When it comes to protecting threatened languages, technology can be a double-edged sword. It can serve to discourage young people from speaking the language of their parents and grandparents, or it can provide tools to help them learn it and space for them to practice it.

Here’s one especially sweet example of how technology can help preserve indigenous languages: an Inuit father named Qajaaq Ellsworth is in the process of developing a video game for young children ages three to seven, the same age range as his little girl. The video game, called Ilinniarnaqsivuq (Time for School), has two goals. The first is to help children get a head start on school by teaching them about colours, numbers, animals, weather and how to navigate the classroom setting.  The second is to help children practice these concepts in three languages: English and the Inuit dialects of  Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun.

Ellsworth told the Vancouver Sun that the idea was inspired by his daughter’s love for gadgets, saying “I have a daughter who is almost four years old, who is very comfortable with technology. She likes to play with our iPad, but there’s not much access to Inuktitut-language material.”

When Ellsworth’s game is complete, probably by April of this year, that will change for the better.

While these two dialects are used as the language of instruction in some Inuit school districts in Canada, the game is being developed for home use at the moment. Eventually, Ellsworth told the newspaper that he would like to create a classroom version as well.

When it comes to preserving Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun, video games like this make sense because they are aimed at very young children, helping them gain skills at an early age. By focusing on commonplace topics like school and the weather, the game also teaches kids how to use these languages in their everyday lives.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Father Builds Inuit Video Game

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If you’re trying to preserve an endangered language, technology can be both your best friend and your worst enemy. More and more frequently, however, technology has become an ally in the quest to keep indigenous languages alive. Apps and computer programs have been developed to bring these previously left-behind languages into the digital age. That makes it easier and more practical for people to keep using them.

Indigenous Language Institute executive director Inée Slaughter explained this sea change to the New York Times:

“For a long time, technology was the enemy.  Even in 1999 or 2000, people were saying technology killed their language. Community elders worried about it. As television came into homes, English became pervasive 24/7. Mainstream culture infiltrated, and young kids want to be like that. It was a huge, huge problem, and it’s still there. But now we know ways technology can be helpful.”

Young people are naturally attracted to technology, and nobody wants to be left out of the latest digital advances. However, technology has become accessible enough and easy enough to use that people can bring their languages online themselves- – and that has made all the difference in the world.

In fact, linguistics professor K. David Harrison told the New York Times that “We are getting languages where the first writing is not the translation of the Bible — as it has often happened — but text messages.”

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of that type of grass-roots effort in keeping a language alive.  However, challenges still remain, particularly challenges related to hardware. For example, while it’s relatively easy to create a new keyboard for a touchscreen phone, not everyone can afford that technology. Convincing manufacturers to build a new physical keyboard for an under-served market is considerably more difficult.

Advocates for N’Ko, an alphabet used to write the Mande family of languages, have been trying to get a simple cell phone that uses N’Ko produced. However, because it’s a niche market, none of the manufacturers have been willing to take on the project. N’Ko speaker Lamine Dabo explained that “Everyone says it’s possible, but the money is not enough for them to make it a priority.” Hopefully, that will change.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Texting in Endangered Languages

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Now  more than ever, it seems like constructed languages have really taken off. Tolkein got the ball rolling with his elvish languages, Sindarin and Quenya, and Klingon has been showing up in some of the strangest places imaginable. Now, the success of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series has fans trying to pick up another fantasy language: Dothraki.

The show is based on author George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. Most of the characters speak English. Not the Dothraki, though- their culture seems to have been modelled after  the Genghis Khan-era Mongols. In the text, there are just enough Dothraki words thrown in to make the scenes feel exotic.

For the TV series, HBO wanted a fully-formed language. So, they hired linguist David Peterson to create one. The Dothraki characters speak in Dothraki, and there are English subtitles.

In a New York Times article, Paul R. Frommer,  the linguist who created Nav’i, declared that “The days of aliens spouting gibberish with no grammatical structure are over.” So we can expect more of these constructed languages in the future, no doubt. The New York Times says that this is due to a “a desire in Hollywood to infuse fantasy and science-fiction movies, television series and video games with a sense of believability,” but it probably goes a little bit deeper than that.

