“Let It Go”: Dubbing Disney’s Oscar-Nominated Toe Tapper in 25 Languages

Speaking of films, there is that Academy Awards thing tomorrow night. I’m predicting a sweep for Frozen in its nominated categories: best animated feature and best original song.

If you haven’t heard “Let It Go,” the nominated song from the Disney film, then you 1) haven’t seen the movie, 2) don’t spend much time on YouTube, and 3) don’t live with a seven-year-old who’s memorized all the lyrics.

And if you haven’t heard the original, then you probably haven’t heard the version dubbed into 25 languages. Even if you have heard it, it’s worth another listen.

The English version of “Let It Go” is sung by the Tony Award winning singer and actress Idina Menzel, who voices the movie’s character Elsa. She’s the one singing the English at the beginning of the multi-language video. But even though the rest of the song sounds as if it is sung by her, believe it or not, it isn’t.

So who in the world was tasked with finding all those talented songstresses? Look no further than Rick Dempsey, senior vice president of creative for Disney Character Voices International.

“In a lot of cases I think we fooled some people into thinking that it’s Idina in all those languages,” Dempsey told NPR. “And that, of course, is the goal, to ensure there is character consistency and the voices are all very similar around the world.”

But all that work isn’t a one-man show. Dempsey told The Hollywood Reporter, “We have 76 people around the world in 19 offices that oversee films in 55 languages. Our goal is to make every audience feel like Frozen was made in their country for their people.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that the array of voice talents in “Let It Go” include Gisela (Castilian and Catalan), Serena Autieri (Italian), Willemijn Verkaik (German, Dutch), Takako Matsu (Japanese), Carmen Sarahi (Latin American Spanish), Marsha Milan Londoh (Malay), and Anna Buturlina (Russian).

And the impressive work of Dempsey’s crew on Frozen didn’t end with the only 25 versions of the feature song. While most stories report that Frozen has been dubbed into 41 languages, a Disney UK tweet puts the total at 43.

(“‘Let It Go’: A Global Hit in Any Language,” NPR, February 24, 2014; Tim Appelo, “‘Frozen’ Composer Robert Lopez on the Perils of Translating ‘Let It Go,’” February 25, 2014; Rebecca Keegan, “‘Frozen’: Finding a Diva in 41 Languages,” Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2014)

[photo: “Snowflake Macro: Silverware,” by Alexey Kljatov, used under a Creative Commons license]

If You Could Talk to the Animals . . . You’d Know They Have Accents, Too

Looks like my See ‘n Say needs a regional update.

When a woman from Nevada asked the folks at How to Do Everything, “How would a person moo in a British accent?” the hosts of the podcast looked to none other than Sir Patrick Stewart (of Star Trek and X-Men fame). He turned out to be a good choice, as discerning between cattle accents seems to be one of his areas of expertise. “In England,” he says, “we’re dominated by class, by social status, and by location.” And, according to Stewart, it’s the same for cows, too.

But while Stewart’s imitations of cows from West Oxfordshire, cows from Yorkshire, Cockney cows, urban cows, and well-bred cows were done with a mock earnestness, animal accents is a legitimate field of study. And there are no shortage of specialists—particularly in Great Britain—who take animal accents very seriously. Seriously indeed:

Goats say . . .

[Researchers] found that a goats’ “accent” changed as they grew older and moved in different groups, disproving claims that their voices were entirely genetic.

The team, from Queen Mary University of London, said their findings are the first to suggest that most mammals can develop an accent from their surroundings.

The findings have caused great excitement in the science community amid suggestions that “if goats can do it, maybe all mammals accents can be affected by their surroundings.”

(“Goats ‘Can Develop Their Own Accents,’” The Telegraph, February 16, 2012)

Dogs say . . .

The woof guide found Scouse and Scottish pets have the most distinctive growl—but there were differences in tone and pitch across the country.

Tracey Gudgeon, of the Canine Behaviour Centre in Cumbria, said: “It seems dogs are more able to imitate stronger, more distinctive accents than softer ones. It’s one of the ways they bond with their owner.” Idea for the research came with today’s re-release of 1955 Disney classic Lady and The Tramp on a special edition DVD.

