language

Easiest Languages to Learn

“Learning another language is a good thing, but with only a small percentage of Americans, it seems most of us can never dream of achieving this common goal.”

Source: www.youtube.com

This video’s humor isn’t always classroom appropriate, but it conveys several important ideas about languages. First, languages that are part of the same language family are easier to learn (leading to more cultural diffusion among speakers). Second, not all languages are equally important on a global scale even if they are similar (some languages are ‘docked’ on this list). This list is specifically for English speakers:

Dutch
Frisian
Afrikaans
Esperanto
Norwegian
Swedish
Italian
French
Portuguese
Spanish

Tags: language, culture, diffusion.

January 1, 2017 0

Gullah Culture

“While Gullah was not originally a written language and has never had a governing authority or dictionary, linguistic scholars have found that the language is internally consistent and in some ways more efficient and expressive than standard English. Elements of the language have seeped into African-American Vernacular English across the country.”

For the first time in recent memory, the Charleston County School Board is discussing how to address the specific needs of Gullah and Geechee students, children of a culture whose linguistic origins trace back to the west coast of Africa via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Some teachers have said the students’ way of speaking — whether in the heavily West African-influenced Gullah language or in the more Anglicized dialects sometimes known as Geechee — can present an obstacle to understanding in the classroom. Like many Lowcountry Gullah speakers of her generation, the current head of state for the Gullah/Geechee Nation carries painful memories of adults who taught her to hold her family’s way of speaking in contempt.

Tags: language, culture, race, education, historical.

Source: www.youtube.com

December 19, 2016 0

Italy’s Last Bastion of Catalan Language Struggles to Keep It Alive

The lingering use of Catalan in Alghero, Italy, is a reminder of how Mediterranean cultures have blended for centuries. But the language is fading there today.

In an age when people cling ever more tightly to national identity, the lingering use of Catalan in Alghero is a reminder of the ways Mediterranean cultures have blended for centuries, rendering identity a fluid thing. But while the traditional insularity of Alghero has helped to preserve Catalan, the language is struggling to survive, even here.

Tags: language, culture, Italy, Europe.

Source: www.nytimes.com

December 12, 2016 0

Labor unrest in Cameroon after clashes over language discrimination

In Cameroon, unrest in minority English-speaking regions over discrimination by majority French speakers is still simmering after violent clashes with police claimed at least four lives.

English-speakers have been protesting since Monday (11/21/2016) against what they see as their “second-class citizen status” and attempts to marginalize them in the west African nation. Eight of Cameroon’s ten regions are largely Francophone, but two regions, North West and South West Cameroon are English-speaking. English-speaking teachers complain that French-speaking counterparts are being increasingly deployed in English schools, despite differences in the curricula and teaching systems.

Tags: language, Cameroon, Africa, culture.

Source: www.dw.com

November 30, 2016 0

Bamenda protests: Mass arrests in Cameroon

Some 100 people are arrested after protests against using French in Cameroon’s English-speaking region.

Areas controlled by Britain and France joined to form Cameroon after the colonial powers withdrew in the 1960s. The country has 10 semi-autonomous administrative regions – eight are Francophone and use the French civil law. English-speakers have long complained that they face discrimination. They often complain that they are excluded from top civil service jobs and that government documents are often only published in French, even though English is also an official language. Bamenda is the founding place of Cameroon’s largest opposition political party, the Social Democratic Front.

Tags: language, colonialism, Cameroon, Africa, culture, political, devolution.

Source: www.bbc.com

November 28, 2016 0

Reading the world in 196 books

“I set myself the challenge of trying to read a book from every country (well, all 195 UN-recognised states plus former UN member Taiwan) in a year to find out what I was missing.

With no idea how to go about this beyond a sneaking suspicion that I was unlikely to find publications from nearly 200 nations on the shelves of my local bookshop, I decided to ask the planet’s readers for help. I created a blog called A Year of Reading the World and put out an appeal for suggestions of titles that I could read in English.”

Tags: language, culture, worldwide, English.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

October 30, 2016 0

The world’s most spoken languages

Source: matadornetwork.com

This infographic is a great way to visualize the dominant languages on Earth. Since this only counts one language per person, mother tongues are listed. Consequently, lingua franca’s such as English and France are smaller than you might have presumed them to be.

Tags: language, culture, infographic.

October 7, 2016 0

How to Say ‘Banana’ in Spanish

Source: i.imgur.com

I’ve lived in both the plátano and banano sub-regions of the Spanish-speaking realm and this discrepancy was one I always found curious (likewise, peanut butter is called crema de cacahuate in Mexico, but mantequilla de maní in Costa Rica). I’ve had many humorous encounters with friends from throughout the Spanish-speaking world when words that mean one thing in a particular country have VERY different connotations in another.

Questions to Ponder: Why do languages have different vocabularies in distinct places? Why makes a language especially prone to a varied set of regionalized terms?

Tags: language, colonialism, diffusion, culture, mapping, regions.