Languages Online: The Best of November 2017

Here are our favourite stories about language from last month. Let's dive straight in...

10: 6 Steps To Listen Your Way To A Better Accent In Any Language on I Will Teach You a Language

If you're struggling with accurately replicating the accent in your foreign language, this article shows you how to do it by just listening. While it only features 4 steps when we first published it on our Facebook Page, two more steps have been added. This article just keeps on giving.

9: Kazakhstan Is Changing Its Alphabet - Here's Why on The Independent

This article covers the news that Kazakhstan is looking to adopt the Latin alphabet. While the country has traditionally used the Russian Cyrillic script, decisions have been made to use the same alphabet as many countries in the West do in order to improve the country's global integration.

8: J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter' Translated To Scots, Marking 80th Language on NPR

Harry Potter fans north of the border (if you're in the UK) should rejoice at the news that the first book has been translated into Scots. You should listen to the interview on NPR to hear a sample of it.

7: We put Google's new language-translation headphones to the test with 10 different languages — here’s how they did on Business Insider

There's been a lot of buzz about Google's headphones and how they'll do away with translators by giving everyone access to live interpreting wherever they go. However, as Business Insider found out, they're not ideal.

6: Why written languages look alike the world over on Science

While you wouldn't say that the Latin alphabet and the Cyrillic script are the same (Kazakhstan is looking to change from the latter to the former, after all), there are a number of characters in both that have very common roots. In this article, you'll find out why there are so many similarities between human writing systems.

5: No more middots: French PM clamps down on gender-neutral language on The Guardian

The French language's latest controversy comes in the form of gender. French is now trying to include gender-neutral versions of words to rectify the problem with middots, a punctuation mark that looks like a full-stop but in the middle of a line. Traditionalists, including the French PM, are not happy.

4: Five languages Brexit Britons should learn on Financial Times

Without trying to speculate on the future of the UK, it's fair to say that it probably wouldn't be able to survive as an isolated nation like North Korea. This means that languages are still going to be useful in the future and here's an interesting article on which languages might be useful for those in the UK.

3: From inboxing to thought showers: how business bullshit took over on The Guardian

If you're like me and you hate business English, you should definitely check out this article. Unfortunately, it looks like the ridiculous use of English employed in offices and boardrooms around the country isn't going anywhere, though.

2: What are the Most Spoken Languages in the World? on Fluent in 3 Months

Which is the most spoken language in the world? Should you just count native speakers or should you consider how many people speak it as a foreign language? What about those who learn the language as a foreign language? There are a lot of questions to answer just to answer a seemingly-simple question. This article aims to address a few of them.

1: A ‘critical juncture’ for language learning in the UK on Times Higher Education

Our most popular article this month was on the future of learning languages in the UK. As you may have heard, the UK is leaving the European Union. With a potentially-massive political shift occurring, the UK has a lot of questions to answer about how it's going to conduct itself in the future and how it teaches foreign languages is one of the biggest questions.

Were there any great language articles in November that we missed? Feel free to tell us and our readers about them in the comments below.

United Nations Day: The Languages of the UN

Today, October 24, marks the date that the Charter of the United Nations came into effect. While it hardly makes for a riveting read (you can read it here if you must), what it does in practice is far more astounding, since it acts as the treaty that founded the UN.

The flag of the UN

The treaty itself was signed on 26 June 1945 at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. When it was signed, Poland was the only of the 51 founding nations not present,  eventually signing the treaty a couple of months later.

The five permanent members of the Security Council (P5) at the time, the Republic of China, France, the UK, the US, and the USSR, ratified the charter alongside a number of other nations. While it may seem odd to mention the P5, their importance will become evident as we look at the official languages of the UN.

When the charter was made, it was written in five languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. It wasn't until the first General Assembly that the five official languages and working languages of the UN were decided. Initially, English and French were decided upon as the working languages.

Spanish was added as a working language in 1948, making the three languages the status quo for the General Assembly until 1968, when Russian was added as the fourth working language. By this point, four of the five official languages were in use as working languages. Chinese was then made a working language in 1973, making all five original official languages also working languages.

Arabic was added as both an official and a working language in 1973. The official language status of Arabic only extended to the General Assembly and its "main committees", as opposed to the five other languages, which held official status throughout all committees. For the first three years after Arabic became an official language, the Arab nations of the UN were expected to fund the procedures required enact this change.

