Monday, 31 January 2022

language is music to the ears

Are you a better language learner if you are good at music?

A musician speaks:

It strikes me that there are three areas in which being a musician might be beneficial to language learning, and the language learning process:
  • Ear training
  • Knowing how to practise
  • Performance
In this article, I'm going to explore these three areas, based on my experience.

3 Hidden Links Between Music And Language Learning – StoryLearning

Here's the basic science:

Scientifically, the two parts of the brain that regard language and music learning are different and do not have a great connection. There are, however, a few skills that are complementary for both – speaking a foreign language and playing the right tones.
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Although the two centres in our brains are not connected closely, there is no denying that being able to recognize music and sing it gives us a better arsenal for learning other languages

https://www.1stopasia.com/blog/does-an-ear-for-music-help-for-language-learning/

With a bit more science: 

When children start studying music before the age of seven, they develop bigger vocabularies, a better sense of grammar and a higher verbal IQ. These advantages benefit both the development of their mother tongue and the learning of foreign languages. During these crucial years, the brain is at its sensitive development phase, with 95% of the brain's growth occurring now. Music training started during this period also boosts the brain's ability to process subtle differences between sounds and assist in the pronunciation of languages – and this gift lasts for life, as it has been found that adults who had musical training in childhood still retain this ability to learn foreign languages quicker and more efficiently than adults who did not have early childhood music training.

Are musicians better language learners? | Education | The Guardian

Here's some evolutionary science:

Did the evolutionary process towards musical abilities begin in the primeval oceans? And have Human footsteps stimulated the evolution of musical abilities, which in turn...
... bipedal walking stimulated the evolution of music, which in turn may have been critical for language evolution...

Music to my ears: how language evolved | Science Features | Naked Scientists

This is from a psychologist:

This is not to say that music is not useful in learning a language. The most widely accessible tool – songs – help L2 learners acquire new patterns of stress and rhythm, strengthen pronunciation skills and make an emotional connection to the language of choice. Many learners owe their success to listening or even singing along with popular songs. This strategy can be used by everyone – including those with a deaf ear for music.

Do Musicians Make Better Language Learners? | Psychology Today United Kingdom

And from a linguist:

Given what is known about brain plasticity and changes in synaptic and neural pathways as a response to practising something throughout a person’s lifetime, it’s not surprising that the greater use of language will show up in musical ability and vice versa.

Explainer: how are learning languages and music linked?

Finally, Gill Ragsdale writes in the E L Gazette:

You don’t have to be musical to find melody in spoken words
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Whether or not they have musical ability, students who rate a new language as sounding melodic are better able to speak it, according to a study by researchers in Austria, Latvia and Germany.
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This is good news for both students and teachers, as there are several ways to boost the apparent tunefulness of language. Some of these tactics may mimic the first language of them all: motherese, the way that parents all over the world speak to their infants – slowly, with more ‘sing song’ intonation, variations in pitch and a lot of repetition.

Language can be music to the ears | E L Gazette

ELG2111 Nov Issue 478

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what's the issue?

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously said: "In most cases, the meaning of a word is its use":

Meaning is use: Wittgenstein on the limits of language – Philosophy for change

And that's the point with most words - that they don't actually 'mean' anything until we know how it's being used.

For example: the word 'issue' has lots of uses and meanings today:

What is the meaning of Current Issues? - MyEnglishTeacher.eu Blog

What is Issue date? Definition and meaning

Do you have an issue around 'issues around'? | Macmillan Dictionary Blog

meaning - What does 'address an issue' mean? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Difference between - Problem, Trouble & Issue - Free Spoken English Lesson - YouTube

Here is the wordsmith Peter Trudgill writing about the issues around issue:

