Applied Languages

Workers at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission have been issued with a style guide to stop them using phrases deemed to be politically incorrect. It is one of a series of Government quangos seeking to ban a number of words which it is believed could cause offence.

Expressions including “right-hand man” and “gentleman’s agreement” have been condemned by some other institutions and in certain cases, workers were urged to avoid using vocabulary which could be construed as offensive.

At the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, staff were advised to use the phrase “miserable day” in lieu of “black day.” Employees were also provided with a style guide encouraging them to show “political sensitivity” and avoid vocabulary which could cause offence.

A spokesman said: “Staff have been advised that certain phrases could carry a hierarchical value. “The general advice is consider sensibly how language might be perceived by people and think about how certain phrases could cause offence.”

Meanwhile terms such as “black sheep of the family,” “black looks” and “black mark” were singled out by the South West Regional Development Agency in England, in accordance with guidelines issued by the TUC, a spokesman said.

At the National Gallery in central London, staff were discouraged from using the terms “right-hand man” and “gentleman’s agreement” which could be considered offensive to women.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said the changes would do little to combat real discrimination. “These silly rules are a waste of time and money, and do no actual good for race relations,” he said.

“It is absurd to ban words and phrases that even the authorities themselves acknowledge have no link to race at all.

“The sad thing is that this political correctness is harming the English language whilst reinforcing an atmosphere of paranoia about perfectly reasonable phrases.”

Read more: Belfast Telegraph

People have long been lusting over la dolce vita and Italy has successfully cultivated an image of beautiful people engaged in romantic trysts set against a backdrop of stunning country – so it’s fitting that the rolling, passionate accents of the Italians have come out top in a new survey to find the most romantic language in the world…

A recent survey from tripadvisor.it asked French, Spanish and English travelers which language they considered to be the most romantic.

There is a certain quality possessed by the Italian language that makes it sound incredibly expressive and the rolling r’s and sensual sounds of Italy helped it to win the title, with 31 per cent of French, 15 per cent of Spaniards and 23 per cent of British travelers saying that Italian is the most romantic accent in the world.

French took second place whilst the bronze medal went to Spain.

The rich culture of Italy has brought about a subconscious association of anything romantic with the Italian language.

Italy’s culture is loaded with passion, from the honeymooners kissing in a gondola in Venice, to escaping from it all in a villa in Tuscany, to strolling through ancient cobbled streets in Florence. The music, architecture and art created in Italy also adds to the romantic identity of the country.

The soft sounds of Italian, French and Spanish came out far higher than the hard sounds of other languages such as German.

When it came to choosing the cities that most inspired a romantic affair, Rome won with 18 per cent of the total vote, followed by Venice is second with 10 per cent and then Florence with nine per cent.

Read more: The Move Channel

A Cambridge University project to safeguard the world’s 6,000 spoken languages has been launched after it emerged half could die out within a generation.

The World Oral Literature Project aims to help cultures under threat from globalisation create lasting records of their native languages.
Still in its inaugural year, the project led by Cambridge University’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, has already handed out around 10 grants to tribes from Mongolia to Nigeria – and the researchers admitted traditional British languages such as Cornish and Gaelic are also at risk.

Experts are encouraging native people and anthropologists to capture myths, folk songs chants and poems in their dying languages through multi-media tools. The collected oral literature is being compiled into a digital archive that can be accessed on demand and will make the “nuts and bolts” of lost cultures readily available.

One project involved making recordings of ceremonial chantings of the Barasana language, spoken by just 1,890 people in the Vaupés Region of Colombia.

Only 7,500 speak the Lowa language but researchers managed to record, translate and transcribe 51 songs from the orally transmitted Kha Lu repertoire.

Of the world’s 6,000 natural languages, half will probably not survive for another generation.

For many communities the transmission of oral literature, through ritual texts, songs, word games and historical narrative, lies at the heart of cultural practice. But drastic socio-economic change and the rise of more dominant global cultures are disrupting the transfer of native languages and risk annihilating them completely.

Project leader Dr Mark Turin, a research associate in social anthropology, said the issue of protecting endangered languages was beginning to resonate with the public.