After seven years as an official language for the General Assembly and its main committees, Arabic's official status was extended to all subcommittees in 1980. Three years later, all six languages were adopted as the official languages of the Security Council.

Currently, there are a number of additional languages vying for official language status. In 2009, the president of Bangladesh suggested that Bengali be an official language of the UN. Esperanto has also been suggested, despite its relatively small number of speakers.

Hindi and Portuguese have also been suggested since they are both widely-spoken languages. The Secretary-General of the UN and the Turkish Prime Minister have also suggested that Turkish become one of the official languages.

Do you think the UN uses the right languages? Which languages do you think should become official languages of the UN? Tell us in the comments below.

The Languages of Separatists in Europe: Part 1

Yesterday Scotland went to the polls to vote on their independence from the United Kingdom. We don't write this blog to promote a political agenda, just the agenda that languages are awesome and we love them. Since there are plenty of separatist movements in Europe, we thought we'd take a look at which ones speak a language different to the prominent language or languages spoken in the country that they are seeking to separate from.

While we're trying to keep language and politics apart, you'll quickly see how difficult defining a language is when politics gets involved. For the most part, we have attempted to go with a linguistic consensus rather than a political one, but if we've slipped up and missed something, please tell us in the comments. We're not indicating that every speaker of these languages is a separatist either. Finally, we're only covering a few select separatist movement in Europe with languages that fascinate us.

Albania

Northern Epirus is part of a historical region that is currently part of Albania. The people in this region speak Greek, which as you can guess, is not the majority language of Albania. That title belongs to the Albanian language.

The canal in Brussels, a battleground for Belgium's two separatist groups.

Belgium

As you may know, Belgium has two main languages. 56% of the population speaks Dutch or Flemish, while 38% speak French. However, the "separatist" movements in Belgium have another element to them: some wish to join other countries.

The Walloons, the French-speaking inhabitants of Wallonia, have a movement to join with France or to make Wallonia its own state. On the other hand, the Flemish and Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Flanders wish to separate from Belgium and make Flanders its own state, with a small minority wishing for the region to become part of the Netherlands.

Cyprus

The separatist movement in Cyprus already has its own sovereign state, if you happen to be the Turkish government. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is primarily inhabited by the ethnically-Turkish peoples of the region and considers Turkish its official language. The region declared its independence from Cyprus in 1983, though Turkey was the only nation to recognise it.

Denmark

The Faroe Islands are inhabited by the Faroese people, who also happen to have their own language, Faroese. There are around 66,000 speakers of Faroese in the world, with nearly three quarters of them residing on the Faroe Islands.

France

It appears that almost every minority language spoken in France has its own separatist movement. The movement to make the Basque Country a sovereign nation is complicated as it is currently an international region that is part of both France and Spain. Of course, Basque, the language isolate, is the main language of this movement.

The separatist movement in Brittany has the Breton language, a Celtic language more closely related to Scottish Gaelic and Irish than the national language of France, French.

The official language of the Catalan separatism movement is Catalan, a Romance language. The proposed nation that unites Catalans in this group is made up of the Països Catalans, an international region in northeast Spain and southwest France, the Rousillon region in particular.

Germany

The Bavarians in Germany have a separatist movement to make the Freistaat Bayern its own sovereign state. The Bavarians also have a few dialects and languages of their own: Bavarian, Swabian, and East Franconian German.

East Frisia has ambitions of becoming its own nation. The native language of the region is Saterland Frisian, a language in decline with an estimated 1,000 native speakers.

Italy

There is a movement for independence on Italy's island of Sardinia. The island is home to the Sardinian language, which while being a Romance language, is incomprehensible to speakers of Italian.

Certain people in Veneto also feel the region would be better off if it was its own sovereign state. The Venetian language has around 2 million native speakers in Veneto, the surrounding regions, Slovenia, and Croatia.

Netherlands

Much like East Frisia in Germany, Frisia in the Netherlands has both a language and a separatist movement that seeks to make the region independent from the Netherlands. In addition to the Saterland Frisian language spoken in East Frisia, the Frisians in the Netherlands speak the other closely-related varieties of the Frisian language: North Frisian and West Frisian.

We'll be back after the weekend with more separatist movements and their languages. If there are any fascinating languages favored by European separatist groups that we missed, please tell us about them in the comments below.