The word issue started being used in English in around 1300, having
originally being brought to Britain in the Anglo-Norman language by William the Conqueror’s followers. Its origins lie in the Latin exutus (originally exitus), the past participle of exire ’to go out’, with exutus ’gone out’ then morphing into issu in Anglo-Norman French.
The range of meanings for the word in 14th Century English reflected this source rather clearly, and included ‘exit, outflow, outlet’ and ‘offspring, children’.
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By the 19th Century, the word was also being used to refer to any important point, contentious or not, which had to to be decided on – at a meeting, for example.
From there, it was not too big a leap for issue to acquire the additional sense of a point which could not be decided on, an unresolved conflict. This meaning seems to have made its first appearance in the 1990s.
More recently its meaning has been extended further still. Here are some contemporary examples: “He seemed nice enough at first, but it turns out he’s got a lot of issues.” Or “She has serious anger issues,” and “I’ve got some issues with his behaviour.”
More examples are: “We have to become better at resolving some of the issues which can lead to depression… the fuel shortage is still causing issues for bus operators… the housing crisis has scope for engagement with the Church to help address the issue.”
It can be seen from these examples that issue is now showing every sign of having quite simply turned into a synonym for ’problem’. The give-away is that English speakers now talk, not just of discussing issues, or tackling issues, but of solving issues.

Changing times cloud the issue - The New European

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Thursday, 27 January 2022

beijing or peking?

There are several ways of talking about the historical capital of China:

Names of Beijing - Wikipedia

Interestingly, the city is called Peking in other European languages:

Peking – Wikipedia (German)

Pekín - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre (Spanish)

Pékin — Wikipédia (French)

So, it seems to be just an English thing:

HERE is an odd thing. The Chinese government gets quite cross about English-speakers using the name Peking for their capital city, insisting on the more modern transliteration Beijing... The Spanish are allowed to talk about Pekín and so it goes on...

Beijing or Peking? | The Economist

Here's a good video which explains the difference:

Peking Never Changed Its Name To Beijing - YouTube

And here's an excellent article in this week's New European:

Don’t duck the Peking question

PETER TRUDGILL on why cities have different names... 

It is often said that the capital of China “changed its name” from Peking to Beijing, but that is not really what happened. The forms Peking and Beijing are both transliterations into the Latin alphabet of the same Chinese name. (Beijing means ‘northern capital’, Nanjing ‘southern capital’.)
Naturally, Peking/Beijing is written by Chinese-speaking people using their own non-alphabetic writing system. For us to read it, this has to be converted into our alphabet. This conversion of Chinese logograms into the Latin alphabet is known as “romanisation”.
The so-called change of the name simply involved an older romanisation system, which rendered the Chinese name as Peking, being replaced by a new system, which transliterated the name using a different sequence of Latin-alphabet letters. The advocates of the new system believed their transliteration gave a better representation of the modern Chinese pronunciation...
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The case of Bombay is rather different. Bombay did not “change its name” to Mumbai. In the local language, Marathi – which has about 75 million speakers – the name of the city had been Mumbai for a very long time. Unlike in China, however, English is one of the official languages of India – it is the major language of inter-regional communication. And so while the Indian government cannot instruct English-speaking people around the world on how to pronounce their own language, they can legislate as to how the English-language names of Indian cities are to be written in India, on official documents and public signage. The English language name Bombay was officially changed to Mumbai by the Indian government in 1995.
This change was the result of pressure from Marathi nationalists. These people felt that Bombay was a legacy of British colonial oppression – which it really was not, because the city’s name in Hindi, the largest Indian language, also was and still is Bambai...

Wednesday, 26 January 2022

how to be open to other people's opinions

We are all 'biased' in one way or another:

Jay Doubleyou: how to spot media bias

Jay Doubleyou: wikipedia and bias

BBC Radio takes a closer look:

Oliver Burkeman explores what it means to be a moderate, in an age when proclaiming to be a moderate is likely to annoy people on both sides of the political divide. He speaks with Damon Linker, a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com, and an outspoken moderate in the USA about why his columns generate so much ire on both sides of the isle, but curiously enough moreso with the people he generally sides with. And why moderation is not apathetic, but deeply passionate, and often a very mentally taxing way of life. And he discovers a potential way to give people a method to open their minds to ideas from another side, with Daniel Ravner, and Israeli writer and creator of The Perspective, a website that show news stories from both sides, in an attempt to open minds and shatter filter bubbles that have such a profound effect on modern society.

