How many languages...

On the weekend I was having brunch with a polyglot friend who asked me, "How do you answer the question, 'How many languages do you speak?'"

Before I continue, I should point out that just about everyone I know who has had to say, "I'm a linguist" or "I study linguistics" has also faced the inevitable question, "So how many languages do you speak?" It's such a common phenomenon that most language / linguistics-related blogs would have a post covering the topic and there's even a Facebook group named 'You're a Linguist? How many languages do you speak?'
(The other usual comment is "I'd better watch what I say around you" and I've even had a good friend who was shocked when he realised I wasn't a grammar Nazi or a punctuation Nazi (like srsly, wtf?))

Anyway (and before this post spirals into a rant about how linguists should not be expected to be polyglots), the question asked by my friend raises two issues that gives me constant grief: since I am a polyglot, how do I quantify the number of languages that I speak? And more importantly, how on earth do I give an answer that will satisfy both me and my interrogator?

Measuring language competency, or rather 'competencies', is a pretty big issue in language testing and personally, I always have a (self-assessed) 'Language Competencies" section near the start of any CV I submit. Following the format of a professor's CV, I list English as my native language, then specify my 'reading/written competence' and 'spoken/listening' competence for each subsequent language. It looks like this:

• English (native language)

• French (full reading/written competence and excellent spoken/listening)

• Mandarin (...)

• Russian (...)

• (random 5th language) (typically 'basic reading and speaking')

I always put a maximum of 5 languages (depending on the job, I might just list 3 so I don't look too much like a wanker). The adjectives I use with regard to competence are 'full', 'excellent', 'good' and 'basic', whatever 'full' means since I'd still need a bilingual dictionary if I was reading a French book. And yes, I might sometimes overstate my competencies. After all, it is a CV, and I do want to highlight the fact that I possess more language skills than your average monolingual English speaker. And breaking down the competencies into two categories seems to be a more 'honest' reflection of my language skills, even if what I'm referring to are different aspects of grammatical competence (using Canale and Swain's 1980 terminology).

It still doesn't make answering the question "How many languages do you speak?" any easier though. If I listed out all my competencies in a normal conversation, I'd sound like an academic suffering from Aspergers (or, maybe just an academic). It's worse as a linguist interested in phonetics and morphosyntax, because I know a lot of stuff about languages that I don't speak. For instance, I wouldn't even consider myself a speaker of Sumi, even though it's the language I worked on for my Masters. It also doesn't help that I know short phrases from Greek to Japanese to Sherpa...

So lately, I've begun responding to the question by saying, "The better question would be to ask: how many languages can you survive in?" I suppose when I talk about survival, I mean being able to handle a wide range of communicative contexts in a particular language. I then list 3 or 4 languages.

Of course, this brings up the issue of how many such 'contexts' are needed for me to qualify as being competent. For instance, in Guwahati I'm happy to jump into an auto and give my driver basic directions in Assamese, but I would not be as comfortable trying to buy a SIM card only relying on Assamese. (I wouldn't be able to hold an entire conversation in Assamese either.) Also, 'survival' implies strategic competence (using Canale and Swain's terminology again): I could still survive in a foreign language situation with minimal language skills by relying on non-verbal means to get my message across.

So I guess It's not ideal, but most people really don't care for that much detail anyway.

I mean if I felt like it, I could always go with my other measure of language ability:
How many languages do I speak well enough to swear at people in?

Back in business

It's been 6 months since my blog post. A lot has happened since then, not all of it India-related. But I'm back and eagerly awaiting my return to Assam and Nagaland.

First, a shout-out to my friend Abokali for the amazing work she's been doing the past year keeping up the documentation of traditional Sumi songs and knowledge. She's got her own awesome blog here at:
http://thevillagemicroscope.blogspot.com/

Her brother Canato also has a blog - check out his fantastic artwork at:
http://canajimo.blogspot.com/

So the big news is that we've received two grants this year. One from the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, and another from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP), the granting component of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project. These grants are for project that aims to document traditional songs and stories of the Sumis of Nagaland. I was around last year to help with a few pilot recordings last December (see photo below) and with some local fundraising (not fun) in the town of Zunheboto. With the funds, we will be able to purchase new equipment, purchase gifts / offer payment to performers, hire staff to do transcription and translation work, and produce a book and DVD for the community.

In the meantime, I'm trying to sort out my travel arrangements...