Ukraine Crisis: Is Russia Right to Defend Russian Speakers in Crimea?

The Russian military occupation of Crimea has sparked an
international crisis. US president Obama reportedly spent
90 minutes speaking with Putin.

Following the Russian military "manoeuvres" in Ukraine, many questions were asked of Russia's president, Vladamir Putin. Putin has given several answers but the one that struck us as perhaps the oddest justification for the Russian military's presence in Ukraine was that Russia had an obligation to defend Russian speakers.

Can a country, a political entity, stake claim to a language? Whilst we are trying to be diplomatic and fair, it certainly doesn't appear to be something that a country can claim to defend. We don't feel that every Russian speaker is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.

Though somewhat of a weak argument, the recent actions of the Russian government, who permitted Putin to occupy Crimea, could have been said to have been in the best interests of the Crimean people. The Russian Federation could be acting in the interest of the Russian ethnic majority, but not in the interest of the speakers of language. A similar reason was given when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, which also was diplomatically avoided by the West.

The majority of people in Ukraine are ethnic Russians and
speakers of the Russian language.

If defending speakers of the Russian language is within the remit of the Russian Federation, then the task of defending speakers of the English language would fall to the US. France would have every right to re-occupy large areas of northern Africa and Québec and Mexico would have a clear claim to political dominance over Spanish speakers, at least when it comes to a "might makes right" mentality.

Though none of the aforementioned countries (or any country in the world) has a spotless record when it comes to foreign policy and military action, we can't remember any time in recent history when they've claimed to defend their mother tongues.

How do you feel about the recent events in Ukraine? Does Russia have the right to defend Russian speakers and ethnic Russians? Tell us in the comments below. 

Languages In The News: December 2013

In many western countries, spirits were probably very high in December as the festive season rapidly approached. Sadly, on 5 December, the world lost Nelson Mandela. Since we're not a politics or history blog we won't say much about this, though we felt it deserved a special mention.

On 7 December, Techcrunch.com had a fascinating article on localisation, (or localization to quote it directly), which looked at the issues surrounding the localisation process for China.

This is more likely to be sign language than anything the
Mandela interpreter signed.

Returning to the sad news of Madiba's death, there was controversy surrounding his memorial when a 'bogus' sign language interpreter marred the proceedings with fake signing. The news was covered pretty much globally, but we preferred the approach of UK newspaper The Independent,
 on 11 December.

The same day, The Independent covered news that a French café was charging rude customers extra, something that we certainly agree with.

The following day, there were developments in the sign language interpreter debacle. We saw in The Guardian that apparently the interpreter suffered from schizophrenia. Elsewhere, it emerged that he also had somewhat of a sordid past. 

Also on 12 December, the Prospero Column of The Economist covered language and thought and whether speaking German changes the way one sees social relationships.

On the 15th, we found the fascinating story of a translator who found love by translating poetry. This was covered in Russia Beyond the Headlines and is one of the most incredible and heart-warming stories we've seen about language in a long time.

The next day, the Telegraph's expat blog told a tale of the long, hard road to learning the Thai language. It may not be for everyone, but if you're a language learner interested in Thai, this may be the story for you.

On 19 December, Wired.com had an interesting article on the linguistic diversity of Wikipedia. By Christmas Eve, any semblance of productivity had left us, and thankfully, The New York Times provided us with a delightful dialect quiz showing us what our language usage indicates about our city of origin, as long as it's in the US. Hopefully there will be more quizzes for other parts of the world and other languages soon.

We can't wait to see what January and 2014 will bring us. Here's hoping it's a good one!

Algerian War of Independence: The Languages Of Algeria

On this day in 1954, the Algerian War of Independence, which is known as the Algerian War in English, Guerre d'Algérie in French, and الثورة الجزائرية in Arabic, began. The conflict, which lasted over seven years, resulted in Algeria's independence from France, as well as becoming an important conflict in world history for the lessons learnt in terms of decolonisation and what is known as an

asymmetrical war.

The Tassili n'Ajjer mountain range in Algeria.

Algeria had been a French colony for over 100 years following its invasion by the French in 1830. However, today marks what was labelled a "Red All Saints' Day", or Toussaint Rouge, the day when members of the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale or FLN in French) staged attacks on both military and civilian targets and broadcast a proclamation for Muslims in Algeria to restore the state to a sovereign nation under the principles of Islam.

