A community in New South Wales is hoping to revive the local Aboriginal language. Menindee Central School, situated in the Kinchega National Park, is offering an 18 month course in Paakantji aimed at adults. The school has taught the language for four years. The main aim of the program is to get it accredited, so that graduate students can teach others and keep the language alive.
The United Nations HQ in New York celebrated Chinese Language Day on Thursday (April 20th) with a series of special events. The day has been celebrated since 2010, and the April date was selected from Guyu to honour Cangjie, the legendary figure in Ancient China credited with inventing Chinese characters 5000 years ago.
The day featured displays of traditional Chinese dancing, musical performances, art exhibits and a demonstration by the Chinese Health Qigong Association.
The UN Department of Public Information (DPI) introduced language days in 2010 to celebrate each of it’s official languages and to encourage cultural diversity. Chinese is one of the six official languages of the UN, along with Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish and English.
The other official UN Language Days were selected for their historical importance connected with each language:
Maori TV are to re-launch a dedicated 100% te reo Maori channel, which is called Te Reo. From Monday 16 April, the channel’s weekday broadcast hours will be begin at 4.30pm, rather than 7pm, as it is at the moment. Te Reo’s weekend broadcast schedule will run from 7.00pm to 11.00pm.
The channel will primarily contain programming for children.
Korero Mai was the main language teaching programme to be aired on Maori TV, but the channel will be launching a new live daily Maori language show.
Te Reo is available only on digital and can be accessed via Freeview Satellite channel 24 and SKY channel 59.
Want to see your Twitter homepage in another language?
Twitter.com, with the help of 13,000 volunteers, has just launched in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Hebrew. Work started on the project on January 25th. This is the first time that Twitter has been available in right-to-left languages. Right-to-left languages previously caused problems, especially with tweets that contained both left to right and right to left content, and to overcome this problem, Twitter’s tech team have had to build special tools to make sure tweets, retweets, hashtags and numbers appear properly.
Twitter’s first foreign language launch was Japanese in April 2008. Although users have long been able to tweet in different languages, not all languages are supported on the homepage. You can now tweet in 28 different languages, with more planned additions this year.
You can file a language request if your language isn’t already supported on Twitter.
Twitter is currently looking for translators for nearly 20 languages. You can apply via Twitter’s Translation Center.
Other peoples’ ability to pronounce your name could affect how successful you are, a new study has found. Researchers at Melbourne University’s School of Psychological Sciences say that easy to pronounce names are generally perceived more favourably when it comes to job promotions, voting preferences and even at school.
The study, which is published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, looks at the “name pronunciation effect,” using surnames from a variety of nationalities. Amongst the easiest to pronounce was Sherman, whilst Farquharson proved more challenging to pronounce. Author Dr Simon Latham claims that the effects can be independent of the length of the name, or how unusual it is.
A 15 year old from Glasgow has won a trip to Beijing in a Mandarin competition.
Ellie Koepplinger, who began learning Mandarin a year and a half ago, impressed judges in the Beginners category of the British Council Speaking Competition, held at the British Museum.
“It’s a beautiful language that’s full of cultural references and stories – there’s a history to every word and phrase. The way the characters are formulated is also fascinating. I want to become an international politician when I’m older and that means you will have to interact with China and the Chinese. The more people that learn Chinese the better-connected and richer Britain will be in the future. China is going to be a superpower and if we can speak their language it’s going to help us massively, so I think it’s great that the British Council is encouraging people to speak it,” she said.
Ellie will join winners of the other language ability categories on a trip to the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China.
Those of you hoping to go to China and only speak in English have had your plans thwarted!
The planned controversial English language town project, which was to be based in Miyun, a county in the suburbs of Beijing, was vetoed by local government officials who felt that it was discriminatory against the Chinese language and people.
The proposed European-style town was in the process of being developed by a private enterprise, with the main objective of promoting the learning of the English language to internal tourists. Visitors to the town would have only been able to communicate in English.
New Zealand’s Maori Language Week will be celebrating its’ 25th anniversary this year with the theme of Arohatia te Reo (cherish the language.) The celebration will be held from 23-29th July.
The Maori Language Commission’s Chief Executive, Glenis Philip-Barbara, said “whether you’re a priest, a business executive, a Mum, a student or a fire-fighter, or anything else for that matter – you’ll be able to identify with this theme and find a way to express your love for the language.”
The theme of 2011 was hospitality, which was apt as the country hosted the Rugby World Cup.
School principal Patrick Tangaere recently wrote a cheque as payment to a McDonalds in Gisborne, New Zealand. What’s special about that, I hear you cry. Well, the cheque was written in te reo Maori, and was queried by restaurant manager Leah Hepi.
Mr Tangaere’s argument was that Maori is an official language of New Zealand, and as such, cheques written in Maori should be accepted as legal tender.
Ms Hepi’s response was that she had never come across a cheque written in Maori before, so had it authenticated by the bank over the phone.
Read the whole story here.
Whilst I can see both sides of the story here, it does raise a few issues. (Aside from the school principal taking pupils to eat at McDonalds on a school trip)
As Maori is a national language, and whilst cheques are still legal tender, all retailers must be made aware that they may come across tender in Maori as well as English. However, as cheques are no longer a regular form of payment, could the issue have been avoided altogether?
This years’ Maori Language Awards ceremony was held on Friday night at the Energy and Events Centre in Rotorua.
27 finalists were shortlisted to compete for awards in 12 categories, including education, government and broadcasting. Each finalist had to incorporate the theme of manaakitanga (hospitality) into their respective entries.
Reo advocate Dr. Te Huirangi Waikerepuru was awarded the Supreme Award, Taku Toa Takimano; the award to recognise an individual’s contribution to the language. Dr. Waikerepuru is renowned for his campaign to ensure the survival of te reo Maori.
Other winners included the Department of Corrections, for helping contribute to the regeneration of the language in the prison system.
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Wendy Wong Wendy is a full-time language teacher and curriculum designer, part-time blogger, and constant traveller. |
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