More posts will come, now that I'm back.

(Also, check out L.'s new linguistics blog at:
http://www.superlinguo.com/)

Literacy And Livelihoods For 445 Women In Nepal

I'm coming out of hiatus to blog about something that involves the Language Development Centre in Kathmandu. As some of you know, I visited the centre last year to find out more about their work and to also get ideas about developing minority language education / literacy programmes in Nepal and NE India. Lauren and I are also hoping to work with them in the near future to assist in running workshops to develop literacy materials for a minority language spoken in Nepal.

They have had great success with the adult literacy programmes and multilingual education in schools. (For those of you who think that children should just learn in the majority language of the country / English, imagine if you only spoke English at home and had to go a school where Mandarin was the language of instruction for everything, and you didn't have much exposure to Mandarin outside school.) Through such education programmes, they've also helped to liberate girls who would've otherwise been sold into slavery, taught mothers what to do when their babies get sick and have diarrhoea and given people the necessary literacy skills to do tasks that most of us take for granted.

The following is an email from a friend who's doing work for the centre:

------------------------------

Dear Aussie linguist friends,


I want to let you know about a fundraising initiative that Language Development Center Nepal is doing. I hope you'll take a look, since this can make a big difference for helping LDC become self-sufficient without SIL or other religious support. And let your friends who are interested in supporting language diversity know - often it's hard to know what to do to support endangered languages, other than doing linguistic work yourself, but this is one such way.


Language Development Center Nepal, is working to get a permanent spot on Global Giving, a website where people (like you!) can donate to support LDC's work in literacy and improved livelihoods: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/literacy-and-livelihoods-for-445-women-in-nepal/


We have been selected by the GlobalGiving Foundation to participate in its Open Challenge, a fundraising opportunity for nonprofit organizations working around the world. In order to succeed in GlobalGiving’s Open Challenge, LDC must raise $4,000 from 50 donors by April 30th. If we meet this threshold, we will be given a permanent spot on GlobalGiving’s website, where we have the potential to benefit from corporate relationships, exposure to a new donor network, and access to dozens of online fundraising tools. In addition, we could earn as much as $3,000 in financial prizes for raising the most money.


Not only will I personally be thrilled if we raise money and get a permanent spot on GlobalGiving, it will make a big difference in the lives of people who really could use some help - but in a way that respects their dignity and allows them to create lasting change in their own lives. I know money is tight, but since we need to get donations from at least 50 individuals to get a permanent spot on the website, just $10 makes a big difference. Please take a moment to check it out at: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/literacy-and-livelihoods-for-445-women-in-nepal/.


Also, we need your help spreading the word. Please share this with your friends and family, including through facebook - there's a prize from Global Giving for the project that gets the most facebook shares.


Thanks for thinking about this! I know everyone wants your money, but I will personally vouch for this being an awesome organization doing great work!


Best,


Miranda

------------------------------

So please visit the site.
Share it on Facebook.
Tweet about it.
And donate what you can.

Closing this chapter

I've made it back to Melbourne, in more or less one piece. Got back on Tuesday and have spent the past few days catching up with friends and sorting out the apartment. To be honest, I'm already looking forward to going back to India. But there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done in the meantime.

Friends have been asking me what I've been doing over in Nepal and India. Though I'd love to condense it all into a 30 second speech that I can repeat over and over again, it's just not going to happen. I tell them I'm looking at minority language education (MLE), especially teaching kids to read and write in their home language, not a foreign language. I also look at language documentation projects for minority / endangered languages, including recording traditional songs and stories, as well as dictionary making.

The push for MLE is particularly strong now, given that more and more parents are sending their kids to schools where a dominant language like English (or Nepali in Nepal) is the main / only medium of instruction. Most people think it would be better to do this, so that the kids will have better English and thus be able to get a better job, and it does sound good in theory. The reality is that children who go to such schools with very little exposure to the dominant language like English at home find school frustrating and quite traumatic. Imagine being dumped in a foreign environment for a few hours a day (this is not an immersion programme) and forced to learn everything from how to read and write to how to count in a foreign language. Children either slog it out and memorise things without understanding them (so there's little cognitive development) or worse, just drop out of school altogether.

