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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It’s amazing how much learning another language has the potential to change your life. For example, check out this New York Times article on Ed Shevlin, a garbage collector born and bred in New York.  He’s perhaps one of the last people you’d expect to speak fluent Gaelic, but actually he’s been studying the language for the past few years and can communicate in it quite well.

Shevlin’s mother was from County Cork, and he began learning the language as a way to connect with his Irish heritage. His studies have literally changed his life, bringing him opportunities for travel, romance, and hopefully a new, post-retirement career.

They’ve also brought him closer to the community where he works, as the Rockaway neighborhood where he picks up trash is historically Irish. He told the New York Times that this was an unexpected bonus, saying “I was amazed to find there were people I could speak Irish with, while picking up their garbage.”

In June, Mr. Shevlin was awarded a grant to study Irish in Ireland along with other university students, mostly career academics. In Ireland, Mr. Shevlin said, his background attracted a lot of attention:  “They’re intrigued that I’m a blue-collar guy who’s learning their language while he’s putting the garbage in the truck.”

What about romance? Mr. Shevlin met his current wife on Match.com, “using the screen name GaelicSpeaker, and writing that he was seeking “grá mo chroí,” or “the love of my heart.” She responded in Irish and Mr. Shevlin was so impressed, he suspended his “No Jersey girls” rule.”

Once he retires from the Sanitation Department, Mr. Shevlin plans to study for his Master’s degree and then start a new career as an Irish teacher.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | New York Garbage Grant to Study Gaelic

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Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most heart-breaking diseases of the elderly, and one of the  most poorly understood.  The causes are unclear; while scientists believe that genetics are part of the picture, they also believe that environmental factors have a role to play in how and when a person develops the disease.

Also unclear is how to prevent Alzheimer’s, though scientists have known for some time that engaging in mentally stimulating activities can help delay the onset.  Research has also suggested that Alzheimer’s tends to strike (or at least to become clinically apparent) later in life in people who speak two or more languages. Now, a new study offers an additional ray of hope, showing that bilingual people do not start experiencing symptoms until much later on in the course of the disease than people who only speak one language.

The study, performed by a team of Canadian scientists, used CT scans to compare the brains of bilingual patients who were recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s with monolingual patients who had also been recently diagnosed. Both groups of patients showed the same amount of impairment, but according to neuroscientist Tom Schweizer, who led the study, “to our surprise, the bilingual patients had twice as much atrophy in that area, despite the fact that they were maintaining their function and cognitive levels just as well as the monolingual patient.”

Speaking to the Winnipeg Free Press, Dr. Schweizer continued, “So that was quite striking. That was extremely counterintuitive to most people, because if you have more disease burden and your brain looks more damaged, you should be performing worse. So there’s something afforded by this bilingualism and we think it’s mapped onto this idea of cognitive reserve.”

Reading, writing and doing puzzles of all types are all great ways to keep your brain limber and hopefully create the “cognitive reserve” that delays the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms. However, being bilingual is a special case because it means you are exercising your brain all time as you move from one language to the other. That may be why it seems to offer extra protection.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | A Second Language May Delay Alzheimer’s

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Proof positive it pays to start learning languages young: Northwest England’s newest top young linguist is only ten years old, but she can already speak ten different languages, one for each year she’s been alive!

Sonia Yang was born in Taiwan, but her family moved to England before she began primary school. By that time, she could already speak Taiwanese, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and English. Once in school, she quickly added to her repertoire,  learning German, French and Spanish.

Then, she decided to enter a regional language competition. To qualify, she had to learn Portuguese and Kazakh. To win the “Best Young Linguist” crown, she had to complete one more challenge: learning the Ugandan language of Lugandan in just a few short weeks.

How does she do it? She told the Daily Mail that her multicultural background definitely played a role:

“Lugandan was easier for me to learn than it might have been for an English person, because some of the words are very similar to Taiwanese and it does get a little easier to learn a new language with each one you try.”

It’s definitely easier for very young children to learn how to speak two languages, and she’s right: once you can speak two languages, learning other languages is almost a piece of cake. For example, an Israeli study published earlier this year showed that 6th graders who already knew both Hebrew and Russian had an easier time learning English than 6th graders who only spoke Hebrew. Plus, some people just seem to have a knack for picking up new languages.

No matter how many languages she learns, Sonia told the Daily Mail that English will always have a special place in her heart:

“English is definitely my favourite language, everyone can understand you.”

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | 10-year-old Speaks Ten Languages

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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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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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When it comes to Afghanistan, winning the all-important “battle of hearts of minds” has proven to be quite difficult…especially when soldiers don’t speak the language. Now, a new, free iPhone app is available to help soldiers learn Dari, one of the local languages. The app, TripLingoDari, was recently profiled on CNN.com.

Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, is spoken by about half of the country’s inhabitants. Being able to speak it, even with a limited vocabulary, is a huge advantage for NATO soldiers. Lt. David Duffus of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland told CNN that the app has been a big help: “It helps break the ice with the locals… I can talk directly to the soldiers without needing an interpreter and when we are under fire that can save lives — ours and theirs.”

The app also help soldiers avoid the type of social faux pas that often happen when cultures collide, with a crash course on Afghan etiquette and customs. The app’s creator, Jesse Maddox, usually makes translation apps aimed at tourists. He told CNN.com, “Soldiers aren’t your typical traveler… but, they have the same problems that tourists do and perhaps even more pronounced…The ability to communicate can go far in delighting someone and getting them on your side… It can help make them no longer see you as a foreigner… but as a person.”

TripLingoDari is not a replacement for living, breathing interpreters and translators. The human touch is irreplaceable. Still, the app is designed to be as useful as possible, in that it does not require an Internet connection to work and the vocabulary is geared toward the needs of a soldier. A separate app is available for medical workers, as well.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | iPhone App Helps Troops

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Have you always dreamed of learning a new language? Make a game of it! That’s the idea behind Memrise, a new language learning website that focuses on building your foreign language vocabulary with social games, quizzes and mnemonic devices.

To help you learn new words more quickly, Memrise introduces them with clever pictures or mnemonic phrases to help you associate the word with its meaning. For example, the Mandarin Chinese character for “child” is represented by a picture of a baby in swaddling clothes, in the shape of the symbol.

There’s also social gaming element- each new word you’re presented with becomes a seed in a virtual garden. Players “tend” the plants by practicing the word and taking quizzes. One of Memrises’ co-founders is a neuroscientist, and the quizzes are supposed to be scientifically calibrated to come at just the right time and with just the right level of difficulty to keep the game challenging but not discouraging.

As co-founder Greg Detre explained to MSNBC.com, the game is “trying to teach you how your memories work. If you don’t nurture them on a scientific schedule, they die just like flowers. But we are also at the same time trying to make your learning visible and social and useful.”

Memrise’s creators claim that the game can help you learn new vocabulary words five times faster. However, other language experts point out that vocabulary is only one piece of the puzzle.  Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn told Technology Review that Memwise “seems to work relatively well for teaching vocabulary But that’s only a small part of learning a language.”

If you want to be able to string the words you’re learning into something that makes sense, you’ll also need to understand how the language is structured. Without proper grammar and syntax, you’ll just be throwing together a word salad. Still, for learning vocabulary, Memwise seems like a fun alternative to flashcards and boring drills. Currently, it’s available in Mandarin Chinese, but other languages are in the pipeline.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Learning Language With a Game

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Over 4,000 years after the death of Sargon the Great, scholars have finally finished compiling a dictionary for the Akkadian language.

The Akkadian language is probably the first language in the world that was written down, using a set of small, stylized pictures called cuneiform. From its origins in the ancient city-state of Akkad in what is now Iraq, use of the language spread along with Sargon’s empire to cover much of the Middle East. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest known written legal codes, was written in this language.

Speaking to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Gil Stein, head of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, which compiled the dictionary, explained the project’s importance:

“The Assyrian Dictionary gives us the key into the world’s first urban civilization. Virtually everything that we take for granted … has its origins in Mesopotamia, whether it’s the origins of cities, of state societies, the invention of the wheel, the way we measure time, and most important the invention of writing. If we ever want to understand our roots, we have to understand this first great civilization.”

Work on the dictionary started in 1921. Back then, scholars thought they were looking at the Assyrian language, so the project is called the “Chicago Assyrian Dictionary” even though the language in question was later found to be Akkadian, of which Assyrian is simply a dialect. 

Consisting of 21 volumes, the dictionary was the life’s work for many of the 88 scholars who contributed to it. Since the team sought to record all the known meanings for each cuneiform symbol, the entries for some words took years to complete.

Despite the fact that it took almost a century to get to this point, the project’s contributors still consider it a work in progress. After all when you’re working with a dead language that nobody has spoken in over 2,000 years and which has been pieced together using scraps of knowledge gleaned from ancient, crumbling tablets, there’s a lot of room for error and debate.In fact, Martha Roth, Chicago’s Dean of Humanities and the most recent editor of the dictionary, told the New York Times that the work “provides the foundation upon which all other scholarship will be built,” and was “never intended to be the last word.”

When it comes to deciphering ancient tongues, we’re so used to hearing about the amazing breakthroughs made possible through computers that you might think artificial intelligence played some part in bringing the project to a close. Actually, though, that’s not the case. Instead, the dictionary was compiled using decidedly low-tech methods: index cards, over 2 million of them!

If you’d like to explore the world of ancient Babylon, the online version of the dictionary is available here for no charge.

Orginal Article on K International's Language Blog | Akkadian Dictionary Finally Published

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