The Death of Nuance - In Praise of Moderation - BBC Sounds

The 'media bias' of the journalist Damon Linker has been rated:

Damon Linker Media Bias | AllSides

Here he's writing a piece about someone else who tries to 'balance' views:

Biden's big Omicron gamble

Here's an interview with Daniel Ravner:

Daniel Ravner, CEO and founder of The Perspective - Oct. 22, 2017 - YouTube

And here's his website:

There are at least 2 Sides to Every Story - The Perspective

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Friday, 21 January 2022

are young people failing to 'grow up'?

To understand 'nuance' is to understand those little differences:

a very small difference in color, tone, meaning, etc.nuances [=shades] of color/meaning
"He listened to the subtle nuances in the song."
"a poem of little depth and nuance"

Nuance Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

We seem to be losing them:

Oliver Burkeman has been concerned for a while that Nuance has been vanishing from public discourse.
He speaks to Professor Susan Neiman, author of Why Grow Up? About how difficult it can be to develop the skill of nuanced, critical thought, and how doing so may not just be an act of growing up, but as an act of resistance against a world designed to keep us infantilised, and our thinking simplistic.

BBC Radio 4 - The Death of Nuance, Losing My Nuance

Here's more about her book:

The philosopher Susan Neiman argues that the absence of appealing models of maturity is not an accident: by describing life as a downhill process, we prepare young people to expect - and demand - very little from it. In Why Grow Up? she challenges our culture of permanent adolescence

why-grow-up

Why Grow Up?

Here's a review of her book:

But the real virtue of this short, sometimes frustrating book lies in its insistence that thinking for oneself is a difficult and lifelong undertaking, in its genuinely subversive defense of philosophy in an age besotted by data. You don’t have to read Kant to be a grown-up, but it couldn’t hurt.

‘Why Grow Up?’ by Susan Neiman - The New York Times

It's a question a lot of people are asking, though:

Lifestyle Writer Rachel Hosie ponders whether if we're living longer, it's justified to act like a teenager into our adult years

Seven signs you're stuck in permanent adolescence | The Independent | The Independent

Extended Adolescence: When 25 Is the New 18 - Scientific American

Here's another view:

A provocative look at the rise of youth culture, the worship of perpetual adolescence, and the sorry spectacle of adults shirking the responsibilities of maturity. Firebrand conservative columnist Diana West looks at the mess America is in and wonders "Where did all the grown-ups go?"

The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization - Kindle edition by West, Diana. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

There's a specific 'syndrome':

While people with Peter Pan syndrome can and do become adults, they are stubbornly resistant to taking on the responsibilities of adulthood and adopting social norms associated with growing older.
Peter Pan syndrome, which is sometimes called failure to launch, is not a clinical diagnosis.

GoodTherapy | Peter Pan Syndrome: When Adults Refuse to Grow Up

Overprotecting parents can lead children to develop 'Peter Pan Syndrome' -- ScienceDaily

8 Reasons Some People Refuse To Grow Up Into Mature Adults

To finish, here's a look at how the world has changed for young people:

Five indicators are commonly understood as the markers of adulthood: finishing one’s education, leaving home, finding work, finding a life partner, and having children. Although many young adults reach the legal age of adulthood before they achieve these five markers, and others do not choose to reach them all, many still consider some combination of these benchmarks to define what it means to be an adult. Compared with the mid-20th century, young adults in the United States appear to be taking longer to reach these markers today. Fewer young-adult men ages 16 to 24 are settled into permanent jobs, and fewer men and women are married with children today than in the 1950s... 
Young adults are not less mature today than in the past. Neither are they necessarily more self-centered. A new developmental stage is not necessary to account for the extended time that many youth need to make the transition to adulthood. We are not the first researchers to challenge the idea of “emerging adulthood” as a distinct life stage, but we have new historical data that help us understand when and why youth feel they need more time to become adults. Our findings tell us something important: When young adults take longer to achieve the markers of adulthood, it is not that something has changed about them; it is that the world has changed.