After all, science fiction and fantasy are aimed squarely at geeks. One defining characteristic of a geek is that they love to completely immerse themselves in the things that interest them, whether it be a series of books, a video game or the inner workings of computers. Learning a constructed language gives fans something to fixate on after they’ve memorized and analysed the novels, and keeps them interested while they wait for the next season of the show.  It’s quite simply good business!

Want to learn Dothraki? Here are some helpful resources:

Dothraki.org – The unofficial fan site for the Dothraki language.

Dothraki.com – David Peterson’s blog.

Dothraki 101 – Basic information and translations from the Game of Thrones blog.

Dothraki Forum on Westeros.org – A great place to practice your Dothraki.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Speaking Dothraki

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Visitors to South Korea, take note. The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) has set a bounty on the awkward, low-quality translations known as “Engrish.” These malapropisms are a prime source of amusement for tourists abroad in Asian countries (see The Top 10 Asian English Translation Failures for examples), but locals are generally somewhat embarrassed by their existence. Plus, when you’re a tourist trying to navigate a foreign country, mistranslations don’t help.

It’s understandable, then, that the KTO would make it a priority to improve the quality of translations available to tourists. What’s interesting is the way in which they are going about it. As CNNGo reports, from now until December 14^th, you can go to the Visit Korea website and submit pictures of translation mistakes from any tourist site in South Korea. When you do, you’ll be entered to win the Korean equivalent of a $45 gift card, accepted anywhere credit cards are taken.

However, there is one important caveat: since the KTO doesn’t have any authority over roads or restaurants, they aren’t accepting pictures of poorly translated road signs or menus.  However, they will pay to fix signs at tourist spots that contestants highlight during the contest.

Also, while the contest is open to everyone, you’ll probably need at least a working knowledge of Korean to get through the application process. There is no English translation provided for the event home page or the entry form, and Google Translate seems to be unable to process it.

Even if you don’t plan to enter the contest, if you’re in Asia and you spot one of these humorous word salads, go ahead and snap a picture of it. The world is getting smaller every day. Sooner or later, “Engrish” will become increasingly rare as people are able to access better translations – and that will be a mixed blessing, indeed!

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | A Bounty on Engrish

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The Ojibwe language is the fourth most common Native American language spoken in North America, with a total of approximately 56.531 speakers in the US and Canada. Even so, like most native languages, it is in some danger of dying out as most of the speakers are elderly.

However, steps are being taken to preserve the language. One effort, which is being led by University of Minnesota Duluth education professor Mary Hermes, involves creating a series of videos showing Ojibwe being used in casual, everyday situations, as it will have to be spoken if it is to survive and thrive in the future.

Speaking to Mother Nature Network, Hermes explained:

“What we are hoping is that you hear it in an everyday way, [with phrases like] ‘tie your shoes,’ ‘get up,’ ‘hey mom what’s for breakfast,’ — that kind of informal speaking … that’s not necessarily correct formal grammar, but the way you would speak it.”

The videos are made by native Ojibwe speakers like Ruby Boshey. Boshey is not only a native speaker, she is also old enough to remember the effort US authorities put into their attempts to destroy the language She told MNN:

“When I was five years old, the priests came and picked us up from my reservation on Lac La Croix, Ontario. I’d never heard an English word before then, and they dumped me in a residential school,” she recalls.

“The scariest part that I remember was they were telling my brother that I was supposed to ‘talk English’,” says Boshey.

But to the small girl, the words “talk English” sounded something like the word for “wolf” in Ojibwe.

“And I was thinking, oh, my, God. They want to feed me to the wolves now because I’m not speaking their language!” she says.

Fortunately, Ms. Boshey held onto the memories of the language, practising it in her head even though she wasn’t able to speak it out loud. Now, the tide has turned, and Ojibwe people of all ages are trying to recover the language. Professor Hermes’ multimedia efforts, made possible by elders like Ms. Boshey, are an excellent way to help spread knowledge of the language to those who want to learn.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Ojibwe Language Into Modern Day

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New parents are bombarded by well-meaning advice about how their parenting techniques could affect their child’s developing brain. A lot of this advice is exaggerated, like the potential benefits of showing your tots “Baby Einstein” videos. However, there’s a scientific consensus that infancy and early childhood is the best time to become bilingual, and that early exposure to two languages can have lasting, generally positive effects on cognition.

