Història de la llengua: català, castellà, globalització, mitjans…

Més enllà de l’anglès.

El britànic i el nord-americà. Visca la independència lingüística!

Meravelles de la traducció. Von GERS to CEFR à CECF a MECR.

Els Redemitteln alemanys no són res en català… ni en anglès o francès!https://www.goethe.de/z/50/commeuro/303.htm

https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_FR.pdf

Why is English so hard to learn

(…) Most of us who have tried it probably feel that learning a new language is difficult, even if that new language is similar to our own. So how difficult is it to learn English and especially if your first language is quite different?

The difficulty of learning a new language will depend on how similar that language is to one you already know. Despite English speakers often rating certain languages as being particularly difficult – languages such as French, which indicate the gender of nouns with articles like le and la, and the Chinese writing system – there are similarities between these languages.

If you were to learn French you’d immediately recognise many words, because the English equivalents have French Latin roots, such as ballet or amiable. If you were to learn Chinese you’d find that its grammar is similar to English in many ways – for example each Chinese sentence has a subject, a predicate and an object (though an English speaker would most likely find learning French easier than Chinese).

The most difficulty arises when people learn English when they don’t have the advantage of sharing many borrowed words or grammatical patterns with English. This will include speakers of Arabic, Urdu and Bengali – three of the most common languages spoken by Muslim immigrants in Britain.

Baffling spellings

In my experience, the most common complaint language learners make about English is that the spelling of words often has little or nothing to do with their pronunciation. It’s easy enough to teach someone how to write the letter “a”, for example, but then they must be taught that its pronunciation changes in words like hat, hate and father. In oak it isn’t pronounced at all.

Compare this to the simplicity of Spanish, a language in which an “a” and other vowels rarely change pronunciation from word to word.

Laugh is pronounced larf but the similar-sounding half is not written haugh – but of course there are regional differences in accent too. Like the “l” in half, there are silent letters sprinkled throughout English words: the “k” in knife and knead, the “s” in island, the “p” in receipt, and so on.

A recent poem of unknown origin, a favourite of English language teachers who want to amuse their students, contains tongue twisters such as:

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
on hiccough, thorough, slough and through.

Another area of difficulty that learners of English often comment on is the prevalence of irregular past verbs in English. It’s simple enough to remember that the past tense of walk is walked, shout is shouted and pick is picked.

But what about all the irregular verbs, like hit, read and think? For hit, the past tense looks and sounds the same as the present tense. For read, the past tense looks the same, but is pronounced differently. For think, the past tense thought involves substantial change to both the spelling and the pronunciation.

There’s not always a pattern to many of these irregular verbs. For verbs ending with “ink” we have “think/thought”, but another irregular pattern “drink/drank” and a regular pattern “wink/winked”. English has several hundred such irregular verbs for learners to look forward to memorising, and many of them are very frequently used: be, get, have, see, eat, and so on.

Being polite

A delicate difficulty concerns how English speakers show politeness. Some languages have quite clear ways for their users to do this. In French you can use the pronoun vous instead of tu to be polite.

English only has you, so that doesn’t work. In Japanese you can substitute polite forms of words, so that although kuu, taberu and meshiagaru all mean “eat” in Japanese, the longer words are more polite.

In English we can use longer words: “Would you like to consume nourishment?” instead of “Would you like to eat?” – but it doesn’t sound polite, rather a bit awkward.

There are less obvious ways of marking politeness in English: use a question (“Could you pass the … ” instead of “Pass the …”), express some doubt (“I don’t suppose you could … ”) and apologise, even for small requests (“Sorry to bother you, but …”).

If subtleties aren’t mastered then otherwise-fluent learners of English (or any other language) – even if they don’t intend to be impolite – may unintentionally appear rude.

So spare a thought for those picking up an English textbook for the first time – mastering the quirks of the language is tough (pronounced tuff).

De correccions i correctors

Editing a written text according to METM

For written texts, editing involves modifying the language to improve its presentation, style, accuracy, usefulness, etc. There are many types, or ‘levels’, of editing that vary in the scope and extent of the modifications. The level best for your job depends on the type of medium (for example, document, slide presentation, or web page), its purpose, and your particular needs. A professional editor will evaluate your text and needs, and suggest how to proceed. But note that, because of the different skills required, not all editors do all types of editing.

One way to classify different types of editing is by the depth of the service provided:

• Copy-editing is a standard pre-publication process that entails correcting and improving the spelling and grammar, and applying the agreed house style.
• Language editing combines basic corrections of spelling and grammar with stylistic modifications aimed at improving a text’s readability, clarity, and usefulness.
• In substantive editing, the editor carefully checks the internal consistency, information flow, logic, readability, numerical and statistical sense, terminology, content organization, etc. The editor then makes substantive changes where needed by adding, removing, or modifying the content. This type of editing requires both linguistic and specialist knowledge.
• In developmental editing, an editor plays a major role in determining the content, structure, and style of a text. A developmental editor may give instructions to an author before writing begins, for example when a publisher commissions scholastic or technical books. Alternatively, a developmental editor may radically restructure a text drafted by an author so that it meets the requirements for publication or use.

