Category: languages

If I Had a Hammer, I’d Still Need to Listen

Thanks to my daughter for showing me “It’s Not about the Nail.”

Point taken (all puns intended). It can be frustrating when someone—like a wife—won’t listen to common sense, ignoring a problem that’s as obvious as the nose on her face. She just wants someone to listen. No advice allowed.

Funny stuff. I feel this guy’s pain.

But wait a minute. Don’t I like to talk about the need for people to be heard, without having someone trying to fix everything? What about her pain? What gives?

Here’s what I’ve decided: Sometimes it is about the nail, but that doesn’t mean we should stop listening. Yes, some people, like this woman, won’t listen to reason. They don’t want to hear the truth or take responsibility, and they need to hear the truth clearly.

8559722063_d78cba51bc_tBut much of the time, our friends on the couch know the problem well and already have the solutions. Maybe they’re in the middle of fixing it but it’s taking time . . . or the fixes aren’t as quick as they should be . . . or the most obvious solutions would do more harm than good (anybody got a claw hammer?) . . . or there are other issues that make things more complicated. And in those cases, the person with the nail doesn’t need to be pummeled with advice, they need someone to hear about their hurts and fears.

There are a lot of people in the world who don’t want to listen to the truths that will solve their problems, but there are also a lot of people who don’t want to listen to the problems of others, so they use easy answers to try to make their own discomfort go away.

I know, I know. It’s just a comedy skit, and I shouldn’t try to make too much out of it. But I wanted to post the video, and I just couldn’t do that without tacking on my thoughts.

Oh, and one more thing. The writer and director for “It’s Not about the Nail” (he’s the male actor, too) is Jason Headley. Here’s another one of his videos. It’s called “A Little French.” (This will be the last of my comments about learning French for a while.) It doesn’t have millions of views like the one above, but it’s just as funny.

How can you not appreciate the thought process of a guy who can say, “I don’t want to learn French, I want to speak French”? If only. . . .

[photo: “Hammer,” by homespot hq, used under a Creative Commons license]

Language Study: Live (There) and Learn

3797213895_8586cd8e5e_nMan, I really should have studied French harder in college.

That’s how I ended my last post. Actually, I did study hard, got good grades in my three French classes, and was only three hours short of getting a French minor.

The reason I didn’t get the minor was that when I showed up for the first class of The History of the French Language, a 3-hour class taught in English, I realized I was in over my head. It was in the fall, after a summer full of not speaking French, and the girl in front of me asked Professor Honeycutt if he would teach the class in French. She asked this in French, and the girl next to her nodded in agreement. The teacher said he couldn’t do that, but I dropped the class the next day anyway.

It was one of the best decisions of my college career. I’m so glad that today I don’t have to tell people that I have a French minor but about the only thing I can still say is “I speak a little French.”

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t study hard enough. The problem was I didn’t need to use it outside of class. And inside of class, what I said didn’t matter as much as how I said it. You know what I mean: If your teacher asks you to tell about your pet, and you have a dog, but you’ve forgotten the word for dog, but you remember the word for cat, suddenly you have a cat. The professor isn’t asking you because he’s concerned about the animals in your life, he simply wants to see if you can put sentences together.

It’s not a silver bullet, but putting yourself in a place where you need to use a language in a meaningful way is key to learning a language. That’s one of the foundations of Education First, named the official supplier of language programs for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. EF was founded in 1965 by Bertil Hult in Sweden, “on the principle that cultural immersion was a superior way to study a language.”

Below are five EF commercials about people learning a language where it’s spoken. Granted, they glamorize the whole expat experience, but they are commercials, not documentaries.

I just wish that I could become fluent by watching cool videos about cool people living in cool places—and not have to worry about conjugating verbs.

The commercials are called “Live the Language.”

(By the way, who knew that speaking Australian and Canadian was so easy? Almost as easy as what they speak over in England).

