Papua New Guinea: Land of 800 languages

by Aaron Hotfelder on

In the above map, conceived by Swedish linguist Mikael Parkvall, each country’s area is proportional to the number of languages it has produced. The map, which appears in Parkvall’s fascinating book Limits of Language, is accompanied by the following caption:

Languages are very unevenly distributed among the countries of the world. The map tries to capture this fact by rendering each country in a size corresponding to the number of languages spoken in it… The ten shaded countries are those in which more than 200 languages are in use.

So why does Papua New Guinea have so many indigenous languages? Deep valleys and unforgiving terrain have kept the different tribes of Papua New Guinea relatively isolated, so that the groups’ languages are not blended together but remain distinct. While the country is thought to have over 800 living languages, some, like Abaga, are spoken by as few as five(!) people.

Check out the Amazon reviews of Limits of Language here. An entertaining excerpt from one reader’s glowing recommendation:

I’ve never smoked crack, but reading this book approximates what I imagine it would feel like — an initial rush of pure pleasure, followed by the irresistible craving for just one more bump, yielding to that craving over and over until – six hours later – you find yourself surrounded by cats not fed, laundry not done, unwashed dishes, unpaid bills, and yet you still can’t stop yourself. You want more.

Rosetta Stone TOTALe – Can you really learn a language online?

by Annie Scott on

Rosetta Stone contacted me and (full disclosure) sent me a free trial of their new Totale program. This online-based language learning system includes:

  • Social networking capabilities
  • Coach-led practice sessions
  • Engaging language games and access to native speakers
  • Encouragement from customer success agents

But can you really learn a language online? This is what I set to find out, because quick online language learning would be really helpful for travelers like you and me.

I chose to receive the Mandarin Chinese course, as I have four years of Mandarin under my belt. I wanted to be able to properly assess the way the language was taught. I donned and tested my headset (which they make very easy), and jumped in to Unit 1, Lesson 1.

My immediate reaction was that, firstly, it’s really fun. The program uses photos and tries to get you to intuitively understand the subjects, for example, that one photo is of a young girl, and the next photo is a group of adult women. The system says the words in Chinese and displays them on the screen, and you click the picture to which you think the phrase corresponds. If you’re right, you get a satisfying “Ding!” of approval. It makes you feel smart.

When it came to the computer recognizing my speech, I was very impressed by the speed at which I could speak and still be understood (and really glad I don’t have roommates). One thing that concerned me about the program was the reading/writing. Chinese doesn’t use regular letters (though a Pin Yin system of letters is widely used in teaching the language), nor do they even have an alphabet. Could this package teach anyone to read and write? I’ll come back to that.I brushed up on my Mandarin just in time to take a trip to Singapore, and it definitely helped me understand the conversations people had around me (which they thought I couldn’t understand). The lessons featured multiple male and female speakers with slightly different accents which helped broaden my ear. I didn’t get that far in the program, but I found the lessons extremely well-organized. The games were sort of mindless entertainment with learning injected by osmosis, which I think is pretty smart. If you just couldn’t stand another lesson, you could play a game instead and still get some benefits.

The social networking was pretty quiet (I only saw a few people “Online” in my course at a time), but it was there. The opportunity to set up coach-led sessions with a native speaker was priceless, though, and everyone I interacted with on the site was helpful and encouraging, even when I had a technical query.

After my trial, I still had a few unanswered questions (like, what about idioms that mean “porn”?), so I chatted via e-mail with the Director of Learning, Duane Sider:

Gadling: Do the lessons adjust according to my performance, or are they the same no matter what?

Duane Sider: Language introduced in Rosetta Stone solutions is carefully sequenced to provide systematic and comprehensive language learning — in all key language skills — from the very beginning. Reviews for each Lesson assess the learner’s mastery of the Lesson content. Using a proprietary technology called Adaptive Recall, the Reviews reappear at strategic intervals based on the learner’s performance, ensuring that language learned in the lesson is stored in long-term memory. Scoring is calculated for each screen of every Core Lesson and Focused Activity, and it is presented as a percentage cumulative score throughout the lesson and at the end. Learners can revisit lessons and activities any number of times to reinforce the language and skills they have learned.

G: Where does Rosetta Stone get the images? Are they stock photos or is there a massive Rosetta photography project?

DS: About 60% of our photos in the product are taken by our own photographers and a few contract photographers, and 40% are purchased from stock photography. Because images alone convey the meaning of new language learned in the Rosetta Stone immersion environment, we pay careful attention to the quality, clarity and significance of every photograph selected for use in Rosetta Stone solutions.

G: I noticed that within Chinese Unit One, you are taught to say “yellow book.” “Yellow book” is a colloquial way to say “porn magazine” in China. Does the TOTALe program teach idiomatic phrases?

