Listen & Learn Blog

Having problems with the vocabulary in your class? Why not write your own dictionary!

That’s exactly what one University of Wisconsin student has done. Josh Abramson from UW-Eau Claire created his own dictionary called “Definitions Made Simple” because he was struggling with vocab definitions for the GRE.

“Half the GRE is vocab-based knowledge,” said Abramson, who will graduate in May with his second bachelor’s degree from the university. “If I had to look up a few words, it would take me 20 to 25 minutes because the way the definitions were worded were so confusing.” (Source: Superior Telegram)

The final book includes 1200 definitions and can be used by those who want to improve their vocab as well as though studying for tests. Abramson has provided clear definitions and example sentences which he hopes will make words easier to remember.

Language learners can also benefit from creating their own vocab books. You may not need definitions, but having a handy reference with the word in your target language next to the word in English could be enough to jog your memory and help improve your language skills.

Back in 1962, Fred Cassidy was named chief editor of an American dialect dictionary project.

He envisioned the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) would be complete by 1976; the first volume was not published until 1985, and covered A to C. The final volume, V, is published in March.

DARE stands alone as the most exhaustive record of regional speech in America, each page bursting with geographically nuanced information about the country’s diverse lexicon. It’s a joy to page through: Where else would you learn that snuff for chewing is called snoose in the Pacific Northwest, and also goes by the name Swedish condition powder?

Though DARE is finally done, with Volume V officially publishing in March, the varied language of Americans marches on. How can DARE avoid becoming a relic? It’s a substantial challenge of capturing something as dynamic as American dialects: No single historical snapshot can really do it justice, especially one trapped on the printed page.

To address these concerns, Harvard University Press is planning an online interactive edition of the dictionary, slated to launch next year. And if Hall has her way, the work of DARE will continue, with a return to the communities that the fieldworkers visited with their Word Wagons. (Source: Boston.com)

DARE is an incredible accomplishment, let’s hope the Harvard University Press project adds to it.

My last post was about presidential candidates who find that speaking a second language can be a disadvantage.

In this case though, it’s lack of fluency in a second language that’s the issue. Alejandrina Cabrera wanted to run for city council in the border town of San Luis, Arizona, but has been barred from the ballot because her English isn’t good enough.

After questions were raised about Mrs Cabrera’s abilities, a judge ordered a linguist to evaluate her. The linguist found she only had a “basic survival level” of English. But in San Luis, Spanish is the most used language, which raises questions about the necessity for city councillors to speak fluent English:

The linguistic dispute is taking place in this small southwestern Arizona city, where more than 90 percent of the population is Mexican-American and Spanish is widely used. In 1993, Cesar Chavez, the Latino civil rights leader, died in San Luis, which used to be a community of farm workers.

At a local pizzeria, the orders are taken in Spanish, although the waitress switched to English while asking about thick or thin crust. On the beat, police officers, some of whom come from the Mexican town of San Luis just across the border, say they communicate over the radio in English but interact with residents in Spanish.

“It’s strange to speak English here,” said Archibaldo Gurrola, a UPS deliveryman and former San Luis councilman who is a political ally of Mrs. Cabrera. “Spanish is what you hear everywhere, maybe with some English thrown in.” (Source: New York Times)

Most of the time it’s seen as desirable to speak more than one language. When isn’t it? When you’re hoping to become President of the United States.

An interesting article at The New Republic explores the reasons why bilingualism becomes an issue in presidential campaigns:

In 2004, it was John Kerry who was derided by George W. Bush for being a Francophile who “looks French.” And in 2008, Barack Obama faced criticism for his upbringing in Indonesia.

It’s tempting to suppose this is an expression of a boorish—and typically American—lack of interest in other languages and cultures. More specifically, one smells an unreflective jingoism among Republicans. Does the GOP think that part of being serious Presidential timber is to speak only English? That’s probably an oversimplification. In general the issue is not whether a presidential candidate speaks more than one language—it’s which languages he speaks and how.

Historically, not many presidents have been bilingual. Some have had functional second languages, but the only one raised with two languages (English and Dutch) was Martin Van Buren, the eighth president back in the 19^th Century.

Should bilingualism be something people look for in their country’s leader?

Being British, I pronounce the letter ‘z’ as ‘zed’. Whilst visiting a friend, his two young nieces were confused and asked me why I didn’t say ‘zee’ like they did. They also chuckled at me saying ‘zeb-ra’ rather than ‘zee-bra’.

Over at Separated by a Common Language, they’ve written a handy post which is of some explanation. Zed is older than zee, dating back to at least the 15^th Century. But the letter ‘z’ has had other names, including ‘zad’, ‘ezod’ and ‘uzzard’. Noah Webster seems to have decided on ‘zee’ for American English use.

One exception to this is on ham radio, where they use ‘zed’ according to one blog reader. There may also be regional variations in both the US and UK on its use.

Do you say ‘zee’ or ‘zed’?

Scrabble is a great game for improving your vocabulary, both in your native and target languages. There’s nothing like a bit of competition to act as an incentive to learn.