(“About Us” and “EF in Brief,” Education First)

[photo: “cafe,” by  pim van boesschoten, used under a Creative Commons license]

Les Images de France 5

I can’t speak French, but I like the way it sounds.

And I don’t know much about the French public TV channel France 5, but I like their video logos.

Last year, the branding agency Les Télécréateurs, helped rebrand the channel and came up with a series of 25 “idents” to show between programs. Les Télécréateurs, on their Vimeo site, writes,

The concept is as simple as it is strong; a multitude of things that move in the same direction, one following the other, like a chain reaction between completely different worlds. Its underlying meaning is stated loud and clear: knowledge derives from making new links.

The idents become a voyage in which the viewer experiences the ever changing world. Each shot is just long enough for you to grasp what you’re watching, but not too long that it bores you. It also instills in you the feeling of wanting more. Everything travels from left to right but sometimes a thing can reach the apex of its trajectory and start moving in the opposite direction.

And Alphabetical Order®, who directed the spots, says,

[T]his is of course about moving forward, striving, exploring, fighting, longing, pushing the limits and developing. It symbolizes what makes humanity prosper, what fascinates us in life.

Here’s a “Branding Montage” of idents paired with announcements for some of their programming. I can understand some of the words and can make out several of the locations (the pictures help). But, man, I really should have studied French harder in college.

(Les Télécréateurs, France 5 Rebrand | Idents, Vimeo)

Four Ways to Leverage Multi-Cultural Experiences to Raise Successful Kids

7778827430_2098f27ba3_nIn an increasingly globalized world, there are several ways to use multi-cultural experiences to help your children get a leg up as they move toward adulthood and future careers. Here are four of them.

None are easy, but the first may be the most difficult.

1. Be an Immigrant to the US

Sociologists at Johns Hopkins University, Lingxin Hao and Han S. Woo, found that children of immigrants in America achieve more academically and have better transitions into adulthood than their peers with native-born parents. The advantage is highest for foreign-born children whose parents move to the States, followed closely by American-born children of immigrants. Hao and Woo’s findings appear in the September/October 2012 issue of Child Development (“Distinct Trajectories in the Transition to Adulthood: Are Children of Immigrants Advantaged?“)

Explaining the difference,

Hao suggests that there is a greater sense of community among immigrants out of necessity—newcomers often need a lot of assistance when they first arrive in the United States. But Hao, who is from China, thinks there is also a great deal of inspiration to be found among the immigrant community: Parents might be working multiple low-level jobs and encourage their children to seek a better life for themselves. The success stories of immigrants who have “made it” are also held up as role models for immigrant children, something other native-born groups might be lacking, Hao said.

(“Children of Immigrants Are Coming Out Ahead of Their Peers, U.S. Study Finds,” ScienceDaily, September 13, 2012)

2. Don’t be a tiger parent

This one might go under the category of cultural lessons on what not to do.

Regardless of what Amy Chua writes in her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, “Chinese-style” tiger parenting is not the best model for raising children. This is according to researchers Su Yeong Kim, Yijie Wang, Diana Orozco-Lapray, Yishan Shen, and Mohammed Murtuza. They compared the developmental outcomes of children from 444 Chinese-American families in northern California, using eight parenting dimensions—”parental warmth,” “democratic parenting,” “parental monitoring,” “inductive reasoning,” “parental hostility,” “psychological control,” “punitive parenting,” and “shaming”—to categorize four parenting styles. In order, from the style that produces the best developmental outcomes to the least, they are “supporting,” “easygoing,” “tiger,” and “harsh.”

From the abstract of “Does ‘Tiger parenting’ Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes” (published in Asian American Journal of Psychology, March 2013):

Compared with the supportive parenting profile, a tiger parenting profile was associated with lower GPA and educational attainment, as well as less of a sense of family obligation; it was also associated with more academic pressure, more depressive symptoms, and a greater sense of alienation. The current study suggests that, contrary to the common perception, tiger parenting is not the most typical parenting profile in Chinese American families, nor does it lead to optimal adjustment among Chinese American adolescents.