Though a fairly sombre day to be remembered, the result of the war would allow Algeria its independence and result in the fall of France's fourth republic. Rather than dwell on the depressing nature of war, we felt it would be wiser to spend today commemorating Algeria's linguistic diversity, some of which is due to its relationship with France.

Official Languages

Arabic

Algeria's sole official language is Modern Standard Arabic. This form of the macrolanguage is considered to be the most formal and is based on Classical Arabic, the type of Arabic that is used in the Qur'an.

Nearly 3 in 4 Algerians speak Arabic as their native language. Algerian Arabic has been influenced by Berber, another native language of Algeria, not to mention French and Spanish, owing to the country's colonial past.

85% of Algeria's population can speak Algerian Arabic and of those who speak Arabic in the country, 83% speak this form of Arabic.

National Languages

Berber

Along with Arabic, the Berber language is also considered to be native to Algeria. Berber is considered to be a language family that spans across a large portion of North Africa, including Burkina Faso, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Niger.

Over a quarter of Algeria's population speak a Berber dialect, and since 2001 Berber has held official status in Algeria as a national language.

Regional Languages

Hassaniya Arabic

The variety of Arabic spoken in the west of Algeria, Hassaniya Arabic, is estimated to have around 3.3 million speakers. Though the language is spoken principally in Mauritania and the disputed area of Western Sahara, it can also be found in the bordering areas of Algeria.

It is considered to be somewhat distinct from Algerian Arabic, and as a result holds no official status in the country.

The province of El Taref in northeast Algeria.

Korandje

This language is spoken by only 3,000 people in the town of Tabelbaba, in the southwest of Algeria. This town is unique in Algeria as being the only town to not speak Arabic or Berber as a principal language. The Korandje language is considered to be a member of the Songhay language family, a group of languages generally found around the central areas of the Niger River, though very few studies have been conducted or published on it.

Immigrant Languages

French

Algeria is considered to be the second largest Francophone country in the world. 1 in 3 Algerians are said to be able to read and write French, and despite independence from France, government and official affairs are still sometimes conducted in French.

Despite its independence from France, French still is the most commonly studied language in Algeria and many university classes are still conducted in French. However, education and bureaucracy in Algeria is becoming more and more Arabic in its affairs.

Are there any important languages spoken in Algeria that we have missed? Tell us about them in the comments below.

Declaration of Neutrality: The Languages of Austria, Part 1

As we pre-empt Austria's national holiday, which occurs 26 October, we will be seeing which languages are spoken in the country. However, before we get onto the languages, today we'll be looking at the background and history as to why tomorrow is Austria's national holiday.

The national holiday was initially called Day of the Flag, at least from 1955 to 1965. It commemorated the Declaration of Neutrality, an act of the Austrian parliament which unsurprisingly declared Austria's neutrality.

Following the Second World War, Austria had been occupied in a similar fashion to Germany,j by Allied forces. Regions of Austria were split into zones of occupation between France, the UK, the US, and the Soviet Union.

The capital, Vienna, which sat within the Soviet Zone of Occupation, was also divided up into zones of occupation between the four powers.

The beautiful city of Vienna, as it was in 1640.

On 15 May 1955, the Austrian State Treaty was signed making Austria an independent nation. The treaty, which was signed by both Austria and the Allied nations that occupied it, came into effect on 27 July 1955.

The treaty expressed the minority rights of Slovenes and Croats, as well as banning a political union with Germany and prohibiting Nazi and fascist organisations. Austria stated that it would declare itself neutral, as the USSR did not wish for Austria to join NATO once Soviet troops had withdrawn.

Allied troops left Austria on 25 October 1955, and though it is sometimes thought that the Austrian national holiday the following day commemorates this, it in fact commemorates the Declaration of Neutrality, which was enacted on the 26 October 1955.

The declaration, which makes up part of Austria's Constitution, stipulates that Austria forever be neutral according to their constitution and international law.

We'll be back after the weekend with a look at the languages spoken in Austria.

Part 1 | Part 2

The Georgetown-IBM Experiment: The Rise Of The Machine Translations

Though a fairly touchy subject amongst professional translators, machine translation is a field that has always interested us here at The Lingua File. Machine translation had been theorised before the 1950s but today we'll be looking at one of the first forays into the field.