Research has shown in places like the Philippines that students who go to schools which implement MLE for the first few years of a child's education and slowly transition to English as the medium of instruction (after introducing it as a subject) actually end up doing better in both their home language and in English. Of course the success of such programmes depends on other factors, including the teachers and the actual curriculum, but it's not hard to imagine the opposite, where kids get frustrated at school when they can't understand much of what's happening.

This brings me back to a point that my friend Linda brought up while we were in Tezpur for the NEILS conference. It was about how sometimes linguists appear to be telling people to preserve their own language, even if the speakers don't see any economic advantage. And I agree, I don't see why linguists should have a say in it. I know people who regret the loss / decline of their language a generation or two later - I belong to one such group, but I'm actually not that sentimental about language loss. Sure, we're losing 'windows' into different worlds, but you can't tell someone to keep speaking a language they don't see value in just so they can keep the language alive for the sake of keeping it alive. I suspect, the fear is the loss of linguistic data which is the driving force behind many a linguist (including one I met up with in Singapore earlier this week who completely disgusted me with the way he treated his language consultant).

While I am not for telling speakers what to speak, I do believe that if there is evidence to show that teaching kids in their home language actually helps significantly with their schooling, I am all for presenting the evidence and advocating to schools and parents that this is what they should be doing.

Now this sounds a lot less impressive than it really is, considering that I'm not trained in producing educational materials for primary school children. But I do know people who work with communities to develop minority language materials for schools in NE India and will be looking at the opportunities to collaborate with them and run workshops in Nagaland to produce said materials.

There's a lot more that needs to be said about this, but I'll be revisiting this stuff later this year. For the time being I'd like to thank everyone who's been keeping up with my updates. The blog will return from hiatus sometime in late 2011.

As a final note, a linguistics professor once said that she had been asked whether she spoke to the language she worked on. She didn't, so the next question was how she could study something she didn't speak. Her response was that a physicist can study the motion of a ball - its speed and trajectory, but it doesn't mean the physicist can play basketball.

That was her metaphor. I'd like to extend that by saying that yes, physicists don't necessarily play basketball. But physicists would never tell basketball players how to play ball, so why do linguists tell speakers what to do with their language? In basketball we have coaches who understand the physics (they don't dedicate their whole lives to observe how particles move) and also have experience with the game. Similarly, we need people like that to bridge the gap between theoretical linguistics and actual language development programmes.

'Push' or 'press'?

The other night I went to the Crystal Jade restaurant at Holland Village (Singapore). As I got to the top of the stairs I saw a sign on the glass door saying 'PUSH' with a mini handprint next to it. I was just about to push the door, when it started to slide to the side. This confused me greatly and I mentioned it to my friends once I walked in and found their table. One response was, "Aiyah, it means 'push the button to open the door.'"

The glass door at the entrance was one of those semi-automatic sliding doors that only open when you touch the sensor (I can't remember there really was a button) on them, so that they don't keep opening and closing every time someone walks by. It just so happened that someone had touched the sensor for me from inside when they saw me walking towards the door.

Now it's perfectly alright to say 'push the button', but the problem with seeing a sign that says 'PUSH' on a door, is that one would immediately assume from the context that it means pushing the entire door. I suppose what I was expecting to see was 'PRESS' or 'PRESS TO OPEN' or 'TOUCH TO OPEN'.

For me it was another one of those examples that I want to offer to linguists who largely ignore the contexts in which language is used. But my first thought was that the restaurant ought to change the sign before someone breaks the door trying to get in by pushing on it.

Language learning: Dialogues (II)

Talking about dialogues which are less than useful, I should mention that the main reason I was doing Assamese classes was to help me to learn Nagamese, an Assamese-based creole and the lingua franca of Nagaland.

One book (see picture below) I purchased on my last trip conveniently provided translations of Nagamese words in both English and Sumi. It's probably one of the only resources I have found on Nagamese, but - and no offence to the writer for his work - I've found most of the 'mini-dialogues' in the book rather bizarre.

Given the format of the book, it's difficult to tell when one dialogue ends and another begins, although one can often group together a few lines by context. Often, lines appear to have been inserted in a rather haphazard manner.

Some make sense:
(page 96)
- Gari chalabi.
- Aste chalabi.
- Besi joldi na chalabi.
- Rukhibi.

- Drive the car.
- Drive slowly.
- Don't drive it too fast.
- Stop.

Others don't:
(page 98)
- Aluchhi hua to bhal nohoi.
- Amake nalage.
- Etiya, etiya.
- Mukh bond Koribi.
- Nijor kam sabi.

