The New York Times recently ran an article by Seth Kugel, the Frugal Traveller, describing a recent visit to the Mirandese-speaking region of Portugal. Today, Mirandese is Portugal’s second official language, but before it was officially recognized as such in 1999, it was sometimes treated as a rural (and therefore undesirable) dialect of Portuguese.

However, it’s actually been a distinct language since around the 12^th century, when it branched off  from Astur-Leonese. Mirandese does have many similarities to Portuguese; the two languages share a common ancestry and they have been spoken side-by-side for centuries. Despite these commonalities, Mirandese has its own phonology, morphology and syntax and is actually much more closely related to Asturian. In the New York Times, Mr. Kugel lists one of many differences that make the language unique:

Most memorable was how Mirandese distinguishes grandmother and grandfather, both of which are spelled abó. When necessary, grandfather becomes l abó de las calças (grandparent of the pants) and grandmother is l’abó de la saia (grandparent of the skirt). Insensitivity to male cross-dressers and female jeans-wearers notwithstanding, can we all agree that that is adorable?

Yes. Yes, we can.

Unfortunately, like many other regional languages, Mirandese is in trouble. UNESCO considers it a dialect of Asturian-Leonese and estimates there are about 150,000 Asturian-Leonese speakers in the world; even so, it is listed as “definitely endangered.” Considered as its own language, the situation becomes even more dire. Omniglot reports that there are only 10,000 fluent Mirandese speakers left in the world, with 5,000 more who speak it just occasionally.  It is spoken only in the following municipalities: Miranda do Douro, Mogadouro and Vimioso.

Most worrisome, of course, is the dearth of young people speaking the language. Omniglot says that “Many young people view the language as archaic and underdeveloped and have little interest in it.” Without new blood, languages die out quickly.

However, Mr. Kugel did note that during his visit there were “many exceptions” to that general rule, so a revival is certainly not out of the question.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Spotlight on Mirandese

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In Australia, English is by far the most commonly spoken language. Of course, that wasn’t always so.  According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, before Europeans set foot there, about 250 languages were spoken, divided into at least 500 different dialects.

Many of those languages are completely extinct. As it stands now, only about 15 of them are still taught to children, which is necessary for any language to survive long-term.

However, indigenous activists like Diane McNaboe are leading an effort to recover some of these lost languages. McNaboe is a member of the Wiradjuri people, an indigenous group living in New South Wales. Although their language was once effectively dead, Ms. McNaboe is one of a group of activists trying to piece it back together. In an interview with ABC.net, she explained her efforts to recover the lost words her ancestors spoke by asking for help from local communities:

“A lot of our old aunties and uncles could speak between 4 and 7 different languages, Aboriginal languages. There’s a wealth and knowledge out there and if it can be saved and recorded…it might be just people who ring up and say ‘look I know my father used this word when he was talking with the Aboriginal people in the area’, and that word may not seem very much to somebody else but it could be of importance to us. It could be another word that we’ve lost.”

A similar effort by Wiradjuri elder Stan Grant recently led to the first-ever Wiradjuri dictionary, published in 2005.

However, according to McNaboe, lack of written information about the language has hampered further efforts to reconstruct it. She told ABC.net:

“I talked to a lady in the Historical Society in Lithgow and they didn’t have much recorded there. I thought, well that’s a shame, because there’s a wealth of knowledge and there’s a lot of our Aboriginal sites, Wiradjuri sites, in and around Lithgow and into the mountains and things like that.”

With few historical records to go on, collecting scattered memories seems like the best hope for the  Wiradjuri language.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Recovering Aboriginal Languages

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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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What language does the Internet speak? All languages, of course, but English much more so than others. Per Wikipedia, anywhere from 65 to 85 percent of the content on the World Wide Web today is written in English. That’s great for all of us English speakers, but what about the huge chunk of the world that doesn’t speak English? Their Internet experience is necessarily limited by their language skills. 

Luis von Ahn, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wants to change that equation by doing nothing less than translating the entire Internet.