In the 1950s Soviet-American relations were poor, as they were during much of the late 20th century. The Russian language was of particular interest to the Americans, and though professional translations were available, there were concerns that human translations were subject to political bias and interference.

The concept of machine translation had been suggested as early as the 17th century by philosophers René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. However, it was a discussion between Warren Weaver and Andrew Booth in 1947 that suggested that natural languages could be translated via the use of a computer.

Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, several experiments in machine (or mechanical) translation were conducted. However, these experiments were limited, used punched card systems, and were hardly groundbreaking.

Leon Dostert, a translator who had worked with American president Dwight D. Eisenhower during the war and had acted as a liaison officer for Charles de Gaulle, was invited to a conference on mechanical translation at MIT in 1952.

Though Dostert was sceptical of the potential of machine translation, by the end of the conference he was convinced there was a future in the field. He did doubt the capable scope of machine translation and preferred experimental methodologies over theoretical approaches to the field.

Dostert had discussed with several other linguists whether or not machine translation was a viable aim, and following the feedback that it was, set out to complete work in machine translation.

Convinced that a small-scale experiment could prove fruitful, Dostert contacted IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, a close friend, to collaborate. The IBM 701 machine that had been released the year previous was used and the programming was written in machine code, a programming language that gives instructions directly to the machine's Central Processing Unit or CPU. IBM chose Peter Sheridan to complete the task of writing the code for the experiment.

White-Gravenor Hall, Georgetown University.

Given that translating from Russian would be the best choice for the experiment since German was no longer considered the language of the enemy and information coming from Soviet Russia was limited, Dostert believed that another language expert was needed.

He found help and a collaborator in the form of Paul Garvin, a lecturer from the Institute of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., which was in fact set up by Dostert himself.

Garvin was an expert in Russian, as well as many other languages. He was born in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia and had emigrated to the US in 1941. He and Dostert decided to test various expressions and phrases from organic chemistry and a few general phrases for their machine translation.

As decided by Dostert, the lexical database was very small, containing only 250 words and six grammatical rules. However, the aim was to show the application of machine translation when it came to morphological and grammatical problems, rather than provide vast quantities of word-for-word translations.

The experiment was such a success that it was widely published in mainstream newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the New York Herald Tribune, and the Washington Herald Tribune as well as scientific journals and publications. The story later found its way into local and regional newspapers and excitement was so high that the authors of the experiment claimed that the problem of machine translation would be solved in a matter of three to five years.

Though the estimate appears to be miles from the truth, the Georgetown-IBM Experiment raised the expectations of machines to translate natural languages and made machine translation a potential solution to the wonderfully beautiful and complex problem of translating languages.

German Unity Day: The Languages Of Germany, Part 1

In preparation for German Unity Day, the day honouring the unification of West Germany and East Germany in 1990, we're going to be looking briefly at the history prior to this event. On Friday we'll be looking at the languages spoken in Europe's most populous country.

US tanks face-to-face with Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie
during the Berlin Crisis.

Following the Nazi defeat in Germany during WWII, Allied Forces occupied a large portion of Western Germany. The US held Bavaria and Hesse in the south, France held a portion of the regions in the southwest and the British Zone of Occupation was in the northwest. The remaining regions were occupied by Soviet forces and from 1945-1949 Germany would remain divided between the Allies and the Soviet forces, exacerbating tensions between the West and the Soviet  Union.

From 1949 the American, French, and British zones of occupation were unified as what was known as West Germany or the Federal Republic of Germany. The Soviet Zone of Occupation would become East Germany or the German Democratic Republic.

The German capital, Berlin, was divided between the four nations, with East Berlin held by Soviets and the western parts of the city under the occupation of Allied forces split between the US, the UK, and France. Though Berlin's location meant that it was entirely within the Soviet Zone, it was never considered wholly as part of East Germany.

The Brandenburg Gate, 13 August 1961.
The day the Berlin Wall was erected.

From 1949 to 1990, Germany and Berlin remained divided thus. The erection of the Berlin Wall, which started in 1961, put great strain on the relations between both East Germany and West Germany, not to mention between the West and the Soviet Union.

The Berlin wall spanned 155 kilometres (96 miles) along the border of East and West Berlin. The wall effectively stopped all immigration from East Germany to West Germany until 1989 when, though the physical wall still stood, East Germans were allowed to pass into both West Berlin and West Germany.