The study even found some dogs have “posh” accents—just like Lady in the animated film. A delighted Disney spokesman said: ‘It seems we were right all along.”

(“Exclusive: Experts Say Dogs Growl with Regional Accents,” Mirror, February 13, 2006)

Cows say . . .

Cows have regional accents like humans, language specialists have suggested.

They decided to examine the issue after dairy farmers noticed their cows had slightly different moos, depending on which herd they came from.

Farmer Lloyd Green, from Glastonbury, said: “I spend a lot of time with my ones and they definitely moo with a Somerset drawl.

“I’ve spoken to the other farmers in the West Country group and they have noticed a similar development in their own herds.”

(“Cows Also ‘Have Regional Accents,'” BBC News, August 23, 2006)

Apes say . . .

Gibbons have regional accents, a new study suggests. While not a sexy Southern drawl, these accents can help scientists identify the species of gibbon singing and where they are from.

“Each gibbon has its own variable song but, much like people, there is a regional similarity between gibbons within the same location,” lead researcher Van Ngoc Thinh, from the Primate Genetics Laboratory at the German Primate Center, said in a statement.

(Jennifer Welsh, “Singing in the Rain Forest: Gibbons Have Accents,” LiveScience, February 7, 2011)

Bats say . . .

Researcher Brad Law of the Forest Science Center found that bats living in the forests along the east coast of the state of New South Wales had different calls.

He said scientists had long suspected bats had distinctive regional calls—as studies have shown with some other animals—but this was the first time it had been proven in the field.

(“Australian Scientists Find Bats Have Regional Accents,” Reuters, September 13, 2010)

Whales say . . .

Dalhousie Ph.D. student Shane Gero has recently returned from a seven-week visit to Dominica. He has been traveling to the Caribbean island since 2005 to study families of sperm whales, usually spending two to four months of each year working on the Dominica Sperm Whale Project. One of the goals of this project is to record and compare whale calls over time, examining the various phrases and dialects of sperm whale communities.

When they dive together, sperm whales make patterns of clicks to each other known as “codas.” Recent findings suggest that not only do different codas mean different things, but that whales can also tell which member of their community is speaking based on the sound properties of the codas. Just as we can tell our friends apart by the sounds of their voices and the way they pronounce their words, different sperm whales make the same pattern of clicks, but with different accents.

(“Whales Have Accents and Regional Dialects: Biologists Interpret the Language of Sperm Whales,” May 12, 2011)

Dolphins say . . .

Dolphins on the east and west coasts of Scotland have different “accents.”

White-beaked dolphins use a complex system of tail slaps, whistles and clicks which were believed to be common among the species. But expert Olivia Harries said: “They use different clicks on the east coast than those on the west coast.”

(“Study Reveals Dolphins on Scotland’s East and West Coasts Have Different ‘Accents,'” Daily Record, November 9, 2013)

Birds say . . .

The [yellowhammer’s] song differs in terms of pitch and tone, especially in the final part, depending on where an individual bird is found. Birds can also add in various “phrases” to their song, according to their dialect.

Experts believe that dialects can be so thick they may hinder the chances of birds breeding with partners from other areas.

(Jasper Copping, “Britain’s Birds Boast a Colourful Array of Regional Accents,” The Telegraph, May 19, 2013)

City Birds say . . .

A group of scientists from Aberystwyth University studying the great tit’s dulcet tones have discovered that the birds sing their songs at a higher pitch in built-up areas to help them travel further. . . .

Researchers from the West Wales university, working alongside colleagues in Copenhagen, have found that it is the buildings that are changing the way birds sing in cities. . . .

“Our cities are packed with reflective surfaces, open spaces and narrow channels, which you just don’t get in woodland,” said researcher Emily Mockford. . . . “The higher notes mean the echoes disappear faster and the next note is clearer.”

(“Urban Birds Find Their Voice with a New Kind of Twitter,” Wales Online, December 13, 2011)

and Ducks say . . .

