Category Archives: Language

The Mellow Sounds and Romantic Mood of the French Subjunctive

19 Tuesday Mar 2013

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From the Atlantic:  To help with understanding the subjunctive, my French instructor has started giving me these “Subjonctif ou Indicatif” quizzes. The subjunctive is the terror of French students. You can go through any of my French posts and find people generally lamenting their ability to master the subjunctive. Part of the problem is that the subjunctive mood very much seems like a “mood.” In other words, as much as it carries literal information, it seems like the subjunctive also emotes. Likely other moods also emote information (hence the point in calling them moods)

As someone who began his career in poetry, and is constantly telling his kids that language must carry both emotional and literal information, I love the subjunctive. It’s like this dark, mysterious, achingly beautiful stranger. Which is different from saying I’ve mastered or I totally understand it. Mastery isn’t the point. This is language study and study–in and of itself–is rewarding.  Continuez.

Mon Dieu! A ‘Hashtag’ Is Now A ‘Mot-Dièse’ In France

28 Monday Jan 2013

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From NPR:  The agency charged with finding French alternatives to foreign-language terms has put an end to the word “hashtag” in France.

From now on, reports Fast Company, the Générale de Terminologie et de Néologie has decided “mot-dièse” (that’s MO-dee-YEZ for those of you who are not Francophiles) is the new hashtag.

Read the full piece here.

Speaking More Than One Language Could Prevent Alzheimer’s

14 Monday Jan 2013

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From NPR: Not so long ago bilingualism was thought to be bad for your brain. But it looks more and more like speaking more than one language could help save you from Alzheimer’s disease.

The latest evidence from the bilingualism-is-good-for-you crew comes from Brian Gold, a neuroscientist at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine in Lexington. To test the idea, he had older people who grew up bilingual do an attention-switching task, a skill that typically fades with age. Earlier research has found that people bilingual since childhood are better at the high-order thinking called executive function as they age.

Gold found that his bilingual seniors were better at the task, which had them quickly sorting colors and shapes, than their monolingual peers. He then added an extra dimension by sticking the people’s heads in scanners to see what was happening inside their brains. The brains of the monolingual seniors were working harder to complete the task, while the bilingual seniors’ brains were much more efficient, more like those of young adults.  Continue here.

Must Dogs in Montreal Be Blilingual?

17 Monday Dec 2012

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From the CBC: A fictitious story about a controversial Montreal bylaw proposal requiring dogs to be comfortable in the country’s two official languages has rippled through the realms of social media and fooled even some seasoned news sites.

The story, a deadpan parody crafted by CBC Radio’s This is That, went viral this week after the show posted a segment on its website about the “untenable chaos” that was rife in Montreal dog parks because some animals were receiving commands in French and others in English.

An interview featured a man with a French accent posing as a councillor and answering the host’s questions

The show’s website included a quote from a phoney Montreal city councillor, Benoit LaDouce.

“Dog parks in our city are chaotic and communication is at the heart of the conflict,” the fake city official is quoted as saying.  Continuez.

Au Revoir aux Devoirs

17 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Culture, Language, Politics, Students

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From the New Yorker:  Here is something you probably didn’t know about France: its President has the power to abolish homework. In a recent speech at the Sorbonne, François Hollande announced his intention to do this for all primary- and middle-school students. He wants to reform French education in other ways, too: by shortening the school day and diverting more resources to schools in disadvantaged areas. France ranked twenty-fifth in a new evaluation of educational systems by the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of the company that publishes The Economist). To give you an idea how bad that is, the United States, whose citizens are accustomed to being told how poorly educated they are, ranked seventeenth.  Continuez.

The (Foreign) Language of American Politics

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

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From the Chronicle: If you really want to attack your opponents these days, you are best off doing so in another language. When the editors of the religious conservative magazine First Things determined in 1997 that the left-wing activism of the U.S. Supreme Court had made the American government illegitimate, they characterized it as a regime, or, should I say, a régime. In choosing a French word, they suggested that the American experiment in self-government had come to an end. We can talk about a political “system” without raising eyebrows. Régime, by contrast, as in ancien régime, connotes a preliberal, European society characterized not only by arbitrary rule but also by a corrupt aristocracy unworthy of holding on to its unearned privileges.

Do foreign words express our politics better than English?  Read this.

Pushing Science’s Limits in Sign Language Lexicon

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

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Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

How does a language generate new terms?  Expressing scientific terms through sign language has long been difficult, but the Internet and online videos are helping to broaden the available vocabulary.

Continue here.

«Watture», mot nouveau de l’année 2012

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

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From Liberation: «Une watture» is the new French term for an electric car.  (Think watt + voiture.)  Some other recent additions to the French language include «humanicide», «chaudard», «ordinosaure», «aimeuse», and «phonard».  What’s going on?  As Victor Hugo noted, a language cannot survive if it doesn’t invent new words.”  Continuez.

Quebec Irks Retailers over Language Laws

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

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From the NYT: Quebec’s stringent language laws, passed in 1977, have long meant that regardless of the name out front, all large retailers serve customers in French and post signs that are predominantly, or entirely, in French along their aisles.

Now, after decades of permitting a plethora of English-language trade names on signs, the government agency responsible for enforcing language laws has changed its mind.

Its efforts, accompanied by threats of legal action and fines, to add French phrases and slogans to those trade names prompted six major U.S. retailers to take the province to court last month.  Continuez.

Learning A Language Makes The Brain Bigger

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

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By peering into students’ brains, a recent study, published in the journal NeuroImage, found that learning languages can help bulk up the brain.

The researchers, from Lund University, compared the brains of students from the Swedish Armed Forces Interpreter Academy, who become fluent in languages within 13 months, to science students at Umeå University, who also study hard.

They took MRI scans before and after a three-month period of studying for these two groups of students. The brains of the science students did not change or grow but the brains of the language students experienced growth in areas of their cerebral cortex, which is related to language, and in their hippocampus, which is involved in learning new things.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/language-learning-makes-for-bigger-brains-2012-10#ixzz29TtFHAhU