Applied Languages

The two Koreas differ in more than just political ideology. Since the Korean Peninsula was divided more than 60 years ago, the way North and South Koreans’ speak has gone separate ways. And, for thousands of North Korean refugees, the language divide is one of their biggest challenges to adjusting to life in South Korea.

The North Korean language is a relic. It has not changed that much since the 1940s, whereas South Korean has added a wealth of new vocabulary. Chae Su-jeong, who defected in 2001, says she did not realize how different North and South Korean languages were until she started working for a recycling company. For example, she says, North Korea has only one word to describe all types of paper, but, in the South, there are many.

Political manipulation might be a reason for the North-South language divide. As in many aspects of life in North Korea, language has been altered to serve the nation’s rulers. So says Kim Seok-hyang, who lectures at the Ewha Institute for Unification Studies in Seoul and who has written a book on how North Koreans use their language, gives an example of one word that has had its meaning changed since the Koreas were divided.

“Sun-mul, in Korean language, sun-mul, which means present to your friend,” says Kim. “But now, North Korean way of speaking this sun-mul, sun-mul is the reserved word by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. So, only Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il are the only two who can give sun-mul to another person.”

Kim says, for these reasons, many North Korean defectors believe they speak a more pure form of the language than their South Korean counterparts. But speaking their North Korean dialect in their new home has caused problems for some refugees.

North Koreans can face job discrimination. Many South Koreans look down on defectors. But, for some refugees, speaking their language is a way to reconnect with the home they left behind.

To help close the language divide, the two Koreas have agreed to compile a joint dictionary. But any future linguistic cooperation is in question now, as the two governments are currently not speaking to each other.

Read more: VOA News

A linguistic survey – the first of its kind – aimed at identifying, preserving and promoting the languages and dialects spoken in Nepal, is formally starting on Friday.

The government launched the survey in a bid to develop a socio-linguistic profile of all the languages of Nepal, maintain their complete database, map out and develop a description for the use of mother tongues in education and in local administration, and produce a basic description of each of them.

“It is needed urgently to conduct a survey at the moment when the issues of language have become controversial, and moreover, the majority of them are at the verge of extinction,” said Prof. Yogendra P Yadhav, head of Tribhuvan University’s  Central Department of Linguistics and team leader of the National Language Policy Recommendation Commission.

According to the approved proposal, the survey will be conducted through questionnaires as well as observation. Basic glossary of words will be collected and their meanings written down in Nepali, English and respective mother tongues, so that it will be easy to write a curriculum for use in schools and in administration.  The survey will also study the language used by the deaf. Prof. Yadhav said over 200 linguists, community leaders and IT experts will be mobilised. Training for field linguists will be conducted soon and will be assigned field work.

The Ethnologue, an encyclopedia of international languages, has listed 126 languages which are spoken in Nepal, whereas the census of 2001 shows only 92 languages being spoken in the country.

Read more: eKantipur, Nepal News

Facebook, the world’s most successful social networking site, has officially launched in Arabic, tapping into a potentially huge market in the Middle East and beyond, the company has announced.

Facebook already has large numbers of users in the Arab world: the site has 900,000 users in Egypt, more than 250,000 in Saudi Arabia and more than 300,000 in Lebanon. Arabic, spoken by 250 million people – and Hebrew, spoken by 7 million – will now be available from a drop-down menu at the bottom of the homepage.

Facebook asked users of a trial version to translate the site over the past month. After providing suggestions, users discussed and voted for the best translations. As a result, Facebook is now available in 40 languages with more than 60 others in development.

The company said that 850 Arabic speakers and 870 Hebrew speakers had helped with the project, out of a total of 200,000 people who had helped with translations.

Arabic and Hebrew, semitic languages that are both written from right to left, posed special challenges. For example, while the verb “write” in English is the same regardless of whether the person doing the writing is a male or female, different translations of “write” are required in both languages.

Design was another challenge, since a web page laid out from right to left looks like a mirror image of an equivalent English page. All components on the page had to be changed for right-to-left languages including text alignment, ordering of tabs on pages, different fields on forms, labels, buttons and much more.

Read more: The Guardian

Young Singaporeans are not as multilingual as their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, a symposium was told on Thursday.

Dr Ng Bee Chin, Acting Head of the Nanyang Technological University’s Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, said: ‘Although we are still multilingual, 40 years ago, we were even more multilingual. Young children are not speaking some of these languages anymore. All it takes is one generation for a language to die.’

Dr Ng was speaking at the Language and Diversity Symposium, hosted by NTU’s Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, which was attended by more than 100 students, academics and international speakers.

Part of the symposium, which ends today, is an installation art exhibition titled ‘Singapore’s Voices,’ which marries linguistics, art and technology to make language a tangible item through pictures and sound. The art piece presented photographs of the speakers of languages that are slowly becoming obsolete in Singapore. When touched, the people in the photographs ‘speak’ through light sensors.

It is estimated by experts that half of the 6,000 languages that are in use worldwide today will be extinct by 2050. However, efforts can still be made to preserve existing languages, and to create new ones. Professor Li Wei from the University of London, who is an active researcher in the field of bilingualism, said: ‘One way to promote and protect linguistics is to allow contact among different cultures and people. New languages are created through such contact.’

Read more: The Straits Times

Many people who live and work in Manchester’s Chinatown – the second biggest in Britain – speak little or no English. Police officers are now learning Cantonese to get closer to the city’s Chinese community.

Ten city centre neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers are learning simple phrases in Cantonese, the language of southern mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong. They are being taught at the Wai Yin Chinese Women Society in Chinatown. During the first lesson of the six-part course, officers learned introductory phases, such as `Hello’, `How are you?’ and `My name is’.

Neighbourhood Inspector for Manchester city centre, Joanne Marshall, said: “This is about building stronger relationships with the local residents and businesses in Chinatown. It is important that they see a visible police presence in their community, a friendly officer or PCSO who can say a few words of their language.”

As reported in the M.E.N, business chiefs have denied there is a crisis in the area following the shock closure of the upmarket Yang Sing Hotel on Monday. Reports have also suggested that visitor numbers to the area have fallen by 40 per cent in recent years.

“Hopefully Chinatown residents will see that the officers and PCSOs do care enough to want to understand more about the people there and find out what more they can do to help”, Marshall said.

In a similar approach, police officers in Greater Manchester have been learning Urdu for many years in order to strengthen links with the Asian community, according to a report by the BBC.

Read more: Manchester Evening News, BBC News