Triqui (de la baja) is an indigenous language spoken in Oaxacan Mexico. Because the area is increasingly dangerous and violent most native speakers will eventually not only leave the area but also leave the language behind with it.

There are an estimated 40,000 people who are fluent in Triqui worldwide. More than half of them no longer live in Oaxaca and around 10 percent of them live right next door in the Salinas Valley.

Although institutions like Monterey Language Services provide translation services in courts and hospitals, there is still worry that this rare language will not survive.  Any attempt to save a language will have to be in large numbers in order to succeed.

Barbara Hollenbach, who works with the Summer Institute of Linguistics, is working on a Triqui-Spanish dictionary with 6,000 entries. She believes this is a step in the right direction but says, “The only way to keep a language alive is oral transmission between generations.”

Source : http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/2012/jun/07/speaking-minds/

Note:

The picture, which shows traditional Triqui weaving patterns, is from one of our colleague’s private collection. The artwork was created by a Triqui artisan group here in our area of Monterey County.     

In our community, other languages indigenous to Oaxacan Mexico are spoken, including Mixteco, Zappotec, Chatino, & Nahuatl, etc. These languages need to be preserved as well.

Today, a hot topic around the world is environmental sustainability. The terms such as sustainable business, ethical business, resilient business, green business, conscious capitalism, collaborative consumption, sustainable brands… etc have been created to keep up with the new ways the business world explains their environmental endeavors. But exactly what do these terms mean?

How do translators deal with these terms? How do they communicate the newest information on the issue in terms that everyone can understand? How do you build a “green building” in Thailand without the building being painted green?

Freya Williams, a columnist from the Guardian Professional, noticed the miscommunication when she visited multiple business conferences.

“…the lack of alignment on a common [sustainable business] language can lead to meetings in which some participants are left wondering what exactly they are discussing, while others are talking at cross purposes, and some are trying express ideas for which a name may not yet exist.”

In a conference as such, interpreters/translators have to convey the same level of vagueness or specificity or pragmatism, as the situation may be. Translators have to recognize the term coined in the target language, which might tend to be a literal translation of the English term. Hence, translations to these concepts may be just as vague as expressed in the original language.

New words are made to keep up with the changing times, but not everyone is on the same page with these changes. Perhaps it’s time for the world community to work together on the definition of the new vocabulary, so everyone can truly understand and communicate in an environmental conference.

Info: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/articulating-sustainability-language-green-business

Image: http://sustainablebusinessincubator.com/

The future of English is unclear, however, that won’t stop us from taking some educated guesses about what it could turn out to be.

First, it’s probably safe to say that our language will continue to not only evolve, but also continue to mix and meld with other languages. We’ve all heard the term “Spanglish” which is the slang word for the end product of someone attempting to speak one or the other, but then certain terms are replaced when the correct word is not known. Naturally, this is most commonly spoken in high school classrooms.

We think of this informal process of mixing languages as fun and games even though, realistically, other languages being smelt together with English is very likely. There are over 80 countries which have English listed as one of if not the only official language. Like most, English is not set in stone. New dialects and slang will continue to sprout and eventually “bridge the gap” between our English and other languages it comes in contact with.

Of course, no drastic changes are bound to appear for a while. Still, we will be able to see slight changes among the English language in our lifetimes. Each generation brings new words (Or old words with different meanings) to the table, which keeps us on our toes. One example of this we have all experienced can be found when taking a look at one of our most common forms of communication here in the states: text messaging. “LOL” is no longer an awkward sounding nonsense word; instead we see this is “Laughing Out Loud.” Others such as “BRB” for Be Right Back, “SMH” for Shaking My Head, and “OMW” which stands for On My Way, are all commonly used in texts between virtually anybody.

Part of what has caused English to evolve so much is its spread around the world.  The language’s diversity is shown by the existence of colloquial phrases such as the Jamaican “I and I” (meaning “we”), and “fixin’ to” (implying “planning to” or “about to”) in the southeastern United States.  In fact, certain letters and words have ended up with different pronunciations.  An example is the word “advertisement”: in England, the stress goes on the second syllable, but in the United States, it goes on the third syllable.  Also, when a word in English ends in an R sound, the R sound is replaced with a mid-central vowel sound (represented by the symbol ə) in much of the eastern United States, as well as in England and several former British colonies.

Some of the neologisms in English are based on people’s names.  Gerrymander comes from the name of a Massachusetts governor who redrew the state’s districts to favor his party in 1812, while the Diesel engine is named after its inventor.  More often, the doctrines and policies of particular statesmen lend their names to words ending in –ism, like Leninism and Thatcherism.

Sometimes, certain words in English can take on new meanings, whether alone or in combinations.  This occurs often in popular culture, as shown by the music genres blues, folk and rock ‘n’ roll, along with the movie genres comedy and horror.

Clearly, this tongue that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England is now one of the ultimate mixtures in the world, and simply continues to evolve.  In fact, many languages have entities that regulate them, such as the Bangla Academy, which regulates Bengali; English has no official regulation.  In a way, English is no longer a sufficient name for the language.  It nowadays needs a name that emphasizes its fascinating mélange of words from around the world.

