Use the IPA to Learn Foreign Language Pronunciations

Geoffrey Pullum has an excellent post about the International Phonetic Alphabet at Lingua Franca today. You can read it at this link.

Following are the official IPA charts for those who are curious about the difference between alphabet letters and IPA letters (symbols for sounds). An interactive IPA chart can be found here.

The study of sounds truly is fascinating.

The Many Languages of Mourning Steve Jobs

From Wired.com:

"In the hours after Steve Jobs’ passing, researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute tried to track the spread of memorial tweets spreading through the internet. Their computers were overwhelmed.

Rather than focusing on network dynamics, they decided to analyze the tributes by language. Jobs wasn’t just an American visionary, but truly global.

Above is a breakdown of two million tweets containing the name “Steve Jobs” and posted between 9 pm on Oct. 5 and 9 am the next morning. Each dot represents 1,000 tweets, and they’re colored according to language. A high-resolution version containing the most-retweeted messages can be downloaded here."

Language and Nutrition

Language humor from an e-mail -

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans..

5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Final Jeopardy

And the Final Jeopardy Category is: Languages

The clue: What the Dalmatian, Gothic & Babylonian languages have in common.

For those participating in the week-long Jeopardy event, you do not need to place a Final Jeopardy wager but you do need to submit the correct answer for a shot at winning that special prize.

Answers from the entire week will be posted later today.

Language Specific Shopping Acronyms

I am not much of a shopper, but as I passsed a store advertising a sale today it struck me how much the acronym for "BUY ONE, GET ONE" has truly become a standard part of the lingo of shopping in the United States. As I read the sign (similar to the one pictured below)...

I immediately read aloud to myself, "bogo" (phonetically, /bogo/). By the way, it is not uncommon to overhear people discussing which store is currently having a bogo. In fact, it has become so common that some stores advertise as follows:

This, of course, got my language-loving brain thinking about other languages and their shopping acronyms.

If English language speakers have "BOGO"...are the following acronyms used by native language speakers in their respective countries?

AUOU (acheter un obtenir un) in France

CUyLU (compre uno y llévese uno) in Spain

KSEAM (Kaufen Sie eine ankommen man) in Germany

OYSY (ostaa yhden saat yhden ) in Finland

VEKE (vesz egy kap egy) in Hungary

KEFE (Kaupa einn fá einn) in Iceland

CACCAF (ceann a cheannach ceann a fháil) in Ireland

PUPD (paghi uno prendi due) in Italy

A Linguist with Fluency in only One Language???

From UofA

Speech Rate by Language

A good friend and I have a mutual friend from France who speaks English very well; however, some of our other mutual friends think that our French friend talks at a faster rate in English than native English speakers do. This brought up the question of whether or not certain languages are spoken more quickly than other languages...there does not seem to be a simple "yes or no" answer to this question. Here are a some of the various themes I came across while looking into speech rates:

Speech rate should be measured by the number of syllables per second.

Languages with multi-syllabic words tend to be spoken at a faster rate.

Speech rate should not be measured by the number of syllables per second because open syllables are spoken more quickly than closed syllables.

Speech rate is influenced by extralinguistic variables (sex, age, profession, emotional state).

Speech rate should take into consideration variations in continuity of speech.

An article in Language and Speech titled "Speech Rate in a Pluricentric Language: A Comparison Between Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands," presents the findings of a linguistic study that, "confirms the traditional view that speech rate is determined by extralinguistic variables, but also suggests there may be intrinsic tempo differences between language varieties."

While I agree that extralinguistic variables affect speech rates across all languages, I think it would be fascinating to learn more about the tempo differences between languages, which obviously exist as well.

If Kitty Pidgin then Kitty Creole

Speaking of Pidgins, and I don't mean the birds called pigeons, what is a pidgin and why would one of the names of the lolcat dialect be kitty pidgin?


A pidgin is defined by Merriam-Webster OnLine as, "a simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages."



More precisely explained, a pidgin is a language that develops when groups of people who do not share a common language have to communicate on a regular basis for the purpose of trade. A pidgin is not a native language to either group but is a new second language used between these groups.

Well clearly the so-called "lolcat dialect" is a very simple form of language and obviously humans do not share a common language with cats, I guess this is why some person thought to give it the name kitty pidgin. Let's just hope it does not turn into a kitty creole.

A creole is defined by Merriam-Webster OnLine as, "a language that has evolved from a pidgin but serves as the native language of a speech community."



Pidgins become creoles when those who speak the pidgin teach the language to their children as a first language. Some pidgins never make it to the status of creoles because they die out before being passed on.

What the Heck is a Lolcat and Who Came Up with the Atrocious Dialect?

I saw what is called a "lolcat" for the first time the other day (I guess I really am behind the times). While I have always liked cats and some of the images and sayings are cute, overall I was appalled to find out these lolcats have become such a phenomenon. There is no excuse for using intentionally poor grammar and spelling. At any rate, I decided to learn a bit more about this phenomenon.

According to Wikipedia, a lolcat is "an image combining a photograph, most frequently of a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English—a dialect which is known as “lolspeak,” ”kitteh,” or “kitty pidgin” and which parodies the poor grammar typically attributed to Internet slang. The name "lolcat" is acompound word of the words "LOL" and "cat".

After reading this I was even more appalled to learn that this supposed dialect has been given not only one name, but three different names. I guess nothing should surprise me in this day and age of chatlish.