The fascinating thing about language

There are certain moments that never fail to brighten up your day. The lively chirping of birds on a summer morning, helping you to face the challenges ahead. The captivating smile of a stranger on the bus, reassuring you that all is right with the world. The lack of a queue at the work coffee machine, providing you with first go at that new vanilla-flavoured cappuccino. The familiar pinging/beeping/honking noise (depending on your operating system) of the e-mail alert, informing you of the arrival of ‘The fascinating thing about language’ section of ‘The Lingo-ist’, Lingo24’s miscellaneous mixed bag of linguistic news, trivia and questionable humour.

Mötley Crüe

At Lingo24 we take language learning pretty seriously, because if we hadn’t paid attention in English/French/Spanish/Italian/German/Romanian/Korean/Japanese class (delete as appropriate), we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs. We also proudly possess the questionable sense of humour mentioned above.

We were therefore delighted to see the BBC marry language and humour in their commendable new series, ‘Excuse my French’. The programme sees Esther Rantzen, Marcus Brigstocke and Ron Atkinson attempt to learn French at an intensive course in Provence, the idea being that after a month these three misfit musketeers will make a stab at performing their day job in the language of Baudelaire.

Entertaining and amusing, the programme will hopefully inspire many more people to take up French, or any new language, for that matter. The accompanying website page includes a language test and tips on how to improve your French. Bon courage.

Garbage

Recently, Lingo24 ran a very unscientific study amongst its employees about language-related jokes. Two things became clear from the results – that it’s an area where there appears to be a gap in the market (multilingual comedians take note), and that the four following efforts are the best of a bad bunch:

1) A mouse is in his mouse hole and he fancies popping out to get something to eat, but he's afraid there might be a big cat outside. He therefore puts his ear by the opening - all he hears is ‘bow wow’, ‘woof’ and other such noises. He thinks, “Well, there can't be any cats out there because that’s a big, friendly old dog”, so he nips out of his mouse hole, whereupon he is promptly caught and eaten by a cat. The cat licks his lips and says "It's pretty useful being bilingual…"

2) Two translators on a ship are chatting. "Can you swim?" asks one. "No," says the other, "but I can shout for help in nine languages."

3) Two builders are busy working on a construction site when a big, fancy car with a foreign flag and diplomatic number plate pulls up. "Parlez-vous français?" the driver asks them. The two workers just stare. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" The two continue to stare at him. "Fala português?" Neither worker says anything. "Parlate Italiano?" Still no response. Finally, the man drives off in disgust. One worker turns to the other and says, "Mibbe we should learn a foreign language..." "What for? That bloke knew four of them - what good did it do him?"

4) A bloke buys a parrot. The man in the pet shop tells him: “It’s fluent in French and English. It’s a bilingual parrot.” “Really? And how does it choose which language to use?” “It’s very simple – it’s got a piece of string attached to each leg. When you pull on the string on the right, it speaks French. When you pull on the string on the left, it speaks English.” “And what happens if I pull on both strings at the same time?” The parrot pipes up: “I fall on my face, idiot!”

Talking Heads

Differences in the way men and women perform verbal tasks have been well documented in scientific literature, but findings have been inconsistent as to whether men and women actually use different parts of their brains. But a new study published in the journal ‘Brain and Language’, which accounted for these methodological factors, has confirmed that men and women do indeed use different parts of their brains when processing information relating to language.

The study, led by the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study thirty adult participants performing a language-related task. Distinct differences were evident between male and female participants. In particular, females showed more bilateral activation in the inferior frontal gyrus than males.

The study's language task consisted of participants viewing two four-letter pronounceable nonsense word strings, one above the other. They were then instructed to push a button with their right index finger if the words rhymed, and their left index finger if they did not rhyme. In order to ensure consistency, all participants were right handed, had English as their first language and completed tasks with an average of 90% accuracy.

Dire Straits

In the April issue of ‘The Lingo-ist’, we announced that Lingo24 was running an on-line competition, open to all readers of the Lingo-ist with the necessary perceptive skills for a little ‘website detective work’.

Thanks very much to all those who entered. Amazingly, there was no outright winner this time. The fiendish question that flummoxed every entrant bar none was "What is the most common mother tongue of Lingo24 staff?" The answer was Romanian - the majority of our staff live in and around Timisoara, in Western Romania. All the answers can now be seen on our website at http://www.lingo24.com/competition.html.

As we’re desperate to give away the prizes, we’ll be putting everyone who got 5 out of 6 into a big, fancy hat, and will announce the winner in the coming days.