Another way to classify editing is according to who commissions the work: a publisher or an author. When editors work directly for authors, with the aim of making a draft fit for purpose (e.g. acceptance for publication by a publisher), they are called authors’ editors (as opposed to publishers’ editors). The work these editors do, called author editing, requires a mix of linguistic and content expertise and familiarity with publication strategies; it often involves close collaboration with authors during the writing process. The term proofreading is also used to describe this type of editing, especially when the texts being revised are university term papers and theses, even though it originally referred solely to checking of galley proofs just before publication.

Discussió sobre tipus de correctors i correccions a Wordreference.

Editar un text en català. Categories habituals.

• Correcció ortotipogràfica
• Correcció morfosintàctica i semàntica incloent-hi tots els aspectes gramaticals
• Correcció estilística i formal, adaptada als registres i tipus de textos corresponents en cada cas
• Redacció i disposició general del text
• Correcció de proves
• Preedició

Argumenta

Plataforma per la llengua

Grans noms de la literatura catalana

https://aulapelc.wordpress.com/

Language and class. English in Great Britain.

Toilet or lavatory? How words Britons use betray national obsession with class
January 7, 2016 10.59am GMT

Simon Horobin

Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford

Dinner is not served. Luncheon, on the other hand…

Few things are as British as the notion of class – and little betrays it as effectively as how you speak and the words you use.

Usefully for those keen to decode this national peculiarity, 2016 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Noblesse Oblige, a slim collection of essays edited by the notorious author and socialite Nancy Mitford, which investigated the characteristics of the English aristocracy.

The volume opened with An Essay in Sociological Linguistics by Alan Ross, a professor of Linguistics at Birmingham University, in which he set out the differences between “U” (Upper-class) and “non-U” (Middle Class) usages, covering forms of address, pronunciation and the use of particular words.

It was the last of these categories – how to refer to the midday meal, the lavatory, the living room – that captured the interest of the class-conscious of 1950s England. Indeed, if the use of dinner (U form luncheon), toilet (U form lavatory), lounge (U form drawing room) and other non-U markers were not so explicitly marked before the publication of Noblesse Oblige, they certainly became so after it. Despite the Oxford English Dictionary attesting to the use of serviette in English from the 15th century, a headnote to the dictionary entry warns that it has “latterly come to be considered vulgar”.

Fish-knives? How vulgar!

Given his academic credentials, you might assume that Ross’s essay drew upon extensive scientific research. But in fact his claims were based on personal observation and anecdote. When he did draw upon textual sources, these are literary fiction of earlier generations such as the works of Jane Austen. The only contemporary source he cites is – somewhat circularly – Mitford’s own novel The Pursuit of Love (1945).

But while Ross invented the terms U and non-U, the idea that the words we use betray our social origins can be traced back to the early 20th century. In her essay on “Social Solecisms” (1907), Lady Agnes Grove lamented the middle-class use of words such as reception, couch, serviette (instead of the “honest napkin”), and expressions including going up to town (meaning London) and inviting people for the weekend.

Napkin or serviette? Be careful how you answer.

For Lady Grove, the use of such words was the unrefined linguistic equivalent of employing napkin-rings and fish-knives – and putting milk into the tea-cup before pouring the tea. The middle-class fondness for fish-knives and milk-in-first were mercilessly satirised by John Betjeman in his contribution to Noblesse Oblige: How to Get on in Society, with its memorable opening line: “Phone for the fish-knives, Norman”.

Perhaps most influential, however, was the discussion of “Genteelisms” included by H.W. Fowler in his Modern English Usage (1926) – the 20th century’s bible for linguistic purists. Fowler defined “genteelism” as the substitution for the natural term of a synonym that is “thought to be less soiled by the lips of the common herd, less familiar, less plebeian, less vulgar, less improper, less apt to come unhandsomely betwixt the wind & our nobility”. For Fowler, the genteel offer ale rather than beer; invite one to step (not come) this way; and assist (never help) one another to potatoes.

The seven deadly sins

Even though they are now effectively a century old and based on little more than upper-class snobbishness combined with Mitford’s teasing sense of humour, U and non-U distinctions continue to be cited as contemporary class markers. Kate Fox’s bestselling study of English behaviour, Watching the English (2004), warns her readers against the “Seven Deadly Sins” which will immediately reveal you as a member of the middle class, or resident of “Pardonia”: pardon, toilet, serviette, dinner (to refer to the midday meal), settee, lounge, sweet (instead of pudding).

