Men in wigs (and dogfights) - The hidden history of contemporary English
By Mark H. Teeter, The Moscow News

How does a language resolve its internal disputes? New Russian college students, bless their teenaged hearts, seem to think contemporary Russian emerged whole from the squabbling of 18th-century versifiers.

Yep, guys in wigs – Lomonosov, Sumarkov, Trediakovsky – got their knickers in a twist arguing over “high style” and “low style” variants, foreign influences and so on; but then Pushkin showed up (luckily), gathered all the linguistic threads lying around (plus some that weren’t) and weaved them seamlessly into Modern Russian, thus rendering further bickering pointless.

How nice. Too nice, in fact. This simple take on a linguistic conflict and its resolution is fine for grade school textbooks, but that’s about it.

Russian had a long and often bumpy ride before and after Alexander Sergeyevich worked his magic, and the language still features ample controversy today – which is adjudicated by the Academy of Sciences’ Russian Language Institute, on the official level, and more informally by an ever-expanding vox populi of radio shows and Internet bloggers, all ready to tell us who really speaks correct Russian – and how we should punish those who don’t (hey, it’s Russia).

Are English speakers any different?

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Can English overwhelm the world languages?
By MSN Menon, www.organizer.org

The demand today is not for a ban of the English language but for protection of native languages. Continuing use of English as a link language, however is an expression of the lack of a national spirit. It shows how our minds have been subverted by a slavish mentality.

Will the English language overwhelm other languages? No, unless of course they fail to grow. Can any language displace English to become the international language? No, English is too heavily entrenched to be uprooted. And the system and infrastructure it has developed over the centuries cannot be replicated.

There are 1200 standard languages in the world. But only a few have the potential to grow into any significant language. For example, Chinese, which is spoken by more than a billion people.

Next comes the claim of the English language with 500-600 million people. Next come Spanish, Arabic, Bengali and Hindi in that order. But while Chinese is spoken by the Han race alone, English is spoken by segments of almost all the racial groups of the world. And English is used by 2-2.5 billion peoples. With globalisation and information explosion, the use of the English language has grown astronomically.

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Schools must be braver with our children
By Toby Young, The Telegraph UK

When I think of some of the things I got up to as child, I shudder with horror. At the age of 12, for instance, I decided it would be fun to take a sailing boat out into the Atlantic. It was fun, too, until the boat capsized. Then there was the time, aged 14, that I “borrowed” the 400cc motorcycle belonging to my sister's boyfriend. As the needle of the speedometer passed 100 mph, I remember thinking that I should probably be wearing a helmet.

When Michael Gove called for a return to a “Dangerous Book for Boys” culture in England’s schools I don’t suppose he had joy-riding in mind. But these sorts of adventures undoubtedly proved valuable experiences on the road to maturity. According to the Education Secretary, risk-averse teachers and litigious parents have led to children being brought up in an over-protective environment. “We need to change our bubble-wrapped culture,” he said yesterday.

So is the Health and Safety Executive going to be added to the flames in the bonfire of the quangocrats? Unfortunately not. But Lord Young of Graffham has been asked to review health and safety legislation to see if it can be made less restrictive. One suggestion is that claimants in compensation cases would need to prove reckless endangerment instead of just negligence in order to receive a payout.

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Pinoy Kasi—Bisdak
By Michael Tan, Philippine Daily Inquirer

I was in Cebu last weekend and it was there where I realized how Cebuanos were really smarting about Gloria Diaz’s alleged anti-Cebuano remarks.

I certainly don’t want to add fuel to the fire, and I totally agree with Diaz’s claims that she was quoted out of context, but the whole controversy reflects how sensitive language issues can be. Remember all this was triggered by still another beauty queen, Venus Raj, using the words “major, major” when she was replying to a question in the pageant and how she was criticized for such “bad English.”

We Filipinos can be too critical of ourselves. I’ll dare say that in these beauty pageants lapses in English—whether in diction, grammar or syntax—may actually be seen as quaint, adding to the international flavor. Using an interpreter, too, would not necessarily be seen as demeaning; in fact, it could be an act of patriotism, a way of saying, as many contestants do, “Listen to me, in my own mother language.” The furor over “major, major” actually tells us about our lack of pride in our own languages, including Filipino English.

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A new crop of Palanca winners
By Butch Dalisay, The Philippine Star

For the first time in a long while, I failed to attend the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature ceremonies last Wednesday, for the most annoying of reasons—arthritis. I woke up last Tuesday with a throbbing pain in my right knee, something I’d never had before. A visit to the orthopedist later that day confirmed what I suspected: my age and weight were taking their toll on my bones. They bled out some fluid and injected cortisone into my knee to get me back on my feet, but I still felt too wobbly to go up the Palanca stage.