The German people began chipping away parts of the wall and eventually, in 1990, the physical wall began to be torn down. Amidst the fall of one of the world's most fierce representations of separation and isolation between the West and the East, the movement for German reunification gained great momentum.

As you know, the reunification of East and West Germany was formalised on 3 October 1990. We'll be back on Friday with our look at the languages of Germany.

Part 1 | Part 2

Language And Politics: Defining Language by Jennifer Collins

If you ever asked yourself what is it that makes language a language, you have probably realized how difficult it may be to give an appropriate answer to this question, even with the extensive knowledge of sociolinguistics. Sometimes, a language and a dialect are separated by a thin line that is often defined by some extra-linguistic forces.

These extra-linguistic forces are frequently related to political concepts of country and nationality. Usually, the first feature that defines the language is the country it is spoken in. However, being a living thing that develops and progresses, a language cannot always be tied to a precisely defined territory. This is the case with many regions in Europe, for example, where the turbulent history caused many nations to interrelate and merge in terms of culture and language alike.

How is the official language chosen?

With the emergence of the notion of ‘nation’, countries adopted different symbols of their national identities. Besides flags, anthems, and coats of arms, an official language is also an important feature that defines both nation and country. However, problems appear in multicultural surroundings and countries where many different languages and dialects are regularly spoken. Recently, The Lingua File featured an interesting article on the Languages of Bolivia, which pretty much illustrates the point.

In such cases, the official language is chosen based on the number of speakers, current political climate and available funds (for reprinting all the existing material). Therefore, choosing an official language is not an easy decision, especially in some underdeveloped countries, in Africa for example, where there are still separate tribes speaking completely different languages.

Is language a national property?

Different examples from Europe prove that a language can be treated as a property emblematic of a national identity, regardless of its linguistic features. This is the case with Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, which share a lot of linguistic features but are spoken within national borders of different countries. ‘Appropriating’ language in this way further poses challenges in terms of defining the features that actually constitute a language.

Even more striking example is the case with the languages of ex-Yugoslavia and disassembling Serbo-Croatian to four ‘new’ national languages. After the huge political transformation when the country got divided into six smaller ones, national language was also divided and turned into: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. Clearly, these four languages didn’t just emerge the same day the country disappeared. They have always existed in the form of standardized registers, until they were given a new status once the national territory was reorganized.

When language is not a language

To make this discussion even more complex, there are some opposite examples when two significantly different dialectal varieties are treated as the same language, even though they are spoken in two different countries. An example of this is Swiss German and its peculiar status in Switzerland.

Namely, Swiss German is regarded as an Alemannic dialect widely used across Switzerland and some parts of Italy. The peculiarity is the fact that in Switzerland, Swiss German is used on all levels of communication but it is still treated like a dialectal variety, rather than a language. Instead, the official language is Standard Swiss German, which has only few areas of use. It is used in formal contexts, such as in educational institutions, for official news and broadcasts.

Even though Swiss German also encompasses a group of different dialects, it is unusual that it has never been standardized in order to get a status of an actual language, especially because it does have political preconditions for this.

Obviously, defining a language depends on multiple parameters. Due to frequent migrations and redefinitions of national borders within Europe, this region seems to be one of the most challenging areas for defining the notion of a language. The examples given above make it clear that a language is much more than set of linguistic features - it is a cultural property and frequently a political tool.

Original image URL: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/5417409353/

Jennifer Collins is an ESL teacher and linguist currently working on Saundz, a new software programme for learning English pronunciation.
Follow @jennifer_collie Follow @saundzdotcom

The EU And Its Languages: Part 2

Yesterday we saw a brief history of the EEC which later became the EU, the countries that formed it and the languages they brought with them. Today we'll be continuing our little history lesson with the Maastricht Treaty, the formation of the EU and countries that became members and brought their cultures and languages with them.

The Colonel Building in the
Dutch city of Maastricht. 

The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 and formally created the European Union. Three years later Austria, Sweden and Finland all joined the club. Austria had little to no worries when it came to linguistic recognition as German had been a permanent fixture since the creation of the EEC. Sweden and Finland, however, led to Swedish and Finnish being added as official languages.

It would take another nine years before the EU would allow any more nations into the community, but when it did it would be the largest expansion to date. On May 1st of 2004, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia joined, as well as seven former members of the Eastern Bloc: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia. Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene all became official languages.