Despite living in a more egalitarian and less class-conscious society, we continue to find a fascination with such linguistic dividers. When Prince William and Kate Middleton split up in 2007 the press blamed it on Kate’s mother’s linguistic gaffes at Buckingham Palace, where she reputedly responded to the Queen’s How do you do? with the decidedly non-U Pleased to meet you (the correct response being How do you do?), and proceeded to ask to use the toilet (instead of the U lavatory).

In his contribution to Noblesse Oblige, Evelyn Waugh observed that while most people have fixed ideas about proper usage, which they use to identify those who are NLO (“not like one”), these are often based on little more than personal prejudices and an innate sense of one’s own superiority. The cartoonist Osbert Lancaster, who supplied drawings for Noblesse Oblige, satirised this view through his creation Lady Littlehampton, who confidently pronounced: “If it’s Me, it’s U”.

Meanwhile, in America

How far do such categories resonate with speakers of English throughout the world? Attempts to identify US equivalents have suggested parallel distinctions between the U words mother, gal, fellow, thanks much and the non-U mom, woman, guy, thanks very much. While toilet is an acceptable way to refer to the object itself, delicate euphemisms such as restroom or bathroom are preferred ways of describing the room in which it is found.

What’s U today?

What are the linguistic markers that Britons use today to identify those who are non-U, MIF “milk-in-first” and – that most heinous of all crimes – NLO?

At the beginning of 2016, U terms such as looking-glasses, drawing rooms, scent and wirelesses are quaint archaisms and the province of period drama – think of the Dowager Countess’s disdain for the word weekend in the ITV drama Downton Abbey.

A recent article by Flora Watkins in The Lady magazine titled “Pardon: that’s practically a swear-word” extends the list of non-U terms with others to be avoided if you want to mix with the right sort in Britain today: cleaner (U daily), posh (U smart), nana (U granny), expecting (U pregnant) and passed (U dead). While expecting and passed capture the U preference for straight talking over the non-U genteel tendency towards euphemism, others seem more debatable.

Having guests to your house (not home or property) for dinner, supper or an evening meal (never high tea) remains a minefield of linguistic etiquette: do you serve them pudding, sweet, dessert or afters; show them to the lounge, sitting room, front room or living room; offer them a seat on the settee, sofa, or couch, direct them to the toilet, lavatory, loo or WC?

Such apparently innocent choices are still likely to prompt people to make judgements about your class, though it’s likely that the rules will just keep on changing. Sorry – or should I say, “pardon”? – the class conscious will just have to keep up.

When languages die, we lose a part of who we are

Vanuatuans live in one of the world’s most diverse linguistic environments

Anouschka Foltz  Lecturer in Psycholinguistics, Bangor University

Climate change is again on everyone’s mind. It conjures up images of melting glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts, flooding, threatened habitats, endangered species, and displaced people. We know it threatens biodiversity, but what about linguistic diversity?

Humans are the only species on the planet whose communication system exhibits enormous diversity. And linguistic diversity is crucial for understanding our capacity for language. An increase in climate-change related natural disasters may affect linguistic diversity. A good example is Vanuatu, an island state in the Pacific, with quite a dramatic recent rise in sea levels.

There are over 7,000 languages spoken in the world today. These languages exhibit enormous diversity, from the number of distinctive sounds (there are languages with as few as 11 different sounds and as many as 118) to the vast range of possible word orders, structures and concepts that languages use to convey meaning. Every absolute that linguists have posited has been challenged, and linguists are busy debating if there is anything at all that is common to all languages in the world or anything at all that does not exist in the languages of the world. Sign languages show us that languages do not even need to be spoken. This diversity is evidence of the enormous flexibility and plasticity of the human brain and its capacity for communication.

Studying diverse languages gives us invaluable insights into human cognition. But language diversity is at risk. Languages are dying every year. Often a language’s death is recorded when the last known speaker dies, and about 35% of languages in the world are currently losing speakers or are more seriously endangered. Most of these have never been recorded and so would be lost forever. Linguists estimate that about 50% of the languages spoken today will disappear in the next 100 years. Some even argue that up to 90% of today’s languages will have disappeared by 2115.

Why languages die

There are many reasons why languages die. The reasons are often political, economic or cultural in nature. Speakers of a minority language may, for example, decide that it is better for their children’s future to teach them a language that is tied to economic success. For example, the vast majority of second-generation immigrants to the United States do not speak their parents’ languages fluently. It is economically and culturally more beneficial to speak English.

Migration also plays a large role in language change and language death. When speakers of Proto-Indo-European migrated to most of Europe and large parts of Asia between 6,000 and 8,000 years ago, they probably brought about massive language change and language death. In Western Europe, Basque could possibly be the only modern language that survived the influx of the Indo-Europeans.

