Listen & Learn Blog

When you’re learning a new language, it’s a good idea to try and immerse yourself in it as much as possible.

If you can’t move to the country of your target language, perhaps try supplementing the Italian classes you’re taking in New York with some movies.

There’s a huge range of movies out there in every genre, so there’s something to interest everyone – from big budget Hollywood blockbusters to Japanese manga flicks. Sometimes the accents are a problem though, or perhaps the words are too unfamiliar to completely follow the plot.

That’s where subtitles become useful. A study has shown that second-language listening ability can be improved by watching movies with subtitles in the second language. The research, published in the online science journal PLoS One, shows that foreign subtitles can help with speech perception, whilst native language subtitles may hinder this. The written word appears to help the learner perceive the speech more accurately as they can draw on previous knowledge of similar words.

So, next time you’re watching a foreign language movie, why not try switching the subtitles?

Elephants are pretty great. They’re cute, they have long memories… and one of them can speak Korean.

An elephant in Korea has started to speak the language by imitating his keeper. Koshik is 22, and scientists think he may have started imitating human speech because he is lonely.

Take a look at the video of Koshik below.

Embarrassed that an elephant has better language skills than you? Try Italian classes in New York.

I’ve just discovered these podcasts called The World in Words from PRI (Public Radio International) and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of them before!

The description of the series is:

The World in Words focuses on language. We cover everything from bilingual education to the globalization of English to untranslatable foreign phrases. You’ll learn how to insult someone in Icelandic, among other things.

If that doesn’t hook you in, I’m not sure what will.

In the most recent podcast the host Patrick Cox explores what happens to a ‘heritage’ language like Italian when languages like Chinese and Spanish dominate the curriculum and why Latin America is mad at the Royal Spanish Academy. Definitely worth a listen.

Bivio, a village in Switzerland, is one of Europe’s great linguistic curiosities.

The population numbers less than 200, but three languages and numerous dialects are spoken by the inhabitants. Switzerland has 4 official languages – Italian, German, French and Romansch – with the majority of Bivio residents speaking some variety of German. Language barriers are not an issue in Bivio – everyone speaks in their mother tongue, and it seems everyone understands each other.

At the grocer’s, everyone speaks their mother tongue, and everyone gets the right change.

They’re well-trained. At the kindergarten, they speak Italian on Tuesday and Surmiran, a Romansch dialect, on Thursday. The rest of the week, the kids alternate between the two, but in the playground, the German dialect Bündnerdeutsch rules. On Sundays, they may attend the Catholic church, where the priest preaches in Schwyzerdütsch, or the Protestant one, where High German is the order of the day.

Bivio means bifurcation or parting of the ways. It was here that Roman legions rested their horses between two great alpine passes, the Julier and the Septimer. At an altitude of 1,932m, Bivio has always been a meeting place, and it has always been isolated. That could explain why it’s a relic of a multilingualism that linguists consider was the norm for most of human history. But its days of relichood may be numbered. The proportion of Swiss German speakers in the village is creeping up, and starting in 2012, English will be taught in the primary school. So if you’re curious about how we used to be, now’s the time to go. (Source: The Guardian)

What an incredible place – can you imagine American or British children being taught two languages at school and speaking another in the playground? I wonder if the children eventually favour one language over the others?

Last weekend, thanks to an incredibly cheap flight, I took a trip to Turin, Italy.

Having never been to Italy before, I was pretty excited – especially about the food. In order to get this food though, I would have to order it, so I decided to try and pick up some Italian words and phrases.

Unfortunately, as I’ve been learning Spanish recently, my brain kept defaulting to por favor rather than per favore and ¿Habla inglés? rather than parla inglese?

As both Spanish and Italian are Romance languages derived from Latin, there are some similarities in words. Also I have been told it’s fairly easy to pick up Italian if you know Spanish and vice versa. So perhaps it is not surprising that my brain jumped to words that seemed close to what I was hearing.

Has anyone else had this experience?

Google has recently launched a cool new extension to their Goggles app which is very useful for language learners and travellers.

Previously you could take a picture with your cell phone’s built in camera and Goggle would recognise it and bring up relevant search results. So, for example, if you were in London and not quite sure which palace or castle you were looking at, you could take a picture of it and Goggle would identify it as say, Buckingham Palace.

Now the app goes one step further and can help translate text also. Looking at a menu and not quite sure what it says? Point your phone at it, press the shutter button and you’ll be given options to translate… if Goggles recognises the language, that is.

The catch is that the app can only recognise English, French, Italian, German and Spanish so far, although it can translate it to many other languages. Other Latin-based languages are in the works, and Google aims to eventually read non-Latin languages such as Chinese and Arabic also.

And the extra exciting bit? The app is totally free, downloadable onto your Android phone as long as it’s running Android 1.6 or higher. Can’t wait to give it a go!