- To be idle is bad.
- I don't want.
- Presenly (sic), just now.
- Shut your mouth, please.
- Mind your business, please.

Some seem quite rude (like the example right above):
(page 99)
- Apuni heitu rasta laga lamba Kiman ase jane?
- Nai ami pahorise.
- Nodi kiman chowra ase?
- Kele apuni moike jawab nadie?
- Kelemane ami apuni laga samanete bohibole mon nai.

- Do you know the length of that road?
- No, I forgot it.
- How broad is the river?
- Why don't you answer me?
- Because I don't like to sit near you.

But one just screams 'church abuse scandal' (even that wasn't the original intention):
(page 94)
- Itu mej uporte rakhibi.
- Mor laga pichete khara hobi.
- Mej laga niche sabi.
- Dangor lorakhan khela pichete horu lorakhan khelibo pare.

- Put it on the table.
- Stand behind me.
- Look under the table.
- Small boys can play after big boys have played.

Seriously.

Language learning: Dialogues (I)

Most language learning textbooks these days include a dialogue (or two) in each chapter, along with a vocabulary list, followed by some discussion of grammar. The dialogues are usually based on some assumed needs analysis of the learner, and focus on common scenarios language learners are likely to encounter, in the order in which learners are presumed to encounter them. For this reason, many books I've seen start with a 'Meeting at the airport' scene.

There's the typical greeting, followed by a brief introduction (simply one's name), and sometimes talk about luggage. Now while this all seems a reasonable way to start the book, I really don't like this kind of dialogue. In my experience, if someone's coming to pick me up at the airport, they're either family, friends or a business associate, all of whom would probably speak the same language as you. (Sometimes it's just the driver who may not speak the same language, but none of the dialogues I've seen cover things like 'Are you the driver?' or 'Did [insert name] send you?') One might argue that such lessons still incorporate elements of 'real world' interaction like greetings and introductions, but my point is, why the need for such a contrived environment?

During my first Assamese lesson, my first tutor had prepared a whole dialogue based on her own needs analysis for me - we had met the previous day to discuss the tutoring over tea. She said, we would go through the dialogue, memorise it and then look at some grammar points.

I have nothing against memorisation. I spend a lot of time memorising new vocabulary and set phrases. But I'm dead set against memorising dialogue, unless of course I'm in a play. For certain topics, like when I'm introducing where I'm from and talking about my family, the act of repetition naturally makes me memorise my little spiel. Anyway, the dialogue my tutor had prepared went exactly like this (in English):

(The situation assumes I'm walking into the office for research students in the linguistics department for the first time and meet someone sitting at her desk, who incidentally is my tutor.)

Me: Hello.
Tutor: I'm [tutor's name]. What is your name?
Me: My name is Amos [my tutor actually wrote my full name, but I argued that people there wouldn't be able to tell which was my first and last name]. Do you work here?
Tutor: No, I don't work in this department. I work in the ELT department.
Me: Ok.
Tutor: I teach in the ELT department and at present am doing my PhD. What do you do?
Me: I'm a research scholar. [...]

What followed was then a long description (not all of it correct) of what she thought I did, like saying 'I'm doing a PhD.' I had to stop the dialogue at that point and tell her that this wasn't what I wanted out of my language class.

For one thing, the scenario was just not something I was ever going to encounter. I'd already met the people in the office and our meeting was nothing like what she had written for me. Then there was the issue of having her write out what she assumed was my introduction, without getting the facts right first. I told her that I would actually like to compose my own introduction, and she could judge it to see if it was culturally and linguistically appropriate. Finally, the dialogue just didn't sound natural to me. I know there are are cross-cultural differences, but I've tried writing dialogue for plays in English, and it never sounds natural to me when I go back over what I've written.

Anyway, whatever it was, I explained to my tutor that I already had a long list of things I wanted to be able to express in Assamese, and a number of scenarios like catching an autorickshaw and paying for stuff at a shop that I really wanted to cover. It wasn't as if I was sitting in a class with 10 other people and had to follow a set syllabus - the advantage of having a private tutor is being able to dictate, within reasonable boundaries, what you want to learn and when you want to learn it. IF you know what it is you want to know. For me, having been in Nepal and having learnt a little bit of Nepali, I already had a good idea of the situations I wanted to be comfortable in in Assamese.