Following in the footsteps of L’Academie francaise, Russian officials have launched a campaign to “clean up” the Russian language.
Russia’s Education and Science Ministry has decided that words borrowed from other languages (loan words) are no longer permissible and Russian words should be used instead. In a project costing around US$150,000, they aim to revise all dictionaries and school teaching material, as well as producing an internet resource on the correct way to speak the language.
Whilst L’Academie francasie has been somewhat successful in replacing loan words for French ones, they’ve really only caught on for official usage. Ordinary people are still shaping their language in the way they want to speak it. I wonder if this project will be successful in Russia, a country with a much larger population than France?
An article on Slate.com comes out in praise of ‘verbal stumbles’ – the “uhs”, “ums” and “ers” we all use to fill in gaps in our speech.
Apparently there is an organisation called Toastmasters International who charge every time one of these fillers is used. And conventional wisdom says using fillers rather than staying silent makes you seem stupid or nervous.
But “uh” and “um” don’t deserve eradication; there’s no good reason to uproot them. People have been pausing and filling their pauses with a neutral vowel (or sometimes with an actual word) for as long as we’ve had language, which is about 100,000 years. If listeners are so naturally repelled by “uhs” and “ums,” you’d think those sounds would have been eliminated long before now. The opposite is true: Filled pauses appear in all of the world’s languages, and the anti-ummers have no way to explain, if they’re so ugly, what “euh” in French, or “äh” and “ähm” in German, or “eto” and “ano” in Japanese are doing in human language at all. (Source: Slate.com)
There’s also evidence to suggest that markers such as “ah” and “um” help listeners recognise what follows, and that the use of these doesn’t affect the speaker’s standing.
For language learners, using “um” and “uh” gives us space to think about what we’re saying next, without breaking the conversation. My high school French teacher actively encouraged me to use a sort of French-sounding “errrr” in my speaking exams as he said this would add to the impression that I had a decent level of spoken French (this was not entirely true).
What fillers are used in your target language?
A woman in England has woken up to find she now speaks in a French accent.
Kay Russell lay down while suffering from a chronic migraine, and upon waking found she spoke with the new accent. The condition is known as foreign accent syndrome (FAS) and is extremely rare.
Ms Russell says the loss of her native English accent has affected her badly – losing confidence and her sense of identity.
“A lot of people come up and say: ‘What a lovely voice you have,’” said Russell, who has lived with the condition, of which there are only 60 recorded cases worldwide since 1941, since January. “You lose your identity and an awful lot about yourself. I feel like I come across as a different person.
“It’s not just my voice I miss. I would love to have my old voice back obviously. But it goes way, way beyond that. It’s the person I was – the person I want to be.
“I rang up a friend I had known since I was a teenager and the last time I had spoken to her I was speaking in my old voice. It took me a while to explain it was me.” (Source: The Guardian)
Language learners often aim for a ‘native’ accent when speaking their target language. I wonder if this aim is to make them feel more like the person they think they should be in that language?
Watch a video of Ms Russell here.
Controversial news from Canada, where immigration officials have introduced instructions requiring all skilled immigrant applicants to pass a language test.
With the UK and France among the top source countries for immigrants to Canada, there are questions as to why, as native English and French speakers, they have to prove their language skills. Previously immigrants had the option of making a written submission to prove their language ability, which was aimed at people whose first language was English or French.
From The Star:
Ottawa has argued a test is the “fairest, most transparent, objective, consistent and accurate” way to assess language proficiency.
But Toronto immigration lawyer Robin Seligman said Canada should make exemptions, as Britain and Australia do. Both countries offer exemptions to native English speakers, to those who hold passports or have lived for 10 years or more in an English-speaking country, and to university graduates of an English-speaking country.
The impact of the test on immigration remains to be seen.
