The fascinating thing about language

Mot du jour

French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal was at the centre of a linguistic gaffe earlier this month when, on a visit to China, she uttered the word`bravitude' when meaning 'bravoure'. Her entourage denied the error, claiming the gaffe to be a neologism: where 'bravitude' is more than just simple bravery (bravoure) but 'fullness of bravery' - a blending perhaps of 'brave' and 'plénitude'. Appearing in a dictionary near you soon?

The International language of music?

'Mack the knife' (sung by Louis Armstrong), 'My way' (Sinatra), 'It's now or never' (Elvis), 'Seasons in the sun' (Terry Jacks), 'If you go away' (Scott Walker), 'Autumn Leaves' (Nat King Cole) … what do these iconic English songs have in common?

The answer is that they were all translated from various languages with great success.

Lyrics require sensitive treatment however and the use of free online translation tools is not advisable unless results similar to those below are desired:

Take the Mexican song 'La Bamba':

Bof !

Those of you struggling with the French language might find lessons in Gallic gestures the way forward. An online campaign launched by officials in Paris this month attempts to explain the significance of these gestures to the unenlightened among us. Parisians are renowned for displaying their opinions by means of a casual shrug of the shoulders, a raised eyebrow or a pout. Discovering that two-thirds of British visitors had difficulty communicating with Parisians and that research revealed 55% of communication in the capital to be non-verbal, the city tourist board decided it was time to cut through this barrier by showing that speaking French is not necessarily the best way to understand or 'converse' with the locals.

Try these out on your next visit:

• You'll need to stick out your lower lip and then simultaneously raise your eyebrows and shoulders in order to simulate the 'bof', the famous Gallic shrug. According to www.cestsoparis.com, this is used to deny knowledge, agreement or responsibility.
• The 'moue' or the pout, is achieved by looking bored, puckering your lips and, for impact, adding a shake of the head. This, according to the website, is the classic way of conveying just about any negative emotion, including discontent, disdain and disgust.
• To show that you've had 'ras le bol' or just about as much as you can take of somewhere, something or someone, you should raise your hand to your forehead and then pull you hand back towards your arm.

This may seem like the cheat's approach to language acquisition but new studies have shown that bilingual individuals often use the gestures from one language, even when speaking the words of another and that gestures like vocabulary, once learned, become an important aspect of communication.

It's official

Europe now has 23 official languages. January 1st may have seen the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the EU but the 23rd official language spot goes to Irish.

Until now Irish had been accorded the status of a treaty language meaning that it had been regarded as an authentic text for treaties. As from January 1st , however, all key EU legislation will be translated into Irish and provisions will be put in place so that Irish can be spoken at council meetings.

In 1957, at the start of what was to become the European Union, there were only 4 languages: Dutch, French, German and Italian. By 1995, the EU had 11 official languages. The accession of 10 new countries in 2004 brought 9 new languages and with the latest additions this year, the number now stands at 23. The accession of Bulgaria added a third alphabet, Cyrillic, to the Union, to join the Latin and Greek alphabets already in use.