Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘language’

26
May

Language of the Week: Samoan

To celebrate Samoan Language Week which runs from 24th May to 1st June this year, here are ten facts about this beautiful language and nation, which many of us know very little about.

If you fancy giving it a try, you can now start learning Samoan for free with uTalk. And for this week only, we’ve reduced the price of the Essentials and Premium upgrades to £2.99 and £6.99 (usually £7.99 and £11.99).

 


10 Facts about Samoan

  1. Samoan is a member of the Polynesian language family, one of the oldest branches still in existence today.
  2. It’s the official language of Samoa, where it has approximately 200,000 native speakers.
  3. It’s also spoken in New Zealand, where it’s the third most-spoken language, after English and Māori.
  4. The Samoan language is written using a Latin-based alphabet.
  5. Samoan’s alphabet has just 14 letters: 5 vowels and 9 consonants. 3 more consonants – H, K and R – are used in loan words from other languages.
  6. The Samoan flag’s upper left quarter is blue and has five white, five-rayed stars representing the Southern Cross. The rest of the flag is red.
  7. Samoa consists of seven islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The two main islands are Savai’i and Upolu.
  8. It takes 20 hours to fly to Samoa from London.
  9. Lu’au is a traditional Samoan dish, consisting of coconut cream, onions and taro, wrapped in taro leaves and then cooked.
  10. Samoans are known throughout Polynesia as ‘happy people’.

5 Samoan proverbs

The Samoan language is full of proverbs and idioms; here are five of our favourites:

E pala le maʻa, a e le pala le upu

Translation: Even stones decay, but words endure.

A reminder of the damage that hurtful words can do.

E pala le maʻa, a e le pala le upu (Samoan proverb)

Ia malu le vai i lou finagalo

Translation: May your mind be like cool water.

This phrase is used to ask someone for forgiveness if you’ve offended them.

Ia Malu Le Vai I Lou Finagalo (Samoan proverb)

Se’i fono le pa’a ma ona vae

Translation: Let the crab take counsel with its legs.

This proverb advises us to think things through before we take action.

Se'i fono le pa'a ma ona vae (Samoan proverb)

Amuia le masina, e alu ma toe sau

Translation: Fortunate is the moon, to go and then return.TranslationHumans only get one life, unlike the moon; so we should make the most of it.

Humans only get one life, unlike the moon; so we should make the most of it.

Amuia le masina, e alu ma toe sau. (Samoan proverb)

Ua ‘afa le aso

Translation: A day for plaiting ‘afa.

A rainy day. ‘Afa is a plaited rope made from dried coconut fibres, and used in architecture and boat building.

 

Ua 'afa le aso (Samoan proverb)

We’ll be sharing more fun facts about Samoan as the week goes on…

19
May

How do you learn a language? (Win an iPad mini!)

The survey and giveaway have now closed. Thank you to everyone who took part!

 

Language learners! We need your help. We want to know the different method(s) that you use whilst learning a language to accomplish your goals. This will enable us to improve and adapt to what you want.

The survey only takes approximately five minutes depending on how much you want to tell us (we are hoping lots). To say thank you for taking up your precious time, we’ll enter you into a prize draw to win an iPad mini, pre-installed with our app, uTalk, in the language of your choice.  There are several different ways to enter, the more you do the greater your chance of winning the iPad mini.

Thanks for your time 🙂

And please share the link with friends and colleagues too – thank you!

Start EuroTalk language learning survey

 

The giveaway ends at midnight on June 17th 2015 (UK time), and is open worldwide to anyone aged 18 or older. The winner will be selected at random and notified by EuroTalk within 48 hours of the closing date.

 

 

15
May

A Hungry Conundrum

Learning a language is one thing… but what happens when that language changes depending where in the country you happen to be standing? That’s the subject of today’s blog post from Kelly – if you’ve encountered any of these regional confusions, we’d love to hear about them!

When is a roll a cake?

Before you break out your finest John Shuttleworth impression in fear of pudding before main, there is actually a very good answer to this.

Because unless you’ve never ventured further than your local shops and the thought of travelling to the next borough, town or neighbourhood fills you with a sense of dread, you’ve probably noticed that local words for things vary.

We don’t necessarily mean profound things like finding yourself receiving a chocolate biscuit when you asked for a custard cream (no complaint there really but still, confusing), but honestly, there is a minefield of potential outrage and disappointment out there if you’re not sure what you’re asking for.

Be careful where you ask for a ride, for example.