Dr Turin, of Cambridge University’s Department of Social Anthropology, said: “When a language becomes endangered so too does a cultural world view.

“We want to engage with indigenous people trying to document their myths and folklore, which can be harder to find funding for if you are based outside Western universities.

“If you are a Himalayan tribesman you might not have access to a video camera to record your shaman and elders.

“It’s often the vernacular traditions of communities living on the margins of nation states that are most at risk. By supporting communities to document their own cultures for the future, and through working with engaged and committed scholars, our project is responding to this urgent challenge.”

Dr Turin said the project was concentrating on non-Western cultures where natural disasters, famine and unstable government put indigenous languages at greater risk. But he admitted traditional British languages such as Cornish and Gaelic were also under threat.

He said: “People often think it’s often only tribal cultures that are under threat. But all over Europe there are pockets of traditional communities and speech forms that have become extinct. It is the domain of stronger nation states with better resources to look after their own indigenous tongues, through Welsh language TV and Breton literature.

“Given our small team we are focusing on the indigenous people who do not have the funding to help themselves.”

While funding is already secure for next year, the £100,000 pilot project is currently seeking sustainable long-term grants to make it a permanent fixture in the University’s research agenda.

Read more: Telegraph

A British tourist spent a lonely night locked in a village hall in eastern France after mistaking the building for a hotel, the local mayor said on Sunday.

The young woman in her thirties, who was travelling alone, wandered into the building on Friday evening after spotting a sign for the “Hotel de Ville” – which translates as “town hotel” but in French simply means town hall.

“Some local association staff were holding a meeting there that evening,” said Paul Rumbach, the mayor of Dannemarie, population 2 500.

“On their way out they heard a noise in the bathroom, but thought nothing of it and locked the door behind them.”

Realising her mistake, the woman switched on the lights hoping to draw attention, but to no avail.

She finally posted a message inside the door reading, in pidgin French, “22.08.2009. I am locking here (toilet). Is possible door of to open?”, before curling up to sleep on a chair in the entrance lobby.

The village pharmacist spotted the message on Saturday morning and released the hapless tourist, who explained she had assumed a “Hotel de Ville” was a hotel or public shelter.

“She asked me where she could find a real hotel. I gave her directions and she set off, looking pretty sorry for herself,” said the mayor, who is thinking of having the Dannemarie town hall sign posted in English and German.

Read more: iol.co.za

Teenagers have ditched so-called soft subjects, such as general studies, for those they think will impress universities and employers, this year’s record A-level results show.

The number of sixth-formers who completed A-levels in general studies, computing and drama fell by 9%, 7% and 1% respectively. The percentage of students who took sport A-level dropped by 3%. Meanwhile, the number of those who chose maths, further maths and economics – considered to be more taxing – soared by 12%, 15% and 13% respectively.

Almost one in 12 A-level students this year chose maths, securing its position as the most popular subject after English, which was taken by just under one in nine entrants.

Exam boards said the subject choices showed students were choosing to “recession-proof” themselves against a dwindling number of graduate jobs. Mike Cresswell, chief executive of the AQA exam board, said that “the dreaded words credit crunch” must have been a factor for some teenagers.

German continued to drop in popularity, with a near 8% decrease, while French, which last year rose by 2.8% to its highest level for six years, fell by 3.7%. Entries for Spanish were up by 4%. Community languages proved popular this year: Irish was up 37%, with 339 students taking it to A-level; while Polish rose 22% with 458 students, and Chinese by 11% with 3,100 students.

Yvonne Baker, chief executive of Stemnet, a group that works to encourage young people to take up maths and science, said there had been a “sea-change” in young people’s attitudes to these subjects. She said this was “crucial not only to the UK’s future economic stability, but to realising the breadth of opportunities those subjects offer young people”.

Kathryn Board, chief executive of CILT, the National Centre for Languages, said: “The continued drop in teenagers studying German is a great cause of concern, as Germany continues to be one of the UK’s biggest trade partners and the language is much in demand.

“At the moment we are simply not producing enough linguists to supply the needs of international businesses. While young Britons continue to neglect language learning, they will find themselves at a serious disadvantage in the global economy.”

Read more: Guardian