Homophones

When two different words have the same pronunciation they are known as homophones. They can be spelt differently (for example air and heir) or have different functions ( for example bear as a verb and bear as a noun).

Congratulations Noam Chomsky

A few days ago it was announced that the respected linguist and political activist Professor Noam Chomsky is to receive an honorary degree from Scotland's oldest university, St Andrews.

Chomsky is one of the most respected linguists of modern times - and his ideas have shaped linguistic theory and fuelled the fire of linguistic discussion for over 50 years. For example, his exploration of language acquisition in children has led to heated debates about whether or not humans have innate language learning abilities (universal grammar) which facilitate acquisition.

You can love his ideas or hate his ideas, but you definitely have to admire him! Congratulation!

Scottish Government wants children to learn 2 foreign languages - better late than never!

“The world is changing rapidly and radically and the Government has a duty to ensure that Scottish schools prepare young people so they can flourish and succeed in the globalised, multi-lingual world we now live in. One indisputable aspect of modern life is that more people travel widely for jobs and leisure and we must respond accordingly; we will not be as successful as a country and economy if we remain essentially a mono-lingual society."

Congratulation to the Scottish Government for finally catching up! 

Today's announcement from Minister for Learning Alasdair Allan is a welcome one even though it is a bit late! The Scottish Government has finally adopted a plan to try and help school children learn two foreign languages, one of which should start when children are in Primary 1.

As his statement goes on to mention, the EU suggests that member states should encourage citizens to adopt a 2+1 approach to language learning- two foreign languages + native language - so that they can function in a multilingual Europe where labour markets are fluid and ever-changing.

The only problem is that this goal was set by the EU back in 2002! Now I don't want to be one of those people who try and turn every positive into a negative, but the proposal is hardly ground-breaking and comes at a time when language education in Scotland - and indeed in the whole UK - is in an appalling state.

As we grapple to rebuild the economy and guarantee prosperity for future generations, we have a largely monolingual population with poor communication skills and a general ignorance of European culture and affairs, never mind Chinese, Indian or Brazilian culture. If we can’t already communicate with Europe how can we begin to communicate with developing economic powers?

As usual, the policy is too little too late. Instead of investing a small fortune into Gaelic education (for a language which was never the language of Scotland as a whole) the Scottish Government should have spent it on modern foreign language education.  When we have a nation that can communicate with the outside world then we can afford the luxury of learning minority languages like Gaelic. Don’t get me wrong, we should protect minority languages, but we also need to establish our priorities.

So well done Scottish Government, a step in the right direction, albeit a few steps behind the rest of Europe!

EU Translation Memory - Available to Everyone

Did you know that you can download the European Union's translation memory? 

This is is biggest parallel corpus in existence covering the 22 official languages of the EU and the entire body of EU legislation, known as the Acquis Communautaire.  

This body of text is useful if you are translating texts related to European institutions or legislation; checking translation consistency across several languages; testing your own CAT tools or building up your own TM's. Given the huge range of subjects covered by EU legislation it can be a fantasic source of standard terminology helping you in your research to build glossaries


It can be found at: http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html

 
 

Thanks for visiting!

Today I'm pleased to say that I have a blog post published in the online version of the Guardian newspaper. Despite a great demand for qualified linguists in the UK the job marker remains tough and getting the job (and indeed career) you dream of can take a lot of hard work, as well as tears and frustration. Then again you have to see it as a journey and not a one-way trip! (Sorry I hate that "journey" metaphor - it's very over-used!)

As you can see from the post I've recently started a new job so posts here on Happy Linguist have been a bit sparse this month - I can only apologise.

I've also had a blog post published on Heriot Watt University's lifeinlincs blog, written from a translator's perspective, please feel free to read and comment on that.

I hope to have some new and fresh blogs for you soon, so please bookmark the page and visit again soon!

Dentals

A dental sound occurs when there is contact (or near contact) between the teeth and another articulator. For example in Spanish and most Romance languages the /t/ and /d/ sounds are produced by pressing the tip of the tongue against the top teeth. If the articulation is between the lip and the teeth, we call that a labiodental sound.