Back to our conundrum.

Escaping the Smoke

Sandwich or breadcake?When I left that there London many years ago from the pigeon-infested Victoria Coach Station on a one-way journey to Yorkshire, I’m pretty sure in my possession was a copy of Kerrang, a selection of confectionary, and a bread roll containing cheese and pickle.

Somewhere along the M1 that innocent-sounding sandwich was eaten, but had it remained intact, a magical thing would have happened to it. For on the journey North, it would have transformed from a roll, to a batch, to a cob, perhaps to a scuffler (I forget the exact National Express route…) before finally settling on being a breadcake.

In Britain, even wheat-based products have identity crises.

How do you say…

English is a diverse language for both native and non-native speakers alike, but think how much more embarrassing it is for a native speaker not being able to order something in their own country in their own tongue. We normally reserve such ridicule for when we travel abroad unprepared, in the arrogant but not-so-naive knowledge that English is spoken everywhere. But on our own doorstep, a quick weekend away can mean an unwanted education in local colloquial vocabulary.

Perhaps it would be easier to stick to the tourist move of pointing at the menu and blinking mutely.

Tuna and sweetcorn with your tea?Another area of confusion could be the names for mealtimes. There is a fond memory of a misunderstanding over tea and dinner time. An offer of tea to a friend was met with an expectation of milk, sugar, and possibly biscuits, but when the option presented was tuna and sweetcorn, it was rapidly declined. With a horrified expression that said, ‘who are you people? What are you doing to the sanctity of the cup of tea???’, a friendship was on the brink. Because breakfast, lunch and dinner can also be breakfast, dinner and tea, depending where you are in our humble isle. (The tuna and sweetcorn was for a jacket potato, in case you were wondering).

And another thing…!

While we’re on our home-away-from-home soapbox, can we take this opportunity to complain about the options available for a ‘pattie’ in your local fish and chip shop? Because again, depending on where you go, this could be fish, potato, fish and potato, potato in a mixture resembling bubble and squeak… There are probably more variations too, and one place we really don’t want to be confused is our chippy. Next you’ll be debating if the perfect side is mushy peas, curry sauce or gravy, and it’s all too delicate a subject for us to deal with without serious, in depth thought. To quote Hot Pie, “you cannot give up on the gravy.”

See? Now look what’s happened. We’re hungry and we want pie. But when is a pie not a pie?

That’s it. Time for a pub lunch.

Wetherspoons, anyone?

Kelly

 

30
Mar

3 surprising facts about the relationship between language and music

It’s often said that music is the “universal language of mankind”. Indeed, like language, music has great expressive power, and manages to convey a vast array of sentiments and emotions, even without the use of words. But just how connected are language and music? Research suggests that the relationship between the two may be even stronger than it appears at first glance. Let’s take a look at some of the surprising ways in which language and music are connected.

Music and language have more in common than you might think.

You’re not likely to confuse Beethoven’s Fifth for Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address, but music and language have more in common than you might think. Image via Derek Gleeson / Wikipedia

1. They share the same basic building blocks

Even on a very basic level, music and language are similar in that both are compositional. This means they are made of small parts that combine to create something larger and more meaningful; in other words, their whole is greater than the sum of their parts.

For example, languages consist of individual words that combine in meaningful ways to create sentences. In isolation, the words “I”, “you”, and “love” don’t mean much — but when combined into a sentence, “I love you”, suddenly they carry great importance.

Similarly, music — at its most basic level — consists of individual notes. Like words, these aren’t particularly meaningful by themselves: hearing an E flat in isolation likely won’t stir up any serious emotions. But when you combine the E flat with a C and a G, you have a C minor chord: something meaningful has been formed.

2. They involve the same areas of the brain

For decades, scientists have isolated specific brain regions that are responsible for the comprehension and production of language. One of the more notable regions is Broca’s area, which is located in the left-hemisphere frontal lobe and plays a crucial role in language comprehension and production. Specifically, Broca’s area seems to be responsible for our ability to use syntax —the structural rules that languages have so that sentences make sense.

Recent studies have also found that Broca’s area is crucial in the comprehension and analysis of music. Indeed, brain scans have found increased neural activity in Broca’s area when subjects heard and interpreted both speech and music. Further, research shows that, compared to non-musicians, musicians have a greater volume of grey matter in Broca’s area, suggesting that Broca’s area may be responsible for both speech and music.