“Cockney” ducks from London make a rougher sound, not unlike their human counterparts, so their fellow quackers can hear them above the city’s hubbub. But their Cornish cousins communicate with a softer, more relaxed sound, the team from Middlesex University found.

(“Ducks ‘Quack in Regional Accents,’” BBC News, June 4, 2004)

So, what are the practical ramifications of all these findings? I’m not quite sure, but I have come up with one thing: Whenever you’re faced with that crucial question of our time, “What does the fox say?” you should reply, “That depends on where the fox is from.”

[photo: “See ‘N Say,” by Chris Murphy, used under a Creative Commons license]

It’s the New Year, So How About a New Accent?

If you’re tired of failing your do-or-die New Year’s resolutions, maybe you should make a resolution lite.

Can’t see yourself losing 50 pounds? Why not shoot for 15?

Don’t want to read a book a week? Maybe a page a day is more your speed.

And if you’re not ready to learn a new language, here’s an alternative: Acquire an accent instead.

Learn Accents from a Pro

Professional help is just a couple clicks, and a couple minutes, away. Just listen to Gareth Jameson, London-based actor and voice coach, and you’ll be speaking like a Brit, or an Aussie, or a German speaking English, in no time. Take your pick from Jameson’s series of 19 videos at Videojug.

“The key to any accent,” says Gareth Jameson, “is to isolate the sounds that are specific to that accent.” Isolating—and reproducing—those sounds is tough for me. To my ear, there are two kinds of English: American and non-American. Tell me to imitate a Scott, and it comes out as something like a parody of Ringo Starr. Same for imitating a South African or an Australian. I know they don’t really sound alike, but I just don’t know exactly why.

So hear you go (yeah, I meant to do that). Click on the photos below for a sampling of videos, or go to the complete gallery, and soon you’ll be well on your way to annoyi . . . I mean, impressing your friends.

[photo: “Happy New Year!” by Chris Chabot, used under a Creative Commons license]

So That’s How You Say It: Find Foreign Words and Names Pronounced Online

It all started when I asked one of my sons what he wanted for Christmas. He said a Moleskine journal. (By the way, this story would be better if I could tell it, rather than write it out.) I’d heard about them before, but come on. Moleskin?!! Do I look like I’m made out of money? I can’t afford a book with a cover made out of mole skins!

I looked it up on Amazon anyway, and I saw that it wasn’t as expensive as I’d expected, nor was it spelled the way I’d thought. Come to find out, it’s not mole skin, the fur. It’s Moleskine, the Italian company in Milan.

So, what’s the right way to say Moleskine? “The answer,” say the folks at the Moleskine website,”is: there is no predetermined answer.”

Moleskine® is a brand name with undefined national identity. And that’s the way we like it. As a literary name, it was used by British travel writer Bruce Chatwin in his book “The Songlines”, referred to the little black notebooks he usually bought from a stationery store in Paris.

Everyone should feel free to pronounce it as he/she prefers. Enjoy.

Well, that’s settled. (Or not.)

But what about all those other foreign words and names that escape obvious pronunciation? You can’t always just look them up. And even if you find them, how can you hope to decipher all the hieroglyphics of phonetic spelling? What do they really sound like? If only we could hear someone say them.

Fear not. There is help—and it’s only a couple clicks away.

Here, for your listening and learning pleasure, are 8 sites that will have you sounding like a native in no time—or at least you’ll sound like an intelligent non-native to your friends.

As the Moleskine people say, “Enjoy.”

Forvo

“The largest pronunciation guide in the world.” Boasts over 2 million pronunciations in more than 300 languages. Gives you the ability to add words, pronunciations, and ratings. From their blog, “Pronuncionary,” here are the top pronunciations of 2013:
1. denigrated
2. Chag Sameach
3. 把手拿回
4. djävligt
5. Karadayı
6. مهذبة
7. præstekonen
8. ムーン香奈
9. Geschke
10. Guillaume

Pronounce Names

Started by Pinky Thakkar, a San Jose State graduate student from Mumbai. Includes people and place names. You can submit names for inclusion. Has its own YouTube channel, as well.