(Nate Kornell “Does Tiger Parenting Work?” Psychology Today, December 14, 2012)

3. Make sure your children learn a foreign language

Bronwyn Fryer, a senior editor at the Harvard Business Review, trumpets the need for “soft skills,” things like “emotional intelligence,” “listening,” and “authenticity,” for global leaders. But, he writes, the top soft skill for executives in global organizations is “sensitivity to culture,” also known as “cultural empathy.” According to Frye,

True cultural empathy springs from personality, early nurturing, curiosity, and appreciation of diversity. But, very importantly, it also springs from deep exposure to more than one language. And this is where American executives fall short.

Learning another language, he says, not only helps in communication, but opens up one’s thinking:

As anyone who has ever learned to speak a foreign language fluently notices how each language shifts one’s consciousness. One day, you wake up and you realize you have been dreaming in the new language. Eventually you realize you are thinking in that language. And when you shift back and forth between, say, your native tongue and the acquired language, you feel like you are driving a car with a stick-shift; you are more involved and engaged in the experience. You take in more; you hear more. And you literally feel different; you are “more than yourself.”

(Bronwyn Fryer, “Why America Lacks Global Leaders,” Harvard Business Review, August 23, 2012)

4. Encourage your children to add overseas work experience to their educations

This one comes a little later in their lives, but they’re always your kids, right?

In 2010, Susan Adams, of Forbes, gathered the views of several hiring experts on the value of work experience overseas. She writes that foreign postings, including the Peace Corps, internships, and other types of jobs, give an advantage to people looking for work. One of the reasons is that living and working overseas exposes people to differing leadership styles.

And some who move overseas find opportunities for long-term employment there. Adams talked with Mary Anne Walsh, a global-leaders coach based in New York, and learned that Walsh’s clients “who moved overseas shortly after college and graduate school . . . advanced much more quickly than if they had tried to climb the career ladder in the U.S.”

Others had this to say:

Dan Black, Americas director of recruiting for Ernst & Young—

We definitely see overseas experience as an advantage. Our clients are demanding more of us these days. They want diversity of thought and diversity of values, and many of our clients are multinationals.

Gary Baker, U.S. global mobility leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers—

[Being part of a minority group in another country]  gives you a greater respect for other cultures, and you learn to be better at managing teams that are diverse.

Not only does working overseas build character, writes Adams, but being successful in a foreign country also increases one’s confidence. “If you can make your way in Mexico City, Abuja or Sao Paulo, then traditional U.S. organizational issues will be a snap for you.”

(Susan Adams, “How a Job Abroad Can Give Your Career a Big Boost,” Forbes, November 4, 2010)

[photo: “Awaiting Riders,” by dolanh, used under a Creative Commons license]

A Scholar, a Footballer, and a Tourist Walk into a Foreign Country . . .

Did you hear the one about the Fulbright Scholar in China studying stand-up comedy? The student, Jesse Appell, put together a spoof of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” called “Laowai Style.” Lao wai is a Mandarin term for foreigner—literally meaning “old” and “outside.” Here’s the video, with subtitles:

And then there’s the former amateur soccer player from Norway, Havard Rugland, who watched the Super Bowl in 2011 and started working on his American-football-kicking skills. The result was a video of amazing trick kicks, called “Kickalicious.” It went viral and caught the attention of some NFL franchises, with a couple giving him tryouts. Last week, the Detroit Lions announced that they had signed him to their team. No joke.

