight, and I have to say that I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It’s about language documentation and the race to record and preserve the roughly 3000 languages which are expected to become extinct in the coming century (at a rate of roughly one every 2 weeks!).  It’s a film which is true to the struggles, joys, and frustrations that accompany language documentation research.  Click the first link to see the trailer.  This 1 hour film would be well worth investing in a DVD if you’re interested in the subject matter.

For the record, I’ve never done language documentation research, but having read the appeal in David Crystal’s book Language Death wherein he urges all linguists to basically choose at least one language — essentially a call to join the movement — I must admit that the idea appeals.  Granted it would take quite a bit of additional training, and as much of it requires rather remote travel and “rustic” conditions, I doubt I’ll ever be able to get the wife to sign off on coming with me, but still it’s something that I’d love to try at least once.  The hardest part is simply choosing an area and language…  If I do ever mangage such a project I’m sure you’ll all know it, as I can hardly think of a more blog-worthy endeavor…

A “time traveller’s phrasebook” that could allow basic communication between modern English speakers and Stone Age cavemen is being compiled by scientists studying the evolution of language.

Anybody who was catapulted back in time to Ice Age Europe would stand a good chance of being intelligible to the locals by using words such as “I”, “who” and “thou” and the numbers “two”, “three” and “five”, the work suggests. 

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Reading University researchers claim “I”, “we”, “two” and “three” are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage.

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing “squeeze”, “guts”, “stick” and “bad” as probable first casualties.

Good advice, followed by great advice…  It almost makes this blog redundant….  Almost…

Stick with it ’til he gets to the actual language training.  Good phrases to know…  His Japanese and Chinese pronunciations are crap, but you’ll get the gist…  French and Spanish are good.  I’ve no idea about the rest…

Guilty admission: I’ve used the recommended French phrase… Extensively…  But in my case, I actually am Canadian by citizenship, even though I left for the U.S. when I was all of 3 months of age (for the record, I’m a dual U.S./Canadian citizen)…  It actually does often times translate into less condescension from the French, particularly if your French is poor or rusty.  There’s an automatic assumption that Americans can’t speak their language, so the bar for Americans to keep French from switching into English (however poor) is often incredibly high (i.e., if you don’t sound perfect, they’ll decide you’re a lost cause).  As a Canadian, however, there were no such tendencies (in fact, there was more of a tendency to assume French fluency on the part of Canucks, which, if you’ve met anyone outside of Quebec and Ontario, you will find as funny as I did).  BTW- the Canadian ruse, however useful in Europe, will backfire on you in East Asia.  Throughout that region, the word “Canadian” has taken on the meaning of “high school drop-out of dubious immigration status who can’t get a job back home and thus comes here to ‘teach English’.” There’s a reason why school administrators in Taiwan, China, and Korea repeatedly introduce their Canadian teachers to students’ parents as Americans….

It’s old, I know…  But my sense of humor is sufficiently juvenile retarded that I find this type of thing hilarious…

Breaking the language barrier to foreign markets! Your comprehensive how-to guide…

“For me, each language constitutes a way of looking at the world,” said Dr. Maureen Jameson, chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. “There is nothing intrinsically better or worse about the way any given language structures experience, but if you only know your own language, you’re missing out on an enormous range of insights.”

Amen to that…

When asked why I feel the need to study so many languages (which happens quite a bit!), I usually respond with a variant of the above.  My favorite illustration of the advantages of language learning is “the old man” example.  Basically put, I like talking with and learning from people, and I’m highly disappointed when some bit of knowledge is placed out of reach by such a silly thing as lack of mutually understood language.  If I meet an old man on a mountain top who potentially could give me life-changing insight into life and how to live it, I want to be in a position to receive such wisdom.  As such, it’s always been important to me to study the language of places where I travel to, however briefly.  While I can’t claim to have done this 100% of the time (for instance, I went to Vietnam and Poland with exactly zero vocabulary words from their respective national languages), I have felt a measurable increase in the quality of the trip and my enjoyment of it each time that I have gone somewhere speaking the language — albeit however limited.  I have had fewer problems, or course, but more importantly, I got a much richer understanding of what I saw and experienced.  Language is the key to cultural understanding, and the study thereof deepens not just our insight into other cultures, but also into out own…

If they evolve opposable thumbs, the human race is screwed….

A fun party trick, but not all that impressive — just a growl that sounds a bit like “mama.” I liked the 80’s “I love you” dog a lot more…

If you haven’t met anyone from Scotland, you probably won’t get it…

I hear this over and over, and I’ve seen the studies, but still I’m convinced that I must be the great exception to the rule as my memory becomes increasingly sieve-like over the years, despite adding more and more language under my belt…  I start feeling like this all too often these days…  But then again, absent-mindedness (or at least a high level of detachment from the real world) seems to be almost a requirement for an academic career, so I guess I’m both in good company, and on the right career path.

Be a student for life.
Learning a musical instrument, a foreign language, or any new skill for that matter, does wonders for our brain. When we learn a new language, for example, our brain uses multiple areas, from storage and retrieval to auditory and language center connections. A study from the University College London examined the brains of 105 people, eighty of whom were bilingual, and found that learning other languages altered grey matter, the area of the brain that processes information, similar to the way physical exercise builds muscles. Use the internet as your teacher — iTunes has dozens of foreign language podcasts and YouTube has thousands of musical lesson tutorials.

Create Your World is soliciting reader contributions of travel and foreign language learning tips on its site now.  Readers will vote for their favorite tips, the winners of which will be published in the 2009 edition of Travel Happy, Budget Low or Language is Music.  So get those tips submitted!

The economy is bad, but it’s still possible to travel and learn foreign languages without breaking the bank! Susanna Zaraysky, author of Language is Music: 65 Fun and Easy Tips to Learn Foreign Languages and Travel Happy, Budget Low: 190 Money Saving Tips, is inviting you fellow travelers out there to join the “Create Your World” book contest. From February 17 to March 15, 2009, people can visit the contest website (www.createyourworldbooks.com) and read Zaraysky’s Language is Music and Travel Happy, Budget Low online for free…Readers must give their email address to gain free access to the books online, and then they can enter their tips and stories via an online entry form. The author will review all the tips to make sure they are relevant and post them on the website on March 17th for people to vote on from March 17 to March 24, 2009. The winning tips and stories will be published along with the authors’ names on the Create Your World website and also in Language is Music and Travel Happy, Budget Low in May 2009. All winners will receive an autographed copy of whichever book their tip or story appears plus a prize from one of the contest co-sponsors: Travel Document Systems, Praxis Language Learning, Adventure Medical Kits, CallingCards.com, Le Travel Store and Kaehler World Traveler. The contest organizer will also include the winners’ names in a news release to the media. 

Want to be productive on your morning commute? Planning an Italian honeymoon? Or maybe you’re looking to get ahead in your career by learning a foreign language? Whatever makes you want to roll your R’s, iPhrase is the most convenient way to learn new vocabulary and pronunciations for the language you’re ready to learn.

Mp3 player phrasebooks definitely seem to be the wave of the future.  I can see the advantages: you have audio (and sometimes video) to support text, and the Mp3 player is something that young people, at least, are likely to already be bringing with them on their next vacation.  I can see the attraction….  I would probably go for something like this before my next vacation to some part of the world where I can’t speak the language, but I’d first need to buy a new Mp3 player.  The FL Doctor’s Dell Jukebox’s battery died a few months ago, and as of yet, he can’t afford to get a new player (but when he can, he’s leaning towards a Zune — Mrs. FL Doctor has one, and it’s great!).