But why is it that? Scientists are just beginning to understand how bilingualism affects brain development in infants, and a new study from the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences adds another piece to the puzzle.

Basically, switching back and forth between two languages is like mental gymnastics for your child, building the cognitive equivalent of both strength and flexibility. Study co-author Patricia Kuhl told Science Daily,

“The bilingual brain is fascinating because it reflects humans’ abilities for flexible thinking — bilingual babies learn that objects and events in the world have two names, and flexibly switch between these labels, giving the brain lots of good exercise.”

Between eight and nine months of age, monolingual babies lose their ability to distinguish sounds not used in their native language. This is the reason that people who grew up in Asian countries and learned to speak English later in life will often substitute “r” sounds for “l” sounds- the “l” sound isn’t used, so they literally have to reprogram their brains to hear a difference between the two.

When your brain distinguishes between two contrasting sounds, something called the “mismatch response” occurs. The study fitted infants with EEG caps to measure their brain responses to contrasting sounds from different languages. At about six months, monolingual babies from English-speaking households were able to distinguish contrasting sounds taken from both English and Spanish, but by ten to twelve months, their brains only reacted to contrasting sounds found in the English language.

There was a definite contrast with the bilingual babies. At six to nine months, the bilingual babies’ brains showed no response to the contrasting sounds in either language. However, at ten to twelve months, the age when monolingual babies were losing the ability to detect contrasting sounds in Spanish, the bilingual babies were able to pick them out in both languages. Plus, the stronger the “mismatch response” was for both languages at ten to twelve months, the more words from each language the child was able to learn at 15 months.

It seems that raising children bilingually literally changes the way their brains work to allow them to successfully use both languages later on in life.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Brain of a Bilingual Baby‎

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Across the globe, government services are being slashed in the name of austerity. In many countries, language services are not exempt from the chopping block– and in Italy, the damage may go so far as to include the Italian language academy itself, the Accademia della Crusca.

The academy was established in either 1582 or 1583. It published the first Italian dictionary ever released in 1612. Ever since, it has focused on training linguists and researchers who study Italian, working with the Italian government and other international governments to promote respect for all of Europe’s languages and working with schools and other organizations to keep the Italian language alive and vibrant by sharing “historical knowledge of the Italian language and awareness of its present evolution.”

Interestingly, the name translates to “bran academy,” as in “wheat bran.” Why bran? The founders saw their work as separating the wheat from the chaff in Italian language. Bran is a byproduct of the milling process.

Unfortunately, the Guardian reports if something isn’t done, more than four hundred years of scholarship will be brought to a close soon, as the Italian government is planning to cut all of the institution’s funding.

Nicoletta Maraschio, the academy’s president, explained to the newspaper that the outlook is bleak, and that the news couldn’t have come at a worse possible time:

“If we close, Italy loses a crucial point of reference for, and protector of its beautiful language, just when the globalisation of languages means it needs us most…The only thing that can ensure we survive is a direct intervention by Silvio Berlusconi.”

She further explained that Italy’s history as a motley collection of independent states makes the Italian language especially vulnerable:

“When Italy unified in the 19th century, Italian was written and dialect was spoken – only 10% actually spoke Italian,” she said. “It has since exploded thanks to mass media but is still evolving fast on people’s lips and in the face of globalisation it is very fragile, especially since we lack the pride in our language that the French have in theirs.”

Hopefully, the money to keep the historic institution running will be found somewhere.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Cuts Threaten Italian Academy‎

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Music may be the “universal language,” but that didn’t make learning to sing opera in Chinese any easier for the 20 American singers who joined China’s “I Sing Beijing” program this summer. The Associated Press chronicled the vocalists’ struggles in a recent article.

You probably remember learning to sing “Frère Jacques” and “Feliz Navidad” in school as a child. Unfortunately for the vocalists, learning to sing opera well in Mandarin is decidedly more challenging. For example, vocal coach Katherine Chu told the AP:

“Singers are already sensitive to pitch, which is a big advantage in learning Mandarin. But certain words, like ‘zi’ and ‘zhi,’ aren’t singer-friendly. These words can tighten the jaw so we have to teach them how to carry the tones.”