3. Musical training can improve language skills

music and language

Image via Montserrat Labiaga Ferrer / flickr

In 2011, developmental psychologists from Justus-Liebig University in Germany conducted a study to examine the relationship between the development of music skills and language skills. To do this, they separated pre-schoolers into two groups, one of which received daily music lessons at school.

Later, they measured the pre-schoolers’ phonological awareness, which refers to their general ability to use and manipulate language. For example, children with good phonological awareness can recognize when words rhyme, can successfully identify individual sounds within words, and can blend together individual sounds to create words. Early phonological awareness has been shown to be a predictor of enhanced reading skills later in life.

The study found that the children who received daily music lessons ended up with higher levels of phonological awareness than those who did not. This suggests that the development of music skills and language skills go hand in hand, which makes sense if music and language are served by the same underlying brain areas.

As you can see, there are more parallels between language and music than meet the eye! On both a descriptive and neural level, language and music have a lot in common. As language learners, you can take advantage of this relationship by incorporating foreign-language music into your daily language-learning routine. In addition to providing you with great music to listen to, you’ll be exercising the same part of your brain that’s responsible for language skills.

Do you listen to music in your target language? What are some of your favorite foreign-language songs? Let us know — leave a comment!

Paul writes on behalf of Language Trainers, a language tutoring service that offers German classes in Dublin, as well as courses for other languages all throughout the world. You can check out their free foreign-language level tests and other language-learning resources on their website. Visit their Facebook page or contact paul@languagetrainers.com if you have any questions or if you’d like more information.

 

24
Feb

So you want to learn Spanish?

Starting to learn Spanish has been an amazing journey. So far, the language and the people are really interesting, and it’s nice to know that a large population of Americans can speak the language. After long hours of practice, I am sitting here writing a post, while listening to my favorite Spanish rap songs.

Spanish class helped me in some ways and has hurt my interest in others. This was due to the grammar, and also we weren’t actually speaking. As much as I love doing grammar workbooks and vocabulary quizzes, I was more interested in sounding like Don Juan seducing girls.

Why you should learn SpanishSpanish is a great language and it has so many benefits, the first being that by speaking the language you can talk to a much larger portion of the world. Spain, Colombia, and Buenos Aires are filled with a lot of activities and people to talk to. Something that most people might not know is that, by speaking Spanish, you can also talk to older generation Filipinos and people from Israel, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. On top of this, after Spanish, Portuguese can be acquired with half of the work already done.

I love the pronunciation for Spanish. You can be fairly understood without going through the work that a French student would go through. Of course, the hardest thing is rolling your ‘r’s, but don’t worry. It isn’t too serious and Spanish speakers can understand you without it. The pronunciation won’t take very long to master compared to other languages. That’s one of the benefits of Spanish.

After pronunciation comes vocabulary. This is easier than other languages due to the similarity of Spanish and English. We have a lot of cognates, like la sofa becomes ‘sofa’, or los pantalones becomes ‘pants’.

Spanish grammar isn’t really that bad, people make it seem a lot harder than it is. I’ve heard that Arabic, Hungarian, and Latin have intense grammar that makes Spanish look easy. That’s because Spanish is so similar to English. It only has a couple of additions, and most of the sentences can translate back to English and still sound comprehensible. One hard step is learning how to conjugate verbs. Past, Present, Future, Conditional, Imperfect, and the dreaded Subjunctive. All verbs have different forms that you must learn, but thankfully, most follow the same pattern. In a sense, it’s just more vocabulary disguised as grammar.

The hardest rule is differentiating between Subjunctive and Indicative forms. For example it stresses the ability to know the difference between the following sentences: We always eat after the class ends, and We are going to eat after the class ends. In Spanish, those sentences are different and it is up to you to memorize the difference along with the verb conjugations. Fun, right? Well it actually isn’t that hard. It just takes time to get the hang of it.

Spanish is an easy language for English speakers, however there is one harsh reality. Learning a language isn’t easy. It takes hours of work and practice, and sometimes we overestimate how hard it actually is. We create excuses for not learning the language. That is why it is important that you have the right motivation for learning a language. Knowing about the steps above will give you a heads up for Spanish, but if you don’t have the right motivation, you will set yourself up for failure. I have faith in your language learning experience. Use it wisely, young Padawan.

Ray Jones

Read more from Ray on his blog at themodernlingo.com.

Want to join the EuroTalk blogging team? We’re always keen to hear from language enthusiasts with something to share. Email liz@eurotalk.com for details.