The Name Engine

Good for names of celebrities, sports figures, politicians, and the like. Created for radio and TV professionals. Gives “Americanized” version of foreign names.

Hear Names

Surnames and given names from over 50 languages. Started by Elizabeth Bojang, an American who served in the Peace Corps in West Africa, to “help executives and customer service representatives compete in the global marketplace.”

Pronounce It Right

Celebrity names and commonly used foreign words, with pronunciations that are “irreproachable replicas as produced by non-native speakers.” Run by Italians Patrizia Serra, a well-traveled journalist, and Laura Mazzoni, a translator and editor of linguistic dictionaries.

Pro•nounce

Voice of America’s guide to pronouncing names and places in the news. “The first of its kind on the Internet.”

Audio Eloquence

Maintained by Judith West and Heather Henderson to provide resources for their colleagues in audiobook narration. An index of links to a slew of sites on pronouncing words in multiple languages, people and place names, food names, biblical names, and more.

World Food Pronunciations—Foreign Cuisine Language Dictionary

A collection of sites from About.com. Includes entries for German, Italian, Japanese, and French cuisine.

[photo: “Mouthing Off,” by Caitlin Regan, used under a Creative Commons license]

Monolinguals Unite: You Can Translate, Too

Luis von Ahn, computer-science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has a goal. It’s to translate the entire Web into every major language, for free. Sound impossible? Not to von Ahn. But he does see two obstacles: not enough bilinguals and not enough translator motivation.

So when it comes to translation, what can turn those obstacles from mountains into molehills? Von Ahn is working on an answer, and so is Chang Hu.

It Takes a Crowd

The Guatemalan-born von Ahn is best known for helping to invent CAPTCHAs. If you don’t know what a CAPTCHA is, it’s that image of distorted letters you see on a lot of Website forms. You’re required to type in those letters to prove that you’re a human, which keeps computer programs from fooling the system.

As he told the crowd at a TEDx Talk in 2011 (embedded below), Von Ahn estimates that each day, about 200 million CAPTCHAs are typed around the globe. With every CAPTCHA taking about 10 seconds to key in, that’s around 500,000 hours a day. Von Ahn wondered how he could redeem this “wasted” time and came up with reCAPTCHA.

Now owned by Google, reCAPTCHA replaces the often random characters of a CAPTCHA with actual words from books that are being digitized. The reason this is a good thing is because the text-scanning software used to digitize printed text can’t recognize every word, especially when dealing with books over 50 years old. But these hard-for-computers-to-read words aren’t hard for human’s at all. So when you’re typing in a CAPTCHA on one of over 350,000 sites using reCAPTCHA—including Facebook, Twitter, and Ticketmaster—you’re helping digitize books.

So what does this have to do with translation? Well, another of von Ahn’s projects, based on the same kind of crowd-sourced “human computing” as reCAPTCHA, is Duolingo. It’s a free language-learning site, currently teaching six languages. What makes Duolingo unique is that while you’re learning a language, you’re joining 10 million other users in translating text on the Web, because the phrases used by Duolingo come from real Websites.

For instance, after you learn some basic Spanish vocabulary, you’ll be able to test your skills by translating simple phrases to and from Spanish. And as you do so, you’ll be helping translate some English Websites into Spanish, or vice versa. Success earns you “skill points,” unlocking new lessons, while mistakes take away one of your hearts. Lose all of your hearts and you have to redo the level. As you learn more, you translate more-complex sentences, and, as your attempts are compared with those of others, useful, accurate translations are produced.

According to von Ahn, two great things about Duolingo are, “People really can learn a language with it, and they learn it about as well as the leading language-learning software,” and, “The translations that we get from people using the site, even though they’re just beginners . . . are as accurate as those of professional language translators.”

Oh, yeah, and did I mention it’s free? That’s possible because the sites that submit their text for translation are paying the tab—sites like Buzzfeed and CNN, which, von Ahn announced just a couple weeks ago, are the first to come on board.

Of course, even when there’s no monetary cost, not everyone wants to invest his time into the hours that are required for learning a language. If there could be a way for monolinguals to help out with just a few seconds—kind of like with the reCAPTCHAs—that might bring more people in.

