Welcome to Sapere Aude´s Bilingual Department Blog. The blog for those who love English and enjoy learning not only the language but also about the culture and society of English speaking countries.
Here you will find articles, students´contributions, sections about sayings, useful vocabulary, riddles,… . If you are a student at Sapere Aude, I hope you will enjoy the blog and find an opportunity to learn and have fun with English, and if you are a parent that perhaps wants to brush up on your English, I hope you´ve found the right place to do it.
To discuss something staightforwardly, seriously, especially in the world of business.
"OK, let's talk turkey and reach an agreement about the new employment contract."
The origins of this idiom are not clear, but some people think it might have originated in America, from the time of the Pilgrim Fathers. According to Robert Shook, in his book The Book of Why (1983, Hammond), the Pilgrim Fathers often wanted turkeys (for eating) when they traded with the American Indians and the Indians would greet them with the words 'You come to talk turkey?'
Backers of a universal alphabet say it will make pronunciation easy and foster international understanding.
BBC News Magazine By Tom de Castella
20 February 2013
But can phonetic spelling systems really smooth the path to world peace?
You are in Vietnam and want a bowl of soup. You ask a local where you can get "pho". After momentary confusion you are handed a book.
It's the curse of phonetics. Pho was correct. But you failed to emphasise the vowel and so articulated in Vietnamese "copy" (of a book).
English has more pitfalls than most other languages. "Don't desert me here in the desert" is a classic example of the heteronym, words spelt the same but pronounced differently. Bill Bryson remarked in his book Mother Tongue that there were nine separate pronunciations of hegemony.
The argument over regulating spelling has been raging for more than a century. Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw were advocates - the latter leaving much of his will to setting up a new phonetic alphabet.
Today the cause has been taken up by Jaber George Jabbour, a Syrian banker living in the UK. He has set up SaypU, an alphabet with none of the indecipherable squiggles of traditional phonetic alphabets.
It contains 23 letters from the Roman alphabet as well as a back to front e. There is no place for "c", "q", or "x", which merely repeat sounds achievable by using other letters. The "ɘ" represents the soft "a" of "ago" or "about", a sound known as "schwa".
Jabbour was a frustrated traveller. He would see words on billboards, menus and street signs. But he didn't have a clue how to pronounce them.
When he first got to London he said Leicester Square as it is written - Le-ses-ter Square - receiving funny looks. Only later did he realise that it is pronounced "Lester".
These kind of misunderstandings create a barrier, he argues. In countries like India and China where the entire script is different it can be a wall between local and outsider.
A simplified universal alphabet would end not only misunderstanding. It would help foster peace around the world, he believes.
Language misunderstandings can inflame conflicts. During the Cold War Nikita Khrushchev was reportedly thought to have said "we will bury you" of the United States. What he actually meant was something more subtle but tensions had been needlessly stoked.
But as translation programmes become more and more accurate, it is the sound of language rather than the meaning of words that is keeping people apart, Jabbour argues.
"I come from Syria, a place torn apart by war now. The war is not to do with languages but the groups fighting each other do use different pronunciations."
A new alphabet could bridge divides, he argues.
"If people pronounce and speak in the same way it makes people feel closer to one another. I do think the world with a single alphabet would be a more peaceful place."
His idea carries the quixotic whiff of Esperanto, the international language that failed to become mainstream. Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, also believed it would unite humanity.
Phonetic learning in the form of "synthetic phonics" is now a major part of education. But Masha Bell, author of Understanding English Spelling, says reform of spelling needs to go further and alter the way words are written.
Bell grew up speaking Lithuanian and Russian. When she took up English at 14 she thought "how do they put up with this?" The illogicality of English spelling holds children back in Anglophone countries and makes life tough for visitors, she argues. "The reason why Finland shines in education is because their children have to spend very little time learning to read and write. It is completely phonetic."
The mechanics of introducing a new alphabet like SaypU are far from simple. The website currently has 10,000 words that can be translated into the new alphabet. Like Wikipedia it is for users to suggest tweaks and add new words.
It isn't always obvious what the correct answer is. The SaypU spelling of "top" and "run" have had to be tweaked to take into account the different vowel sounds of American and British English. And "very" - originally written in SaypU as verii - is now veri.
And how does it cope with British, North American and Antipodean English? In Britain people pronounce "borough" with a short second syllable. But for many Americans and Australians it is long, rhyming with burrow.
Accents can't just be standardised, says Nicholas Ostler, chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages.
Ostler is sceptical about any new undertaking. Others have attempted the same thing, such as Navlipi, devised by Indian banker Prasanna Chandrasekhar.
SaypU champions simplicity. But because of that it will struggle with languages in the Caucasus which have five or six ways of pronouncing the "k" sound, and South African languages like Xhosa where clicks play an important role, Ostler says.
Jabbour's initial aim is for SaypU to complement the native language rather like subtitles. One day - perhaps in two or three centuries - he hopes it will become the default international alphabet.
Technology means that unlike in Shaw's day, there is now the means of making it work, he argues. "We have the internet and social media. It distinguishes this attempt from any previous ones."
Sceptics highlight the practical difficulties.
"How are people going to be incentivised to adopt this spelling system side by side with whatever system they use at present?" asks Henry Hitchings, author of the Language Wars.
Bell says it would be better to concentrate on reforming English. "The notion of starting something completely new and every language being written in that seems a bit far fetched to me," she says.
There are top-down attempts to control or reform the language. The Academie Francaise tries to standardise the French language and keep out Anglo-Saxon terms, with varying degrees of success. And opponents of language regulation would highlight the Nazis' 1944 plan to reform German spelling.
Experts often liken language to a river which flows onwards regardless of efforts to control it. Jabbour says he's not trying to stop the river but to "redirect" it.