But never mind my medical travails. What made this year’s Palancas special was the fact that it was the 60th anniversary of this cultural institution, an event anyone who’s ever won a Palanca—and there should be several hundreds by now—would have wanted to be a part of. Some of us had earlier suggested that President Noynoy Aquino be invited as guest speaker to share his thoughts on Philippine art and culture—for which the event would have been the perfect occasion  but with his administration just settling in, the Palancas thought it more prudent but no less an honor to invite one of the true icons of Philippine literature, the fictionist and essayist Gregorio Brillantes.

I had other reasons to want to go: I chaired the board of judges for the short story in English, and the first-prize, first-time winner—a teacher from Cagayan de Oro named Elena Paulma—was a student of mine; her story “Three Kisses” was written in my graduate fiction class. Now, before your eyebrows hit the roof, listen to this (short) story.

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A celebration of evocation
By Alfred A. Yuson, The Philippine Star 

Greeting guests at the foyer of the Manila Pen’s Rigodon Ballroom at the 60th Palanca Awards Night was a special exhibit of photographs collected over six decades.
The round tables were made to fit a dozen instead of the usual 10 guests. The aisles became much narrower as more tables were set up at the Rigodon Ballroom of the Manila Peninsula Hotel, the customary venue for Palanca Awards Night. All with reason. On Sept. 1, 2010, the most prestigious literary contest in the country marked its 60th year.

Guest of honor was the eminent, elegantly silver-haired Greg Brillantes, who delivered a speech that would likely be discussed among literary circles, provocative as its thesis was: basically that there is no need to rule out any language that Filipino writers use as being only that of the “power elite.”

National Artist for Literature Frankie Sionil Jose listened intently, only deigning to directly address the speaker once when a technical glitch kept depriving him of the elite power of the microphone: “Ayaw sayo!”

We’re that kind of joshing family, anyway. Make that a community, as Sylvia Palanca-Quirino stressed in her own remarks.

“We have stood together for 60 years now. We have celebrated this awards night together since that first historic affair held on Sept. 1, 1951, when we initially honored the best among our writers…”

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The good and the bad
By Ramon J. Farolan, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Last month, the nation marked the arrival over a hundred years ago of a group of American educators who were sent in 1901 to establish a public school system in the Philippines. Known as the Thomasites, after the US transport ship USS Thomas, which brought them to the country, 530 teachers—365 men and 165 women—some with their families, signed up for a three-year commitment. Their salary was $125 per month, more than what they could earn in the United States. For some, it meant adventure in a distant and strange land.

The Thomasites contributed to the creation of the third-largest English-speaking nation in the world. They also brought about the idea that education was for all people and not just for the elite.

Some critics argue that the Thomasites, in introducing the English language, did more damage to the growth of a national language as a unifying force for the country. To this day, the debate on the use of English or Filipino as the language of instruction in schools continues, and a by-product of the ongoing discussions has been the development of a third form of communication known as Taglish.

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Are bookstores dead?
By Dennis Posadas, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Are bookstores dead? With the advent of cheap e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle ($139 with wifi) and cheaper versions available from China, and with the news that ebooks have overtaken paperbooks saleswise at Amazon.com, logically it becomes a question worth asking. Plus, looking at the way Apple iTunes and MP3 players laid waste to businesses like Tower Records, technology's role in demolishing entrenched businesses is worth looking at in this case.

But paper books do have their merits. First of all, they do not require electricity or batteries. If you drop them, they are shockproof. Also, the merits of reading metal typefaces on acid free paper, with nice artwork covers, in a comfortable library or bookstore with a cup of coffee at hand, is one of the cheap finer pleasures in life. On the other hand, if you are a medical or a law student and have to lug around several books, ebooks (if you like them) might be a useful alternative if the books you need are available in that format.

In the traditional book business, for a book that sells for around $10 (around P400), roughly 30-40% goes to the bookstore. Bookstores in a way do not really sell books; they sell consignment space in most cases, but in some cases (like Harry Potter) they do purchase the books…

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English for dummies
By Fabian Muir, The Sydney Morning Herald

Living abroad for more than a decade, I have observed with voyeuristic fascination the creeping bastardisation of the English language in Australia.

First, I watched as the word “'are”' died a slow, wretched death.

Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I was brought up to say, “'There are seven words in this sentence”, not “'There is seven words.”' Yet this blunder has even been adopted by all forms of media, supposed custodians of the language.

Next against the wall were “me” and “I”. No one seems to know the difference any more. My flesh crawls each time I hear “between you and I'”, a mistake so patent as to be insulting.