Obviously, that’s a staggering prospect considering the sheer amount of content on the web. But according to Fox News, that’s the ambition behind Professor von Ahn’s new language-learning start-up Duolingo. Duolingo offers free language learning to everybody. Since the best way to learn is by doing, language learners on the service are simply assigned a few sentences to translate from the language they’re trying to learn into their native language. Each little snippet of text is from a real website. Duolingo then records the translation, compares it to other people’s translations of the same sentence and determines what the best translation for the sentence probably is. This is similar to the method used by Facebook to translate its website, though of course Duolingo’s project is much more ambitious in scope.

Professor von Ahn says that people are the “secret sauce” that will distinguish the translations Duolingo produces from Google Translate. He told Fox,

“We thought that maybe we could do it with a computer but we saw we couldn’t, that (machine) translations are really bad for now and we need human beings… The translations aren’t perfect but we’ve confirmed that they are very, very good.”

Meanwhile, Duolingo participants get the opportunity to learn a new language (or at least get some practice in it) for free. This will be especially valuable to people in developing countries who wish to learn English. Professor von Ahn notes that language learning programs “cost a lot of money, some up to $500, and for someone in Latin America that’s a great deal of money.” Compared to the high cost of a formal course, the time spent in translation is bargain. 

For some people, the opportunity to learn a new language through translation will be a perfect fit. Others may prefer a more structured method of language learning. Either way, though, translating sentences via Duolingo will be great practice. What do you think of this idea?

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Duolingo

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Machine translation is probably not a good choice for your business. However, in the right hands it can be quite useful. A case in point: researchers from the University of Southern California and Uppsala University in Sweden just used a machine translation program described as being similar to Google Translate to crack an 18th-century cipher that has been bedevilling linguists for centuries.

The code, known as the Copiale Cipher, was used by an 18-century German secret society to protect their rituals and teachings. It has resisted attempts at translation since it was discovered at the end of the cold war. In other words, eat your heart out, Dan Brown!

To crack the code, the team first had to transcribe all of the symbols into a machine-readable format. Then, they let their computer analyse the document, looking at first for meaningful correlations amongst the Greek and Roman letters sprinkled throughout the text.

Even with the computer’s help, computer scientist Kevin Knight said, “It took quite a long time and resulted in complete failure.”

As it turns out, it was the abstract, seemingly nonsensical characters that held the meaning. Once the translation team realized that, it was only a matter of time before they cracked the code.

What dark, mysterious secrets was this occult sect protecting with their code? Information about living descendants of Jesus Christ? The long-sought-out formula for the elixir of eternal life? Nope. Once the translation was complete, it turned out that they were somewhat obsessed with ophthalmology and eye surgery. Weird.

However, the successful translation effort has broader implications for scholars. In a statement issued for the press, Knight explained,

“This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies. Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | 18-century Code Cracked

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“Universal translators” have fuelled science fiction plots for decades, and building such a device

has long been the Holy Grail for tech-oriented linguists. However, the prototypes that have appeared so far have used machine translation. Over the past few years, machine translation has  improved by leaps and bounds, but it’s still not precise enough to be relied upon for complex conversations.

That may soon change. A new start-up called Babelverse  has an incredibly ambitious goal: putting real-time, human-powered translation at the fingertips of everyone with a mobile device like a computer or smart phone.  Basically, the service connects you with an interpreter working remotely, and is supposed to cost about the same as placing a phone call. Babelverse can also set up interpreters for conferences, saving the expense of arranging for on-site interpreters. The conference industry is the main focus of their business at the moment, and the founders expect to leverage it to provide for further expansion.

The two founders, Mayel de Borniol and Josef Dunne, got the idea for Babelverse at a Greek technology conference, as they tried to make sense of presentations in an unfamiliar language. That’s not to say that they expect the entire world to speak English- they just want people to be able to understand each other via qualified, knowledgeable interpreters. Dunne told Fast Company:

“Being a native English speaker who lives abroad, I experience many people trying to use English as the de facto language, but this unfortunately lowers the quality of communication. We want to enable everyone to understand one another while each speaking in their native language…Our vision is the seemingly science-fictional idea of everyone being able to simply talk to each other in their respective native languages, and seamlessly understand each other.”