I heard about the two stories above on “PRI’s The World” while I was listening to NPR in my car last Friday afternoon. This last video isn’t related, but it shows some cross-cultural miscommunication, between an English-speaking tourist and a couple French locals—and I think it’s pretty funny. It’s “Do You Speak English?” by BBC’s Big Train comedy team:

(Nina Porzucki, “Humoring the Chinese: An American Comedian Has a Run-in with Chinese Censorship,” PRI’s The World, April 12, 2013; Steven Davy, “Norwegian Kicker Havard Rugland Signs Detroit Lions NFL Deal after YouTube Video Goes Viral,” PRI’s The World, April 12, 2013)

The Britishisms Are Coming! So Are the Americanisms! Is Any Language Safe?

In his new book, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To, British historian Stuart Laycock claims that Britain has attacked more nations than any other. In fact, according to Laycock, Britain has “invaded, had some control over, or fought conflicts in the territory of something like 171 out of 193 UN member states in the world today (and maybe more).”

Of course, Britain’s incursions aren’t limited to the military variety. Who hasn’t heard of the British Invasion, when the Beatles and Rolling Stones came to American shores? And now those sneaky Brits are at it again.

It’s Enough to Get One’s Knickers in a Twist

This time they’re assailing something as personal to us Americans as our English language. (Yes, yes, we originally got it from them, but we’ve made it our own.) The headlines speak for themselves:

We have Ben Yagoda, a professor of English at the University of Delaware, to thank for keeping track of the incursions. Such is his acumen, his work is sourced in each of the articles above. Yagoda’s blog, “Not One-Off Britishisms,” keeps track of the invasion as it occurs, one word and phrase at a time. Britishisms such as spot on, cheeky, chippy, and have a look have already taken up residence within our borders, and it looks as if there are more to come, what with Harry Potter, Downtown Abbey, and Doctor Who helping with the assault.

American Offensives and Offenses

In all fairness, though, as an American, I must admit that my country has done its fair share of invading over the years, militarily and culturally. And evidence suggests that this most recent verbal offensive by the British might actually be a counter offensive.

Take, for instance, the following from Alistair Cooke’s 1984 radio broadcast, Letter from America. The host of PBS’s Masterpiece Theater for 20 years, Cooke had one foot planted firmly on each side of the Atlantic, being born in Lancashire and later becoming an American citizen. Letter from America ran for 58 years, and the BBC has just recently put over 900 of Cooke’s audio installments online.

The “letter” of note is “Americanisms,” in which Cooke discusses American words that have made the jump across the pond. There’s caucus and pow-wow (both of which came initially from American Indians) and hunky-dory, parole, scientist, and awful.

French and Chinese under Siege

French has not been immune to the encroachment of English, as well. (Granted, this isn’t all the fault of us Americans. Maybe we should consider it a joint invasion from the US and Britain.) An article in Les Echos gives several examples of Franglais in the French business world, which now “has French people talking about ‘addressing’ problems, ‘delivering’ solutions, attending ‘meetings’ and ‘workshops’ and ‘conf calls.'”

Finally, we can’t ignore the awful things that American English is doing to the Chinese language. According to Jin Zhao, of the blog Things You Don’t Know about China, online Chinese have latched onto Oh my Lady Gaga!—a phrase from the TV series Ugly Betty and a variation on the globally ubiquitous Oh my God. (Now there’s a phrase I wish we could put a stop to.) And then there’s “Chinglish” like geilivable, a combination of the Mandarin gei li, meaning “give” and “strength,” and the English adjective ending able. The result means something like “cool” or “impressive.”

Chinese innovators have also created new words completely out of English, such as antizen (from ant and citizen) for “college graduates who share a small apartment with several roommates, working hard, yet making little money,” and smilence, meaning “smiling silently” to show mutual agreement.

Is the government of China taking this lying down? Of course not. Two years ago, China’s People’s Daily Online reported that the General Administration of Press and Publication had declared a ban in official publications on geilivable and other forms of “abuse of foreign languages, including arbitrary use of English words; acronym mixing in Mandarin and coined half-English, half-Chinese terms that are intelligible to nobody.” “All these have seriously damaged to [sic] the purity of the Chinese language,” says People’s Daily, “and resulted in adverse social impacts to the harmonious and healthy cultural environment.”