Three years later in 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU member states and Bulgarian and Romanian became official languages. Irish also finally gained its official status, no less than 14 years after Ireland joined the EU.

With five years having passed since the last the enlargement, Croatia is due to accede at some point this year and will no doubt bring with it its native language, Croatian.

The EU And Its Languages: Part 1

Since today is Europe Day, the celebration of the EU and Europe, we felt it would be an apt time to celebrate our thirst for language knowledge. Today we'll be looking at how the political entity of the EU has affected languages over the last six decades.

The Treaty of Rome was signed in this room
in the Palazzo dei Conservatori.

Our story begins with the Treaty of Rome and the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. This helped create the earliest form of what can now be called the EU. The EEC wasn't actually the EU, but many consider it to be the precursor for it. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were the founding nations of the EEC.

If you're even vaguely culturally aware, you will notice that these six countries don't all speak the same language. Belgium's main languages include Flemish and French, while German is used in Germany, Italian in Italy, and French in France. It's also spoken in Luxembourg, where Flemish and Luxembourgish are also used, while Dutch and other languages we mentioned last week for Queen's Day are spoken in the Netherlands.

Four main languages from these countries were assigned official status. These were French, Italian, German and Dutch, three of which would later be considered by marketers as the most important languages in Europe, known as EFIGS (English, French, Italian, German and Spanish).

Charles de Gaulle clearly wasn't a fan
of his British neighbours.

It wasn't until 1973 that more nations joined the EEC. The United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark were added to the roster despite previous vetoes from France's president, Charles de Gaulle. As if the British and the French needed more political tension!

With their accession came English and Danish as official languages. Ireland's native language, Irish, would not be added as an official language until New Year's Day 2007.

The early 80s brought with it horrendous fashion and a galvanised music scene (some of the best and worst music is from this decade), as well as newly democratic states in the Mediterranean such as Spain, Portugal and Greece, all of which lost their dictators in the 70s.

The common agricultural policy was too good for the Mediterranean states to turn down and membership put a huge seal of approval on the fledgling democracies. Spanish, Portuguese and Greek were all added to the ever-growing list of official languages.

Having already covered all the enlargements of the EEC, tomorrow we'll be covering the history following the Maastricht Treaty, which created what we now know as the EU.

Read Part 2.

May 3: World Press Freedom Day

Today is indeed World Press Freedom Day, an international celebration of, you've guessed it, freedom of the press. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are, in essence, the same thing. One refers to spoken language and the other to its written form.

What will we use for art projects when
all newspapers are replaced with websites?

Unsurprisingly, countries with little or no democracy tend to have a poor record when it comes to freedom of the press. Of course, non-democratic political systems, dictatorships and despots require a high level of control over the press and free expression as these interfere with propaganda and their efforts to maintain absolute power.

The fact that the freedom of the press is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of the UN is cause to celebrate. In fact, the UDHR is the world's most translated document. UNESCO's Index Translationum lists the most translated authors and most common language pairings.

It's one thing to feature an ideal and another thing to uphold or even enforce it. The phone-hacking scandal in the UK showed that freedom of the press can't be left unchecked, and that the term "freedom of the press" isn't an excuse for the media to do as they please.

The press, for all their foibles, do occasionally spread news. When they're doing things morally they should certainly be supported.

Politics Week: Speech Writing

Sometimes you want to rule the country, sometimes the world. If you want to do it democratically then you're going to need a speechwriter. Your own words just won't cut the mustard!

Your words won't cut this mustard either!

What does a speechwriter do? Write speeches, obviously. There's more to it than that, though. Political speeches aren't expected to be as eloquent as Shakespeare, but we highly doubt anyone would be elected into office nowadays without the help of carefully selected words, meticulously constructed sentences and organised paragraphs.

The speechwriter will have to write drafts for their clients and, much like a copywriter, accept criticism and be willing to redo and redraft their work. The difference is that they're writing with the aim of their words being spoken rather than being read. They have to be aware of the speaker's speech tendencies. They'll need to avoid sounds that the speaker is uncomfortable saying as well.

The speechwriter is anonymous, of course. They can't take credit for writing a speech since it could undermine the person who is reciting it. We are, after all, listening to them and not the speechwriter. A speechwriter works in a very similar capacity to a ghostwriter... they accept little to no credit for their work and write speeches in such a way that they appear to have been written by their client. They're unsung heroes of the writing world!