The big question about Babelverse: how do you know whether or not the interpreter you get actually knows what he or she is doing? The interpreters won’t be translating for you out of the kindness of their hearts- they keep 70% of what the company makes on the call, and like eBay sellers, customers are encouraged to rate them after each transaction. So, it’s in their economic interests to do a good job, and poor interpreters should be weeded out daily quickly.

Of course, when it comes to policing behaviour and evaluating performance, systems like this are not perfect. If you’re in a situation where clarity is important, always make sure that adequate safeguards are in place to ensure you get the quality translation help you need.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Universal Translator

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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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One of the most important aspects of language preservation is the ability to record the language in writing. However, many endangered languages lack an orthography, or writing system. UNESCO notes that “it is extremely difficult to estimate how many written and unwritten languages there are in the world, and there is no established source of information.” What is certain, however, is that languages that can’t be written down suffer from a competitive disadvantage, as may the people who speak them.

One such language was ciShanjo, spoken in Zambia’s Western province. Nancy Kula, a linguist at the University of Essex, told the BBC that the language “is very much under threat of extinction.”

Until recently, the lack of a writing system made it even more vulnerable, but that has changed as representatives of a ciShanjo-speaking village collaborated with linguist Paul Tench to devise and standardize a spelling system for their language.

The BBC has an excellent article up in which Professor Tench described the process:

“All of these people were literate in the [local] trade language siLozi and English; they knew from these languages the consonants and vowels of the Latin alphabet and what they stood for in those two languages. They applied this as best they could to the sounds of the words in their own language. Then they discussed things together in their mother tongue to agree solutions to any problems that arose. I kept a tally of the letters used and arranged them in a chart that reflected phonetic patterns.”

The end result of the project was a booklet on how to read and write in ciShanjo, a dictionary, and some stories written in the language, all tools that will be essential for teaching ciShanjo speakers how to write in their mother tongue and in preserving the language for future generations.

Just as important, the project has given members of the community a sense of pride and hope that they did not have before. Enoch Walubita, one of the farmers who worked on the translation, explained “We were thinking we are nobody, but now we are the same as everyone in the world.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Zambian Farmers

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Can you imagine being held prisoner by people you cannot communicate with, with no idea why you are there or when you will be released? That’s what happened to Timothy Siaki, an American man imprisoned in a Colorado jail for 25 days without an interpreter. That’s almost a month!

How did this Kafkaesque situation come to be? Mr. Siaki was staying in a motel with his fiancée, Kimberlee Moore. Ms. Moore is also deaf, and the couple communicates exclusively in American Sign Language (ASL). ASL is Mr. Siaki’s only mode of communication; he can neither read nor write English.

The couple got into a spat that was apparently not that serious but was quite loud. When hearing people fight, they are able to hear themselves, so they know exactly how loud they are being and can tone it down as necessary. Deaf people, on the other hand, can’t hear their own voices. So, it’s easy for them to end up screaming bloody murder without even being aware of it.

According to the couple, that’s what happened to them. Other hotel patrons thought something was really wrong and called the police, who promptly arrested Mr. Siaki. With no interpreters provided, the couple was unable to tell their side of the story. So, Mr. Siaki had no option but to sit in jail until someone who could understand him came along. That happened 25 days later during his court appearance, where he was finally given an interpreter. The charges were dismissed, but now he is suing the police department that held him for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act-and with good reason.

As Mr. Siaki’s lawyer noted in an interview with the Denver Post:

“There were 25 days of his life that he had access to nothing — no information on why he was being held, no information about his case or what was going to happen to him…They need policies and procedures for folks who are deaf. People just assume that a deaf person understands what they are saying.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Deaf Jail

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