And there’s more…Mandarin includes sounds that aren’t even found in English as well as different intonation patterns, making it quite difficult to master.

Still, the vocalists who completed the “I Sing Beijing” program were up to the task and made their Chinese début last week at the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing.

The “I Sing Beijing” program was funded by the Chinese government, who selected Chinese-American opera singer Hao Jiang Tian to be its leader. Tian, a former Chinese factory worker, is now an international opera star. He explained the purpose of the program to the AP:

“You could say it’s an experiment of sorts. We hope it will inspire Western singers and bring Chinese modern opera onto the world stage.”

That may be the official goal, but Tian also told the BBC that he has a personal goal of his own: helping to bridge the cultural gap between China and the West by enabling the young students to learn about China first-hand:

“Positive, negative, good or bad – I just want to them to take whatever they get from this trip back home to share with their friends and family.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Chinese Opera Program

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As babies grow up and develop language skills, they lose the ability to hear and produce sounds that aren’t used in their native language. This typically happens between 8 and 10 months, and it’s one of the things that makes it so difficult to learn a new language as an adult. However, with practice, most people can re-learn how to make these sounds as part of their language lessons.

Unfortunately, for British teenager Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, perfection remained elusive even after years of practice in Korean. The problem? She was quite literally “tongue tied.” Rhiannon had a condition called “ankyloglossia,” in which the frenulum that attaches the tongue to the bottom of the mouth is too short and/or too thick. There aren’t many statistics available on how common it is, but a study done at Southhampton General Hospital found that about 10% of babies born at that hospital were affected. The condition sometimes resolves by itself in early childhood, but at Rhiannon’s age, the only option was surgery.

Learning Korean was more than just a school assignment for Rhiannon- she is passionate about the language and culture and intends to move to the country after graduation. So,the decision to go under the knife was apparently an easy one. She told the Daily Mail:

“I’d been learning Korean for about two years, and my speaking level is now high, but I was really struggling with particular sounds. ‘It became apparent after a little while that I was having trouble with the Korean letter ‘L’, which is very frequent and comes from a slightly higher place in the mouth than the English ‘L’, and that my tongue was too short. My pronunciation was very ‘foreign’, but now I can speak with a native Korean accent. The surgical procedure was my only option. It’s not like you can stretch your tongue otherwise. I just decided enough was enough.”

The operation, an outpatient procedure done under local anesthetic, was initially quite painful but healed quickly. She described it as “like having a tooth pulled.”

How far would you go to learn another language?

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | How Far Would You Go?‎

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There is a long-standing debate in the deaf community over the best way to educate deaf children. Should they be taught with other deaf children, in classes that emphasize sign language? Or should they be “main-streamed” into classrooms with hearing children, taught spoken language as much as possible and encouraged to take advantage of new technologies like cochlear implants?

Now, some sign language advocates in Indiana fear that budget shortfalls will determine the answer to that question. For example, Naomi S. Horton, executive director of Hear Indiana, which supports educating deaf children in mainstream classrooms, told the New York Times that:

“Kids in the mainstream save society, taxpayers, a significant amount of money in the short-term and in the long-term when it comes to being integrated into the hearing world,” though she added “There is a financial benefit, but at the end of the day it has to be a parent’s choice.”

Also, as reported in the New York Times, state Governor Mitch Daniels recently nominated new board members to Indiana’s School for the Deaf, two of whom are members of Hear Indiana. Currently, the School for the Deaf teaches both American Sign Language and English to students, who ideally end up bilingual in both. Deaf activists who support the use of sign language now fear that ASL will be thrown by the wayside at the school, leaving kids who can’t use or don’t want cochlear implants out in the cold.

According to Marvin Miller of the Indiana Association of the Deaf:

“Speaking and listening classrooms across the nation are known for their forced exclusion of A.S.L. and expressly forbid any contact with the culturally deaf adult role models.”

At the end of the day, it’s important to support children and their parents no matter which approach they take. Cochlear implants work for many children but not for every child, and access to sign language and to the deaf community should always be available. With the benefits that come with being bilingual, it seems short-sighted to not teach deaf children to sign, whether they have implants or not. Hopefully, Indiana will manage to find the funds to support both types of students!

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Teaching Deaf Children

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