‘The King and the God’ in what linguists think Proto-Indo-European sounded like.

In the coming centuries, we may experience an increase in climate-related migration. It is already clear that climate change influences modern migration patterns. Climate-related disasters displaced an estimated 20m people in 2008.
Vanuatu and diversity

The areas affected by climate-related disasters are often ones that exhibit great linguistic diversity and include languages with small numbers of speakers, which are especially vulnerable. The threat facing islanders in Vanuatu is not just due to rising sea levels.

Recent tectonic movements have also caused parts of some islands to sink. As a result, a whole coastal village had to be relocated further inland from 2002 to 2004. This prompted a 2005 United Nations Environment Programme press release to call these villagers the world’s first climate change refugees. These climate change refugees happen to be living in a country that has one of the highest levels of linguistic diversity in the world.

Vanuatu is the third most linguistically diverse country in the world, as measured by the Greenberg index. The index shows the likelihood that two randomly selected speakers in a country have different native languages. Vanuatu’s Greenberg index is a staggering 97.3%. Vanuatu has 110 indigenous languages spoken in an area of about 15,000 square kilometres (about 6,000 square miles) – that’s about one language for every 136 square kilometres. Half of the languages spoken on Vanuatu have 700 speakers or less.

Losing languages to natural disasters

Some of the countries affected by the earthquake and tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in 2004 are also very linguistically diverse. India has 447 indigenous languages and a Greenberg diversity index of 91.4% and Indonesia has 706 indigenous languages and a Greenberg diversity index of 81.6%.

Researchers had just discovered the Dusner language, which had only a handful of remaining speakers, when flooding in 2010 devastated the Papua region of Indonesia, where the Dusner village is located. Luckily, some of the speakers had survived, and the language could be documented.

Often, we do not know precisely what effect natural disasters have on the languages spoken in affected areas. What we do know though is that environmental pressures increase mobility and migration and that migration affects language change and death. A further increase in climate-related disasters may further accelerate the disappearance of languages. This would be a tragic loss not just for the people and cultures involved, but for cognitive science as well.

Q&A: Addresses in Barcelona

July 28, 2010

I’ve just arrived and have been having problems understanding how addresses work here. Can you help?

There are some key differences between the way that postal addresses are written here and in other places, and sometimes the task of working out where you are trying to go is made even harder because of the two official languages.

To start with the basics, a typical address in Catalunya would be written like this:

Enric Granados 48 entlo 2ª

08008 Barcelona

The street name comes first and may or may not be preceded by the type of road it is (eg avenue, street, square, etc; for more on this, see below). The street name is followed by the building number and, if it is an apartment, the floor and door number. The next line is for the post code (codi postal in Catalan and código postal in Castilian) and the name of the town or city. In addition, the name of the province sometimes appears in brackets after the town name—eg 17257 Torroella de Montgrí (Girona).

In the address shown above, ‘entlo’ stands for entresuelo in Castilian (in Catalan, the word is entresol, abbreviated to entl.); this literally means ‘between floor’ and usually describes what English speakers call the first floor. The ground floor is bajos (bjs) in Castilian or baixos (bxs) in Catalan. Some apartment buildings also have the principal floor (often shortened to ‘pr’ or ‘pral’); this is also a name for the first floor. Another feature is the àtic (Catalan) or ático (Castilian), which, despite the name, is not the attic, but the penthouse flat. To make matters even more complicated, some buildings also have a sobreàtic, which usurps the àtic to the top floor. If in doubt, check the buzzers at the entrance to work out where to go.

Depending on the size of an apartment building, there may be two ‘staircases’ (escales). This means that the building is divided in two parts, each with its own stairs, usually indicated as Escala A and Escala B. Floors are written in ordinal numbers: in Castilian, 1º, 2º, etc; Catalan is more complex: 1er, 2on, 3er, 4rt, 5è, 6è, and so on. Flats are identified either by a number or letter. If the former, it is written in both languages as the number followed by ª.

As already seen, addresses here have a lot of abbreviations in them. What follows are the main types of road (Catalan / Castilian) and their abbreviations:

Carrer / Calle (abbreviated to C/)—street

Avinguda / Avenida (Avgda, Avda)—avenue

Plaça / Plaza (Pl)—square

Carretera (Ctra)—main road

Passeig / Paseo (Pg or Pº)—boulevard

Travessera (Trav)—these were originally streets that would cross from one side of a town or village to the other, and the name comes from the word to cross, travessar.

Another abbreviation you might see is s/n (sin or sense número), which literally means without number, and is common on big buildings that are hard to miss.
– See more at: https://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/living/qa-addresses-in-barcelona/#sthash.UUQZBdgt.dpuf