“'Me”' has been deprived of its once proud standing, while “I” enjoys the untrammelled right of way of a presidential motorcade. Oh woe is me.

Most recently, I have been left dumbfounded by the unstoppable rise of what I call the stillborn simile. For example, “Geez, it’s hot as.”

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What language will you curse in when China rules the world?
By Venkatesan Vembu, DNAIndia

A new dictionary, out from Oxford University Press, incorporates some very earthy Chinese slang expressions and new words, including some that you can’t invoke without having to rinse your mouth out with soap. (Now, you’re dying to know what they are, aren't you?)

Although these street-talk words (among other more socially acceptable words) only made it to the parallel universe of the Oxford English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary—not the more definitive Oxford English Dictionary—it has set off a frisson of etymological excitement among folks in China. Some see it as the beginning of a lexicographic lead-in to a world that will, progressively, speak Chinese—and in countless other ways be ‘Sinified’ by Chinese soft-power influences.

It’s hard, of course, to make a linear connection between a few cuss words making it to a Chinese-English dictionary, and definitive prophesies that ‘China will rule the world’.

After all, mainstream English language (and even the OED) has incorporated many words with roots in Indian languages—“juggernaut,” “catamaran,” “mulligatawny” and “jugaad” (among others) — but we Indians don’t exactly have the world in our pockets. And although the British have also hungrily appropriated our curry as their ‘national dish’, we don’t really have the world eating out of our hands.

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English language teachers connect to mobile learning
By Nik Peachey, Guardian Weekly

Apple’s iPhone has caused a revolution in the way we interact with mobile phones and access the internet. With early sales of the new iPad breaking records, and many pundits predicting that this will be the educational mobile device to transform the classroom and make e-textbooks accessible to students (who can afford an iPad), I decided to have a look at how mobile devices are impacting on the practice of English language teaching.

In June I launched an online survey to discover how teachers viewed the use of mobile learning, how many of them had access to web-enabled mobiles and to find out if and how they were using them.

My first surprise was the number of teachers who could already access the internet via their mobile phones. Almost 80% of the 500 teachers who responded to the survey claimed to have some form of web-enabled mobile device. When asked whether teachers planned to buy a mobile device in the near future, almost 60% responded positively, with 50% planning to buy either an iPhone or an iPad.

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“Patronizing” use of English language by Baltimore Sun confuses readership

Joel Meares at the Columbia Journalism Review tips readers off to the incredibly true story of that time the Baltimore Sun used a word in a headline that completely perplexed its readership. The headline in question was "Opposing votes limn difference in race." And now, when you put that into Google, all the top results refer to the confusion that the word “limn” caused the city of Baltimore.

“I had to keep looking at it again and again,” complained Carol N. Shaw, one of a number of readers who contacted The Sun. “I consider myself an educated person. I graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland, College Park some years ago with a degree in international relations/economics. I have never heard of the word ‘limn.’ To put a word like ‘limn’ in the headline for the lead article on the front page of this newspaper seems to me to be unbelievably arrogant and patronizing.”

Really? “Arrogant and patronizing?” That basically opens the door for this University of Virginia-educated dick to point out that there are five words in the above that pretty much explain what went wrong.

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Obama and the English language
By Stuart Whatley, Huffington Post

In his compendium on the life and works of Charles Dickens, George Orwell paints his literary forebearer as not so much a revolutionary in the traditional, head-rolling sense, but as more or less a revolutionary all the same. Dickens found fodder for criticism at all levels of the inequitable society from whence he hailed, but as Orwell writes, “there is no clear sign that he want[ed] the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believe[d] it would make much difference if it were overthrown.” Nevertheless, he concludes that, “it is not at all certain that a merely moral criticism of society may not be just as ‘revolutionary’.”

Two years ago millions of voters saw in Barack Obama their own contemporary Charles Dickens—a “revolutionary” who arose from within the same system he would condemn and reform, but keep intact. Candidate Obama spoke of the immorality of deep inequality and want, and of justice through opportunity. He successfully tapped into the inherent decency and good faith political leadership one expects any advanced society to not take for granted—and he furnished a slew of sophisticated policy proposals to fix the dysfunctional areas of a system where that is precisely what was happening.

Unfortunately, that sophistication has been undermined by sophistry, the most recent and glaring example of which comes this week from top Republicans who equate a non-extension of tax cuts for the very wealthiest with “class warfare.”

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Tips for learning English as a second language
By Suzanne Rose, Helium.com

Those who know English might not realize that it is one of the more challenging languages to learn. There are tips that can increase your chances of success of this lofty goal.

