Applied Languages

Ticket machines on the London Underground (LU) have been upgraded to speak the language for more of London’s diverse migrant communities as well as tourists and business travellers.

Some of the touch-screen machines were already available in six languages – English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. Since last week, all machines in every station will help passengers in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Polish, Punjabi, Tamil, Turkish and Urdu. More than 300 languages are spoken in total in London.

Kulveer Ranger, City Hall’s Transport Director to the Mayor of London, said: “Boosting the number of languages on our ticket machines is just another step in making life easier for those who live in, or travel through, the capital.”

He said improving the languages on the ticket machines would give many people added confidence, help maintain London as a city that supports its cultural diversity and would also improve tourists’ visits to the city, as they would get that ‘positive experience’ of London.

LU is undertaking a major programme of renewal as part of Transport for London’s Investment Programme. Tube bosses, of course, have their eye on the 2012 Olympics when East London plays host to the world.

Read more: BBC News, Hackney Gazette

There is a new offshoot to the Valley divide following the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits — the Kashmiri language, which used to be a binding factor between Valley Muslims and Pandits, is undergoing a transformation.

For centuries, the accepted Kashmir script has been Perso-Arabic but Kashmiri Pandit organisations are promoting the language among their youth using Devnagari. The reason: the young generation of Pandits born outside the Valley have no knowledge of the Perso-Arabic script, the accepted form of writing among Hindus and Muslims for centuries in Kashmir.

The annual Khir Bhawani Mela at Tullamula in Srinagar last week — it has now become the biggest Kashmiri Pandit gathering in the Valley — was witness to the change. Most organisations were distributing literature in Devnagari. Shailender Dhar of Satisar Foundation, a non-profit organisation formed eight years ago in Jammu, said: “We are concerned with people who form our audience. That is why we use Devnagari. They can’t read any other script.”

Even the weekly and fortnightly classes that the organisation holds to promote Kashmiri culture among the youth are in Devnagari. “We are not creating a wedge between the two communities, we are just trying to promote the dying Kashmiri Pandit culture. Our aim is to preserve and promote age-old values of the Kashmiri Hindu cultural tradition which includes language, philosophy, art and literature, history, sciences and the spiritual tradition. We are not against any script but we are just trying to revive our old roots,” said Dhar.

Kashmiri language known as Kashur belongs to the Dardic linguistic sub-grouping, part of the Indo-European language family, and is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley and parts of PoK. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India.

Read more: Indian Express

The English language is about to hit a major milestone. Well, sort of. According to the Global Language Monitor, a group that tracks new additions to the lexicon, it will hit one million words at 5:22 a.m. ET on June 10.

The group gives language status to words that have been used more than 25,000 times. “No one decides when an English word is a word, other than the people. When people use it enough, it becomes a word,” said Paul Payack, president and chief word analyst for the GLM.

But it takes more than just frequency of use for a word to officially make it onto the list. New words also need to have “staying power,” Payack said. “We have to see the breadth and the depth of the word. So in other words it can’t be used just in Toronto or New York City, it has to be used globally by the English-speaking community and it has to have at least 25,000 citations in the global media.”

The rapidly growing number of people around the world who speak English — now roughly 1.5 billion — means new words are being added to the lexicon every 98 minutes, according to the GLM’s math.

The current tally is roughly five times the 200,000 words contained in a standard Webster’s dictionary, and is still well above the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains 600,000 words in several volumes. But those publications don’t include so called ‘Chinglish’ words that meld Chinese and English, or words that take on new meanings, such as the Super Bowl-inspired “wardrobe malfunction” or “mobama” — meaning something that evokes U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama’s fashion sense.

The GLM’s definition of what constitutes a word is broader than Merriam Webster or other dictionaries’ choices. The group defines a word as anything that is spoken, and understood.

Words that are on the verge of entering the language, and could possibly become the one-millionth word, include the following:
• Chiconomics, which describes the ability to maintain fashion sense during a recession.
• Greenwashing, which is when an old product is rebranded as environmentally friendly, or green.
• Mobama, which describes anything akin to the fashion sense of the U.S. First Lady.
• Noob, which can also be spelled with two zeros, and was adopted from the gaming community, describes those who try to take credit for other people’s work.
• Zombie banks, which describes financial institutions that have been kept in operation only by government bailouts.

All are possible contenders for the coveted, historic title one one-millionth word.

“It’s going to be the one that has the largest footprint and breadth and depth as of June 10 at 10:22 GMT,” Payack said.

But that prediction has come under fire from linguists who say Payack is more interested in generating publicity than in adding to linguistic scholarship.

“He made it all up in his head,” said Robert Beard, a linguist who worked with Payack on an Internet dictionary told the Houston Chronicle “He’s a great marketer, but he’s a classics major. He knows nothing about linguistics.”

“I think it’s pure fraud,” said Geoffrey Nunberg, a University of California-Berkeley linguistics professor. “It’s not bad science. It’s nonsense.”

Experts say it’s impossible to calculate the number of words in the English language, which is complicated by the classification of compound words, verb forms and obsolete terms.

But don’t tell that to Payack. “We believe words can be counted if you define them in the right way,” he said. “You can count them like anything else in science. You can count how many atoms there are in the ocean.”

Read more: CBS News, ctv.ca, post-gazette