The Real Reason Young Adults Seem Slow to 'Grow Up' - The Atlantic

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reading really is the best way to improve (your own and a second) language

There is reading... and there is reading:

We have developed a PowerPoint state of mind. As audiences, we increasingly assume that whatever we read – a PowerPoint slide or a novel – should be short, straightforward, and only worth reading once.
...
When reading on a digital platform, we do incredibly more multitasking and are far less able to concentrate than when reading printed works.

The Fate of Reading in a Digital World: Conversation with Naomi S. Baron

Prof Baron weighs the value of reading physical print versus online text:

Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World by Naomi S. Baron | U-M Library

She has a new book out looking at the general importance of reading:

How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio: Baron, Naomi S.: 9780190084097: Amazon.com: Books

Here's a review, with a few key points:

The decline in pleasure reading among young people...
Students not only read less, but also comprehend and retain less of what they read...
A digital mindset includes an openness to the advantages of digital reading, including the ease of skimming, scanning, and accessing an abundance of information.

How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, & Audio | Washington Independent Review of Books

Here is Prof Baron writing last year:

During the pandemic, many college professors abandoned assignments from printed textbooks and turned instead to digital texts or multimedia coursework.
As a professor of linguistics, I have been studying how electronic communication compares to traditional print when it comes to learning. Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper? And are listening and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material?
The answers to both questions are often “no,” as I discuss in my book “How We Read Now,” released in March 2021. The reasons relate to a variety of factors, including diminished concentration, an entertainment mindset and a tendency to multitask while consuming digital content...

Wednesday, 19 January 2022

questions about cars

Cars are always a good subject to talk about:

ESL Conversation Questions - Cars and Driving (I-TESL-J)

What should a good commercial for cars do?

Audi in the 1980s advertised in English using a German slogan:

Audi UK Commercial compilation - YouTube

What is the slogan for Porsche?

Porsche commercial - It's A Magical Life / Engineered for Magic. Everyday - YouTube

Yes, car adverts can be funny:

Witty Porsche Commercials - YouTube

And here's another:

Audi Provokes Porsche. Porsche Replies 3 Years Later - YouTube

What does the car of the future look like?

And what were our attitudes to cars back in the 1950s?

Tex Avery - Car of Tomorrow (1951) - YouTube

Jay Doubleyou: our love affair with the car... and what it does to us

What do we think about cars today?

What are the issues?

The Biggest Problem With Modern Cars - YouTube (and again at 4:20)

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how many meanings are there to 'love'?

What do you mean when you say you love your brother/mother/husband/friends, or you love chocolate/the Beatles/flying/this blog?

Words have lots of meanings - for example the word 'love' - as explored by Dr Tim Lomas BBC Radio 4:

The Death of Nuance - Twisting My Words - BBC Sounds

He has a book out looking at the problem:

Have you ever had a feeling that you couldn't quite describe, because no English word exists for it?

The Happiness Dictionary: Words from Around the World to Help Us Lead a Richer Life eBook : Lomas, Tim: Amazon.co.uk: Books

Here he is giving a TED Talk on so-called 'untranslatable words':

Tim Lomas: Expanding our experiential horizons through untranslatable words | TED Talk

Expanding our experiential horizons through untranslatable words | Tim Lomas | TEDxZurich - YouTube

He has a 'positive lexicography' where he looks at this in detail:

Welcome to the positive lexicography, an evolving index of 'untranslatable' words related to wellbeing from across the world's languages. For an introduction to the project, please check out my new TEDx presentation.

drtimlomas/lexicography

Click on the example of 'love' in the top-left hand corner to see a wealth of language:

Lexicography

And here he has an article where he explores

... love is far more complex. Indeed, arguably no word covers a wider range of feelings and experiences than love.
So how can we ever define what love really is? In my new study, published in the Journal for the Theory of Social Analysis, I’ve made a start by searching the world’s languages for words relating to love that don’t exist in English...

How I discovered there are (at least) 14 different kinds of love by analysing the world's languages

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