English is quite possibly the most dynamic language in the world today.  This is due in part to the immigration into Anglophone countries, which has introduced countless new words, and partly to the Norman conquest of England in 1066, which altered English to make it a little bit more like the Romance languages (especially French).  Nowadays, this hybrid of Germanic, Norse and Romance languages is the first language of over 300 million people worldwide.

An example of the evolution of English can be seen in the spellings of words in Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English.  The following passage from the epic poem Beowulf is an example:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum,
þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon

The words hwæt, dagum and cyninga translate to the Modern English words what, day and king, except that certain letters of course changed.  In fact, there are letters that disappeared entirely from English.  Two such letters in the passage above are æ (ash) and þ (thorn), but others include ð (eth) and ƿ (wynn).  Over time, these letters were replaced with other letters.  For example, “th” represents all interdental sounds in English.

Another notable change in English occurred in verb conjugations.  Until the 1600s, the second-person singular pronoun was thou, with the verb conjugation –(e)st, as in thou knowest.  Then, the pronoun and its conjugation were dropped from English and replaced by you, although it still appears in religious texts and in the works of Shakespeare.

English has evolved since it first arose.  It is classified as a Germanic language, and of course maintains a number of Germanic root words, like gold.  But the language also acquired words like happy from Norse, words like nation from Latin, words like hyperbole from Greek, and words like algebra from Arabic.  During the 20th century, the language added Bolshevik from Russian and mahatma from Sanskrit, in addition to the names of numerous kinds of foods from different cultures.

The language English initially started to develop during the fifth century. Since its initial development, there have been four different variations of the English Language: Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English and Late Modern English.

The English language spoken today is Late Modern English. Over the years English has evolved very much so in its vocabulary. Many words have been added to the language because of the Industrial Revolution and as technology has developed. Also, since the British Empire had so many colonies spread throughout the world the language adopted many words from other foreign languages.

It is particularly interesting when looking at how many different varieties of English there are. Some variations include Australian English, Canadian English, South African English and American English.

Although it may be difficult to clearly identify different variations. At the end of the day, it is all English, each with its own unique twist.

Last Month, Monterey Language Services was featured on the “Your Town” TV show; a local program for the Monterey Area. Throughout the program, Mei-Ling Chen, Tim Sussman, and the host Joy Anderson discuss the resources, quality, and services that we have to offer at Monterey Language Services.

Monterey Language Services is a translation and interpretation company, offering high quality translation and interpretation services in over 175 languages.

We’ve uploaded some excerpts on our YouTube channel (Monterey Language Services).  Feel free to check these out, you may find them interesting!

It is estimated that 25 languages become extinct every year. Every major country has signs that are posted in their countries natural language, as well as English. In this era of globalization, has culture become the main casualty?

According to an article posted in The Australian, this has become the case. However, they further go on to explain that the movement to reclaim dying languages has grown in larger numbers. However, any attempt to save languages will have to grow in larger numbers in order to have a chance of success. The problem is the vast majority of people feel it is too difficult to learn another language, thus simply choose not to.

Despite this, there are still millions of people that share a passion for languages. On the Monterey Peninsula alone there are hundreds of students fully devoted to learning new languages. With this undeniable passion, the culture of languages will still be here to stay for a good while.

The full article from The Australian can be seen here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion/stop-revive-and-survive/story-e6frgcko-1226385194433

Explore the fun between human and animal communication in different languages!

Unless you were lucky enough to grow up speaking multiple languages, learning a whole new one can be an extremely difficult task. Still, people are willing to put in hundreds of dollars and hours in order to officially call themselves bilingual.

However, we aren’t the only ones capable of achieving this feat… animals are too, and it’s quite a bit simpler.

Avid Scooby-Doo fans know that our animal companions will do practically anything for a tasty snack, and that includes learning new and already-known commands in a different language. By assigning hand gestures with a command in the desired language, your dog will eventually be able to respond to the word or sentence in both languages simultaneously without the need for hand signs or body language.

If you want to see a bilingual dog in action watch this video of a man who taught his dog multiple commands in both English AND Japanese: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdDMvXCeaN8

 Thank those who have served, enjoy the food, and welcome to the summer!  

Memorial Day is a time for everyone in America to appreciate those who have served our country in the past, present and future. But it also means to fire up that BBQ and welcome in summer with open arms. The weather is changing—here in Monterey the ever-present fog keeps it cool—and school will be getting out.

And it all begins with the BBQ on Memorial Day. Food from around the world will sizzle on hot coals and guests at some BBQ’s may have to use their best translation skills when trying to understand what lengua and barbacoa are. Whatever language you may be eating in, branch out those taste buds and explore the universal language of food.

So enjoy the edemame and yakitori, and in the words of Andrew Zimmern, a chef who travels the world eating bizarre foods: “If it looks good, eat it!”

Picture was taken by Monterey Language Services at the Monterey Bay.