Enter MonoTrans.

The Power of Widgets

MonoTrans (named MonoTrans2 in its newer version) is a process that combines machine translation with help from monolingual humans to produce accurate translations. A team from the University of Maryland’s Department of Computer Science, led by Chang Hu—a PhD candidate at UMD—proposed the process in 2010 to overcome the problem of not having enough bilingual translators to work on (a) texts in rare languages, and (b) huge amounts of text that would require enormous amounts of human effort.

MonoTrans starts with a computer translation of a passage, which is notorious for producing flawed (and often humorous) results. The output is then passed on to a person who speaks the target language. She then makes a guess as to the correct meaning and phrasing of the sentence, and her efforts are back-translated into the source language. Then a speaker of that language compares the results to the original passage, and the process between the two speakers is repeated until a satisfactory translation is produced. Along the way, the two monolinguals can help each other by including annotations, such as images and Web links, and multiple participants can vote on results.

While the process doesn’t necessarily take a large number of steps, it can be complicated and time consuming. MonoTrans2 addresses this problem by breaking the process into smaller, individual “microtasks,” so that many more people will take part in a translation, with each one handling only a small part of the whole process.

This new method was tested using children’s books at the International Children’s Digital Library. Visitors to the Website were presented with “widgets,” windows on a page that run a simple program. These widgets allowed users to edit or paraphrase a sentence, identify errors, or vote for the sentence they think is best.

The results of the trial show that using the MonoTrans Widgets in conjunction with Google Translate is a significant improvement over using Google Translate alone. And while this method also introduced some inherent problems, it indicates that the future of crowd-based computation by monolingual humans is very promising.

A Match Made in Cyberspace

Luis von Ahn coined the term human computation to describe using people to accomplish tasks that computers usually perform. Hu, in a blog post, sums up the relationship of human computation to translation in this way:

[H]uman computation presents a unique opportunity to significantly lower the threshold to do translation. At the same time, translation provides a set of interesting problems for human computation.

It sounds as if the relationship is something like a dance, with the dancers figuring out the steps as they go. Or maybe it’s more like a marriage, where both partners aid and challenge each other at the same time.

It’s a good union, and I’m glad there are people like von Ahn and Hu to serve as matchmakers.

(Luis von Ahn, “3,2,1 Takeoff! And We’re Translating the Web!“ Official Duolingo Blog, October 14, 2013; Chang Hu et al., “Translation by Iterative Collaboration between Monolingual Users,” University of Maryland Department of Computer Science, July 25, 2010; Chang Hu et al., “Deploying MonoTrans Widgets in the Wild,” University of Maryland, May 2012)

[photo: “Crowd,” by James Cridland, used under a Creative Commons license]

Race, Culture, and Ethnicity in America: Checking Boxes and Switching Codes

In many ways race is about difference and how those differences are codified through language, categories, boxes, segmentation, and even the implicit sorting that goes on in our heads in terms of the way we label others and even ourselves.

—Michele Norris, The Race Card Project

Here’s Proof

4443977630_3b27ef0eb5 — The results from the 2010 US Census include six single-race and 57 multiple-race groups.

This month’s issue of National Geographic marks the magazine’s 125th anniversary. That’s quite an accomplishment, and it represents thousands and thousands of pages of amazing photographs and stories. But National Geographic has more to share, and last month it opened up a new avenue: Proof, a blog “launched to engage ongoing conversations about photography, art, and journalism.”

Proof‘s first post is “Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change.” It features photographic portraits by Martin Schoeller (I wouldn’t have recognized that name before writing my last post) and discusses the dilemma faced by so many multi-racial Americans who find it difficult or impossible to check only one box on the census.

The post is a companion piece to a feature article in National Geographic, entitled “Changing Faces.” It’s written by Michele Norris, host and special correspondent for NPR, and curator of The Race Card Project, a site that collects views on the topic of race, all expressed in sentences of only six words. And you thought Tweets were short and to the point.