It's a futile aim, says Hitchings.
"Utopian language projects, in which an artificial system is put forward as an alternative to what's developed naturally, tend to fail. People are strongly attached to the distinctiveness and idiosyncrasies of whatever language they use."
And world peace? "Shared language can dupe us into thinking we share other things - values, beliefs, goals - when in many cases we don't. Does it minimize differences, or merely mask them?"
heteronym (also homograph): a word that is spelled the same as another but has a different meaning and sometimes a different pronunciation, for example, "Santa is ready to present the present."
Do you
believe in the literal meaning of sentences in English? What do you think the British
want to mean when they say “very interesting”? Do they really want to mean that
something is interesting or perhaps they want to mean it is clearly nonsense?
The table below will probably help you.
An occasion when someone suddenly behaves in a very angry and unreasonable way, often screaming, crying, or refusing to obey someone. This word is usually used about children: Johnny had (or threw) a tantrum because his father didn´t give him a sweet.
For the study, the team monitored the brain responses of 48 healthy student volunteers - which included 23 who were bilingual - to different sounds.
They used scalp electrodes to trace the pattern of brainwaves.
Under quiet, laboratory conditions, both groups - the bilingual and the English-only-speaking students - responded similarly.
But against a backdrop of noisy chatter, the bilingual group were far superior at processing sounds.
They were better able to tune in to the important information - the speaker's voice - and block out other distracting noises - the background chatter.
'Powerful' benefits.
And these differences were visible in the brain. The bilingualists' brainstem responses were heightened.
Prof Nina Kraus, who led the research, said: "The bilingual's enhanced experience with sound results in an auditory system that is highly efficient, flexible and focused in its automatic sound processing, especially in challenging or novel listening conditions."
Co-author Viorica Marian said: "People do crossword puzzles and other activities to keep their minds sharp. But the advantages we've discovered in dual language speakers come automatically simply from knowing and using two languages.
"It seems that the benefits of bilingualism are particularly powerful and broad, and include attention, inhibition and encoding of sound."
Musicians appear to gain a similar benefit when rehearsing, say the researchers.
Past research has also suggested that being bilingual might help ward off dementia.
It seems that in horse racing circles tips (a piece of special or secret information) on which horse is a likely winner circulate
amongst punters (someone who bets on the results of a horse race). The most trusted authorities are considered to be
those in closest touch with the recent form of the horse, i.e. stable
lads, trainers etc. The notional 'from the horse's mouth' is supposed to
indicate one step better than even that inner circle, i.e. the horse
itself.
CHRISTMAS IN THE UK
Christmas is a
very special time of year; however it is celebrated in very different ways fromcountry to
country. In the UK there are Christmastraditions, foods and even superstition
thatare different
to those in Spain and all over the world.
Christmas Pudding
One of the
main differences between cultures is always food and this is true for Christmasfood. In the
UK we have a variety of Christmas food from Mince Pies, sweet mixed fruit
tarts,to Mulled
Wine, hot red wine with spices and orange (a festive Sangría!). Food is a veryimportant part
of Christmas in the UK but so are the traditions.
On Christmas
Eve (the day before Christmas) there is a church service called Christinglewhich
celebrates the last day of advent by lighting the last advent candle. The
children aregiven oranges
with a red ribbon around it, a candle in the middle and sweets on sticks. Thesweets don’t
last very long! In the evening children leave a mince pie with a glass of
brandyfor Santa (andcarrots for the reindeer). Santa comes when the children go to bed and leavepresents in
their stockings which are put on the fireplace ready for Santa to come down thechimney!
Christmas Day
is the biggest day of the festive celebrations. In the morning the presentsfrom Santa and
the family are opened, usually very early if there are excited kids in thehouse! In the
afternoon the family eats Christmas dinner which is traditionally roast turkeyand Christmas
Pudding for desert (a fruit pudding that is steamed, set on fire with brandyand served
with brandy sauce). Christmas Day evenings are spent relaxing and spendingquality time
with the family.
The day after
Christmas Day is Boxing Day in the UK, a tradition that originates from manyyears ago. In
UK history when wealthy people employed servants the servants had to workon Christmas
Day, so the day after (26th) the wealthy people would let them have the day offwork to visit
their family. As a way to say thank you for the servants’ hard work throughoutthe year the
wealthy people gave them a box that contained leftover food and gifts, this iswhere the name
comes from. Nowadays it is a national holiday that is celebrated by eatingthe leftover
food, spending time with the family and also, more recently, the ‘Boxing DaySales’ in the
shops.
Following
Christmas is the Twelve Days of Christmas. This starts on Christmas Day andthe Twelfth
night is on 5th January. The day following this is when we take down all theChristmas
decorations because it is believed to be bad luck if they are up after this
date. Forthose of us
that are superstitious it is essential that every last bauble* is packed up ready fornext year!
*a shiny
coloured ball used as a decoration on a christmas tree, a decoration or piece
of jewellery that is not expensive
3 feb 2013
CHINGLISH MALAPROPISMS
Shanghai
authorities are trying to clean up English-language signs and menus to rid them
of their malapropisms,like these examples. But, what is a malapropism? A malapropism is a word that is used wrongly but sounds like the word that you should have used, especially one that creates a funny change of meaning, for example, "Texas has a lot of electrical votes", instead of electoral. In Spanish, Sofía Mazagatos, a celebrity from glossy magazines, made famous the expression estar en el candelabro, instead of candelero).
The word "malapropism" comes from the French "mal à propos" meaning "inappropriate", and was personified by Richard Brinsley Sheridan in his comedy The Rivals (1775) as "Mrs Malaprop", a character who habitually misused her words.
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