Maybe It’s Nothing to Be Gobsmacked About

So what are we to do? What is the world to do? Maybe we can learn from Alistair Cooke, who says, given time, it will all be OK. “The invasion of Americanisms into Britain is never a problem to any generation born after a particular invasion,” he asserts, “since they don’t know they were invaded, but only to the generation that can see the invaders offshore.”

So no worries. Carry on.

(Stuart Laycock, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To, History Press, 2012; Alistair Cooke, “Americanisms,” Letter from America, BBC Radio, February 24, 1984; Philippe Bertrand, “Franglais: How English is Ruining the French of the French,” Worldcrunch, July 21, 2012, translated from “Le Français, l’Anglais et Notre Crise d’Identité” Les Echos, July 19, 2012; Jin Zhao, “‘Oh My Lady Gaga! This Is So Geilivable!’: Chinglish Entering Globish?” Things You Don’t Know about China, June 4, 2011; Li Mu, “Authorities Ban Mixed English Words ‘Ungelivable’ in Publications,” People’s Daily Online, December 21, 2010)

Thanks to Chris Woolf, Clark Boyd, and Patrick Cox of PRI’s The World, whose stories pointed me towards much of the the source material above. Well played! I say. Well played!

[photo: “250th Fort Necessity,” by ryanophilly, used under a Creative Commons license]

Google and YouTube Are Racing Forward in Translation (but the Finish Line Is Staying Ahead)

As the online community continues to grow, more and more languages are coming online, and power players like Google and its subsidiary YouTube are speeding ahead to keep up. Here are some of the numbers that illustrate this:

  • “To reach 90% of the world’s internet users required at least 19 languages in 2009 and 2010. In 2012, marketers will need 21 languages to achieve that mark. To hit 95%, the number of languages required has jumped from 27 to 34. Finally, to reach 98%, the number rocketed from 37 to 48.”

(Benjamin Sargent, “ROI Lifts the Long Tail of Languages in 2012,” Common Sense Advisory, June 26, 2012)

  • Google Translate currently works between 64 languages.
  • Over 92% of its more than 200 million monthly users come from outside the US.
  • “In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you’d find in 1 million books.”

(Franz Och, “Breaking Down the Language Barrier—Six Years In,” Official Google Blog, April 26, 2012)

  • “Sixty percent of all video views on Google-owned YouTube come from users who select a language other than English as the site’s display language”

(Janko Roettgers, “Most Youtube Views Come from Non-English Users,” GigaOM, November 3, 2011)

And now YouTube has launched a new interface to help in translating its videos into over 300 languages. The first step is to upload a transcript or caption file. Then the next step is to use the translation feature in the YouTube Video Manager to create a translation or invite other online users to help out. For the 64 languages available using Google’s machine translation technology, YouTube will provide a “first draft” to jump start the process. The interface also allows for translation into the 300 plus languages available in the Google Translator Toolkit.

(Jeff Chin and Brad Ellis, “Build a Global Audience on YouTube by Translating Your Captions,” Creators: The Official YouTube Partners & Creators Blog, September 24, 2012)

Those of you who have used Google’s translator in the past will know that the first draft of the translation may be a good starting point, but it will probably need quite a bit of tweaking. If you’re really brave, you can start with YouTube’s automatic captioning, which currently creates onscreen captions for English and Spanish, generating the text from the audio. (Access this feature by clicking the “cc” button at the bottom of the video viewer.) Google admits that all of this is a work in progress, and it often produces humorous results. Take a look at the video below to see Rhett and Link use YouTube for a modern take on the telephone (or gossip) game:

If you do need to create multi-language subtitles for a video project, and you find limitations in YouTube’s approach, take a look at dotSUB and Amara for more options.

[photo: “Race Hard,” by velo_city, used under a Creative Commons license]