Of course, quite a few of the boxes were checked in the 2010 Census, and the results show a multi-colored collage of racial diversity across the American landscape. You can see that collage at The Racial Dot Map, created by Dustin Cable of the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. With one dot per person, the zoomed-out map shows a blending of colors representing the five categories of White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Other/Multi-Racial. But by zooming in, you can see the distinct contrasts at the neighborhood level, both intermixed and segregated.

Speaking in Code

NPR has started a new blog this year, too. It’s on race, ethnicity, and culture.

“Remember,” write the blog’s authors, “when folks used to talk about being ‘post-racial’?”

Well, we’re definitely not that. We’re a team of journalists fascinated by the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities, and how all of this is shifting.

They call the blog Code Switching. In linguistics, code switching is when a multi-lingual speaker switches between languages within a conversation. More loosely defined, it can also include moving from one dialect, set of vocabulary, accent, or speaking style to another because of a number of factors, such as setting, relationship to the listener, and expectations.

Imagine that the doorbell rings. You answer the door and see that it’s your boss at the ad agency or your grandmother from Mexico or your childhood friend from the city or your ESL student or an acquaintance from the gym or a policeman. How might you talk differently to each of them? We all do it to one extent or another. But it’s an even bigger factor for those who move between races and cultures.

Gene Demby, host of the blog, calls this movement “hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities.” Code Switching goes well beyond just methods of expression. It also covers news, info, and opinions on race relations and cultural interaction within America’s borders.

One of the things I like about Code Switching is its broad range of topics, from pop culture—”Why Black Heroes Make Zombie Stories More Interesting“—to historical—”The History of How a Shogun’s Boat Made Lincoln a ‘Tycoon’“—to current issues—”It Takes a Classroom to Learn the Family Language.” When it comes to race, culture, and ethnicity in America, they’re covering it all.

If only the staff here at Clearing Customs had the resources of NPR.

(Michele Norris, “Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change,” Proof, September 17, 2013)

[photo: “Question#9—Multiracial ID’s,” by Spot.us, used under a Creative Commons license]

Do You Hear What They Hear? Babies Are Listening Bilingually Even before They Can Speak

I remember having a conversation with an American raising his children in Taiwan. The father was fluent in Mandarin, and he’d started teaching that language to his son at a young age. He told me that it hadn’t worked for him and that he’d read that parents who speak more than one language to their small children only confuse them, as they aren’t able to tell one language from another.

It seemed like sound reasoning to me.

So it surprised me to see new research showing that infants are better at becoming bilingual than I’d thought. As it turns out, by the age of seven months, babies can distinguish between languages by recognizing their different grammar structures.

The study, published in Nature Communications, focused on languages with opposite grammar patterns—such as English, which most often has the verb before the object, and Turkish, which follows the object-then-verb arrangement. Infants in bilingual environments pick up on these patterns and can distinguish between the languages, by listening to differences in pitch, duration, and word frequency.

Janet F. Werker, of the University of British Columbia, is co-author of the study, along with Judit Gervain, of the Université Paris Descartes. Werker reassures parents in bilingual households. “If you speak two languages at home, don’t be afraid, it’s not a zero-sum game,” she says. “Your baby is very equipped to keep these languages separate and they do so in remarkable ways.”

Mental Cartography

Werker and Gervain’s research is one more step forward in what we know about infants and language learning. In 2001, Patricia Kuhl, the director of the University of Washington’s Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, told the Smithsonian magazine that six-to-eight-month olds can already distinguish between different vowel and consonant sounds in the languages they hear everyday and in languages “foreign” to them. But by their first birthday, they can no longer differentiate between sounds that are not part of a language that they’ve been exposed to. This is because they have developed a focus on familiar sounds, while “tuning out” unfamiliar ones. Then, later on in life, when the familiar competes against the unfamiliar, say, when learning a new language, the old sounds will usually win out. The result is a non-native accent.

To register what sounds infants can differentiate, Kuhl used a “head-turn” study (similar to that used by Werker and Gervain). In one example, two-thirds of both American and Japanese six-month olds could hear the difference between “la” and “ra.” But by the one-year mark, 80% of American children responded to the difference, while only 59% of the Japanese children did. Since the latter rate is only 9 percentage points above chance, this showed that the Japanese children had joined their parents in no longer being able to distinguish between the two sounds.