DS: We try to teach language that is natural and relevant, and this would include idioms and common expressions. However, we do not treat idioms as a separate topic of study, so we do not have any specially designed sections of the course that focus on idioms. Regarding “yellow book” in Chinese, we do NOT teach the colloquial meaning of this term. We only use images that clearly show a book that is yellow (not a porn magazine), so that it is clear that we are teaching the standard word for “yellow” and the standard word for “book” rather than any colloquial meaning of the phrase.

G: While I saw characters, I didn’t get to any writing, and know that writing in Chinese is very complicated (you have to draw the characters with the correct stroke order, etc.). In cases like Chinese, where the traditional writing is not done with letters (or even an alphabet), does Rosetta teach how to write at some point?

DS: In Rosetta Stone Writing activities — in the Core Lessons and in the activities focused on writing — learners use the letters or character sets from the language they are learning to write words, phrases and sentences. Learners are not required to manually draw individual letters and characters.

So, there you have it folks. Rosetta Stone TOTALe is a highly comprehensive and fun language-teaching system and it will totally (no pun intended) help prepare you for traveling abroad, but don’t expect to learn to write in Chinese or become a reading scholar. If you’re just looking to learn to speak and understand, I’d say this is one of the very best options out there — especially as you can do it on your own hours (3 AM lesson, anyone) from the comfort of your own home. So, can you really learn a language online? With this much help, including live teachers just a keystroke away, I’d say yes.

The cost for all this individual attention is usually $1,199 for a year of unlimited online access, an audio kit and all the lessons, but they currently have an introductory offer of just $999. Click here to see if they have the language you want to learn!

Hotel owner makes Latino employees change their names

by Katie Hammel on

Taos, New Mexico, is home to a large Spanish-speaking population. There are a lot of Latino people living and working in the town. So it follows that many people there have traditionally Latino names. You would think a guy from Texas (another state close to Mexico and home to many Hispanic people) would understand that. But not Larry Whitten.

When Whitten came into town to take over as the manager of a run-down hotel, he told his Latino staff that they needed to change their names to more Anglicized versions. As CBS News puts it, “No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain old Martin. No more Marcos, now it would be Mark.” Of course, the staff and many of the town’s residents were not happy. Nor were they pleased when Whitten fired several Hispanic employees and forbade those remaining from speaking any language but English around him, because he feared they were talking about him in Spanish.

After referring to the locals as “mountain folk” in an interview and then being picketed by fired employees and their families, Whitten later apologized for the “misunderstanding” and said he was not against any culture.

Whitten denied that his actions were racist and said that he asked the staff to change their names for the “satisfaction” of guests who may not be familiar with Spanish names. One fired employee disagreed. “I don’t have to change my name and language or heritage,” he said. “I am professional the way I am.”

Twitrans offers translation by native speakers

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Using web translation services like Google Language Tools is often less than satisfying. Sure, the service can translate any phrase or website into a passable version in another language. But it’s far from perfect – tenses are often wrong, certain words don’t convert…it’s kind of a mess.

Sometimes you just need to leave it to the experts: the language’s native speakers. Thanks to the magic of Twitrans, you can now get your message personally translated into one of 14 languages, for free, by a native speaker. How does it work? Twitrans combines the magic of everyone’s favorite microblogging service, Twitter, with the translation experts at One Hour Translation. Twitter users send any message they want translated to @twitrans, along with the abbreviations for the starting and ending languages. For instance, an English to Chinese translation would read “@twitrans en2zh [YOUR PHRASE].” The completed translation appears back on your Twitter home page, no more than an hour later.

For something so simple, the functionality of Twitrans is remarkable. It’s fast, useful and more likely than web-based translation tools to catch the subtleties of language. Still, it’s not for everyone. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you’re out of luck, although non-Twitterers can browse on over to One Hour Translation’s page for a similar translation service that charges by the word. Even if you’ve never tried the service, Twitrans provides yet another of the growing reasons to check out Twitter.

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You can find Gadling on Twitter, as well as the most of the Gadling Team: Mike Barish, Kraig Becker, Catherine Bodry, Alison Brick, Justin Glow, Aaron Hotfelder, Tom Johansmeyer, Jeremy Kressmann, Heather Poole, Jamie Rhein, Annie Scott, Karen Walrond, Kent Wien, and Brenda Yun.

Gadling giveaway: Me No Speak guides

by Alison Brick on

You know those handy Me No Speak guides that I mentioned a few days ago? The ones that are stripped down to the basics of an illustration and translation, so you can just point to get by in a pinch when you don’t have a common language.

We have a few on hand that we’re giving away.

Enter our giveaway to win a Me No Speak guide for your next trip. The three grand prize winners will be able to select one guide of their choice–China, Japan, or Thailand.

To enter the contest for the chance to win a Me No Speak guide:

  • Simply leave a comment below telling us which guide you’d want if you won: China, Japan, or Thailand.
  • The comment must be left before Monday, March 30 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter only once.
  • Three winners will be selected in a random drawing.
  • These three random winners will each receive a Me No Speak guide of their choice (valued at $9.95).
  • Click here for complete Official Rules.
  • Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, including the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.