Study as much as possible

If you only study for an hour a week, you are unlikely to ever be successful at learning English as a second language.  Learning a language is very difficult and there are many words, grammar rules, etc. to be learned.  Of course it is helpful if you speak a language that has some similarities such as Spanish, but there is still much to remember.  You should try to study every day if possible, and as many hours as you can.

Use a variety of techniques

There are many ways to learn English. In many areas of the United States they have free classes through community schools. Take advantage of these. You will also find many computer programs that you can use. You will find free information on the Internet. They make a variety of books. You can get language listening tapes. Try helpful techniques like making flash cards with a word in English on one side and the word in your language on the other to test yourself.  Try all of these different ways to give you a comprehensive education.

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Japanese students and politeness
By Mike Guest, The Daily Yomiuri

Leave it up to academics to take something that should be simple and make a long, complicated theory out of it. Politeness, for example. Your mother taught you about being polite, right? Something like: Treat others the way you’d like to be treated, show kindness and respect to others, don't make trouble.

But Mom’s advice wasn't enough for linguists Stephen Levinson and Penelope Brown. In 1987, they produced the seminal work on politeness theory, a 364-page tome titled, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage.

It is always dangerous to summarize a lengthy work in just a few sentences, but then again you do read this column for the danger, right? So, here goes: Brown and Levinson are not concerned about prescriptions for being polite but rather a linguistic description as to what constitutes politeness. And not only for English speakers but, as the title implies, for all languages.

Their focus is largely upon face-threatening speech acts. These FTA’s (to use the common abbreviation) form the core of the theory. The basic notion is that under normal circumstances people try to behave (and speak) in a manner that preserves both their own face and the face of others. (No, face is not just an Asian concept.)

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Don’t blame JET for Japan’s poor English
By Debito Arudou, Japan Times

The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, touted as the world’s largest cultural exchange scheme, has brought thousands of non-Japanese into the country to teach at local boards of education. These days, with many government programs being told to justify their existence, a debate is raging over whether JET should be left as is, cut or abolished entirely.

Essentially, the two main camps argue: (a) keep JET, because it gives outback schools more contact with “foreign culture” (moreover, it gives Japan a means of projecting “soft power” abroad); versus (b) cut or abolish JET — it’s wasteful, bringing over generally untrained and sometimes unprofessional kids, and offers no measurable benefit (see Japan’s bottom-feeding TOEFL test scores in Asia).

The debate, however, needs to consider: (1) JET’s misconstrued mandate, and (2) Japan’s psychotic—yes, psychotic—system of language teaching.

First, when critics point to Japan’s bad English, bear in mind that ESL (English as a Second Language) instruction was not JET’s foremost aim.

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How far do we push the language envelope?
By Hau Boon Lai, The Star.my

To describe or to prescribe, that is the question linguists and users have to face when dealing with language.

Have you ever felt like you are the only one left in the world who thinks the phrasal verb “impact on” should not be used? Do you cringe each time you hear someone say: “this action impacts (on) the bottom line negatively” instead of “this action has a negative impact on the bottom line”?

If so, welcome to the club of English language users on the more prescriptive side fighting a losing battle against the more descriptive users who believe that it is the job of linguists to document the language and not to dictate what people say or write in a language.

In other words, if large numbers of people began to use “impact on” as a phrasal verb frequently enough, descriptive linguists will include the meaning of the verb impact as “having a strong effect” in the dictionary, acknowledging that common usage is the rule of thumb.

This is on top of the usual meanings of the word as a verb of “coming into forcible contact with another object”, as in “the shell impacted only metres away from him”, and of “pressing something firmly”, as in “human feet impact and damage the soil less than the hooves of horses and cows do”.

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Linguist says Setswana language is a unifying force

Mmegi staffer EPHRAIM KEORENG sat down with UB don Dr Thapelo Otlogetswe and found out the linguist’s passion for Setswana and new found love for politics.

Mmegi: Where are you from?
Otlogetswe: I am from Ruele Kgotla in Kanye.
Mmegi: Are you married?
Otlogetswe: Yes, with two boys, Lebopo and Popo.
Mmegi: What religion do you subscribe to?
Otlogetswe: I am a Christian and worship at Pentecostal Holiness Church.
Mmegi: How did you become a linguist?
Otlogetswe: I was fascinated by language way back at Seepapitso Secondary School whilst I was a student where we had essay competitions. That is what built an excellent foundation for me for language. I went to the University of Botswana and did English, French and African Language and Linguistics (ALL) and graduated as a single major in English.
Mmegi: So how was your time at UB?
Otlogetswe: It was the place where I read the finest works of English language and literature. Literature exposed me to commentary on social issues like politics, gender, cultural conflicts and a lot more.

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