According to Kuhl,

The baby early begins to draw a kind of map of the sounds he hears. That map continues to develop and strengthen as the sounds are repeated. The sounds not heard, the synapses not used, are bypassed and pruned from the brain’s network. Eventually the sounds and accent of the language become automatic. You don’t think about it, like walking. [Familiar sounds] become more and more embedded into the map, until eventually they are almost ineradicable.

This accent map gets harder and harder to change as time goes by. On the other hand, if a child is exposed to multiple languages early enough—while the map is being drawn—the child can create more than one map at once.

Kuhl also has found (as shown in the TED Talk below) that if this exposure to languages is to have an effect on an infant, it must come from a live person. Listening to audio, even with an accompanying video of the speaker, does no good.

It’s Never Too Early to Learn

According to DNAinfo New York, some parents in the Big Apple are even learning a new language themselves in order to make sure that exposure to multiple languages happens for their children at an early age.

Take, for instance, Rhonda Ross, of Harlem, who went to a boarding school in a French-speaking area of Switzerland when she was a student. Later, when her son, Raif, turned one, she began speaking to him only in French. “I started with a French babysitter,” she said, “but a friend convinced me I would have to speak French to my son myself if I really wanted him to be fluent.”

Not being fluent herself, that means that Ross has to keep learning as she teaches her son. But she feels that the effort is worth it. In fact, she is so pleased with the outcome, that she’s introduced Raif to Mandarin and Spanish, as well.

Linguist Jennifer Wilkin, of Brooklyn, is another advocate of early bilingual education. In 2001, she founded Science, Language & Arts, where parents and children can learn French and Mandarin. “There is certainly a trend among New Yorkers to give a language to their children,” said Wiklin, who “knows several parents who are learning, and speaking, Spanish, Japanese, French and German to their children.”

While Wilkin’s school has students from preschool through fifth grade, Lyndsey St. John started Baby French in a Brooklyn ice-cream parlor and candy shop named The Candy Rush. The class caters to children who haven’t even learned to talk yet. “It’s really good to start those [language] pathways forming at a very early age,” said Wilkins. “Anywhere from 8 months to 3 years is when children are really sponges. They’re picking up everything.”

(Judit Gervain and Janet F. Werker, “Prosody Cues Word Order in 7-Month-Old Bilingual Infants,” Nature Communications, February 14, 2013; “Bilingual Babies Know Their Grammar by Seven Months,” The University of British Columbia Public Affairs, February 14, 2013; Edwin Kiester, Jr., “Accents Are Forever,” Smithsonian, January 2001; Julie Norwell, “New York Parents Learn Foreign Languages to Help Kids Become Fluent,” DNAinfo New York, March 6, 2013; “Even before They Utter First Words, Brooklyn Babies Take French Lessons,” DNAinfo New York, August 22, 2012)

[photo: “Mommy Tells a Story,” by Dan LaVange, used under a Creative Commons license]

Rainbows, True Colors, the iPhone 5c, and The British Paraorchestra

I saw one of the new iPhone 5C commercials a couple days ago. It’s a great collage of people around the world saying hello on their phones. I guess Apple wants their cheaper, more colorful smart phone to catch on all over the globe. (Who am I kidding? Of course Apple wants all their phones to catch on all over the globe.)

There are two versions of the ad, “Greetings” and “Greetings Too,” but the one-minute extended version combines both. Are the languages you speak buried inside?

We certainly live in a rainbow-colored world.

After I watched this, I got nostalgic for the song “True Colors,” so I clicked around YouTube and found Cindy Lauper’s and Phil Collin’s versions. Then I came to last year’s cover by The British Paraorchestra (“the world’s first ensemble of professional disabled musicians”), T he Kaos Signing Choir for Deaf and Hearing Children, and ParalympicsGB athletes. Very moving.

You with the sad eyes
Don’t be discouraged
Oh, I realize
It’s hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors
Are beautiful like a rainbow

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