According to a Lifehacker article, they key to winning at Scrabble is knowing all the two letter words. Doesn’t sounds too hard, right? Well, there’s 124 of them.

aa ab ad ae ag ah ai al am an ar as at aw ax ay ba be bi bo by ch da de di do ea ed ee ef eh el em en er es et ex fa fe fy gi go gu ha he hi hm ho id if in io is it ja jo ka ki ko ky la li lo ma me mi mm mo mu my na ne no nu ny ob od oe of oh oi om on oo op or os ou ow ox oy pa pe pi po qi re sh si so st ta te ti to ug uh um un up ur us ut we wo xi xu ya ye yo yu za zo

(Source: SOWPODS via Lifehacker)

Oh yes.

But help is at hand. Tom Rees has written scripts to create mnemonics so that all the letter combinations can be remembered. So for ‘a’ he came up with ‘birthdays mangle wax’. The letter ‘a’ can go with each letter in the mnemonic to create a new word. Simple!

So if you’ve got some IT skills and some time on your hands, give it a go in your target language – you’ll be the Scrabble King or Queen before you know it!

I’m currently in South Carolina, where there is a lot of coverage of the Republican presidential nominee process. This reminded me there’s an election this year, and got me wondering what new words the election may bring.

The US News & World Report has some political words/phrases as some of their 10 new words learned in 2011.

Supercommittee (noun)

Origin: U.S. debt ceiling crisis

1. Colloquial term for Congress’ Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, formed to forge bipartisan agreement around the debt-ceiling crisis. 2. Sometimes used ironically; given the committee’s ultimate failure, “super” suddenly seemed like an unfortunate misnomer.

Endgame (noun)

First known usage: 1881; recent notable usage: countless news articles about the Europe sovereign debt crisis.

1. The final actions in a larger process. 2. The eagerly-awaited roadmap for how the European sovereign debt crisis will play out, thus allowing the rest of the world to breathe easily again.

“Oops.” (interjection)

First known usage: 1933; recent notable usage: Rick Perry

1. Expression typically expressing dismay or an apology, often at a mistake. 2. The sound of one of the biggest presidential debate gaffes ever.

I wonder if these will continue to be used this year? Whether they are or not, I’m sure the election will throw up some interesting new phrases.

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope you had some fun downtime and are now ready to get your language learning started again!

It’s a new year and that means resolutions. Some of mine are language related and I hope yours are too. I discovered an article at CBC News that may help us – it promises the secret to learning languages!

We can’t all be like Alexander Arguelles, an American polyglot who spends nine hours a day studying different languages. Most of us can only spare a little time each day or each week. But he may have one technique we can all use – exercising our brains as well as our bodies. When Arguelles goes running, he listens to an audio book in one of his target languages. Not all of us go running of course, but we can listen whilst doing other types of exercises – I sing along to Spanish words whilst doing Zumba, for example.

And there’s the technique mentioned in the article – shadowing.

The method is simple: go outside, put on headphones and play a bit of the language you’re trying to learn.

Then walk briskly, staying upright and, in a loud, clear voice, try to repeat what you hear, simultaneously. Hear, repeat, hear, repeat and march around.

Odd, yes, but effective.

Erard says shadowing has a number of things going for it. It gets you used to people looking at you when you’re doing something new, so it reduces the embarrassment factor.

It also hooks up kinetics to the language, so it engages those gross motor skills and makes you less focused on what’s going on with your mouth and tongue. Plus it exercises your working memory, which is key to learning a foreign language. (Source: CBC)

Sounds pretty simple! I realised my teacher also uses this technique in class – I used to feel pretty silly repeating the same phrase over and over with others, like I was a kid again, but it actually works!

Have you tried shadowing?

2011 has been a very eventful year, and it’s reflected in Time magazine’s Top 10 buzzwords of the year.

Their number one word is “occupy”, with this summation:

In 2011, occupy became this generation’s sit-in, a word connoting peaceful but uncompromising objections to the status quo.

The other words that made it into their top five are:

2. Winner/winning (in honour of Charlie Sheen)

3. Planking (see photo)

4. Carmageddon (what was supposed to happen when part of one of LA’s highways closed)

5. Super PAC (“super PACs are committees that can spend unlimited amounts of money in elections to support or oppose candidates — as long as they do it independently”)

See the rest of the list over at Time magazine.

Hanukkah is nearly over for this year, but there’s still time to consider how it’s spelt: Chanukah or Hanukkah?

The Jewish Festival of Lights apparently has no “correct” spelling – it is a transliteration of a Hebrew word into English. Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Washington, DC was asked by NPR about the spelling, and this is what he had to say:

“There’s several different difficult letters in terms of the transliteration,” he says. “There’s the (Hebrew spoken), there’s the (Hebrew spoken) and there’s the (Hebrew spoken), then there’s the (Hebrew spoken) at the end. And all of them have legitimately different variations on how to properly transliterate them.” (NPR.org)

The Rabbi also said he had to attend a committee at his synagogue to agree on which spelling would be put on their publicity materials – they went with C-H-A-N-U-K-K-A-H.