"I am, you are, he/she/it is". A polish guy learns English for Christmas. Photo: Allegro/Youtube
Well, the holidays are here, and given the way 2016 has shaped up, a lot of us could use a hefty dose of yule tide cheer. Our British brethren have voted their way out of the European Union, with Italy possibly following suit (something we wrote about, with a little too much optimism, as it happened). And the biggest news was a xenophobic con man winning a surprise victory as president of the United States, spurring a wave of anti immigrant hatred within the country.
So, how about a little bit of cheering up? For that, we look to Poland, a country whose own language is both as beautiful and as complex as a piano piece by its homegrown hero, Frederic Chopin, where a local eBay knock-off called Allegro has come out with an explosively viral video about an old Polish gentleman who yearns to speak a language that a bit less complex than his own: English. After receiving a hefty stack of books on how to learn English, our wrinkly hero enthusiastically sets out practicing verb conjugations: "I am, you are, he, she, it is!" he gleefully belts out. (This has to be the happiest anyone has ever been about learning grammar). To bone up on his vocabulary, he plasters his house with post it notes with the English words for each object, even posting his pooch with a little note that says "dog". And any attempt to learn English would be incomplete without a movie night. As he learns English, the old Pole decides one night to flip on his TV and tune in to some English-language fare. Lucky for him, he quickly finds an English-language movie to watch, but unluckily for him, it's a violent gangster movie. Our protagonist manages to pick up the phrase: "I'm going to fucking kill you". But thankfully, he also manages to pick up another phrase: "I love you." The clip closes with the old man preparing his suitcase - before packing, he holds it up and promptly blurts out "Suitcase!" with a giddy grin - and heads off to an Airport. Why is he going to the airport? Well, we won't spoil it for you, at least not entirely, but get ready for a sappy, feel good ending. In a troubled world, where foreign languages seem to increasingly be becoming a springboard for bigotry, nativist sentements, and even violence, this video is just what we need. It's a reminder that, as strange and unpleasant languages may seem to us at first, they can all be used for the same purpose: coming together with of friends and family to let them know that they are important to us. And maybe pinning a post-it note on them to brush up on our vocabulary. Watch the video here: Domo Obrigado, Rio. Image: Reuters/Yahoo www.rappler.com/technology/social-media/143810-viral-rio-2016-closing-shinzo-abe-super-marioThe 2016 Olympics wrapped last weekend, and of course, the show couldn’t be over without first shooting off a whole hell of a lot of fireworks and getting a lot of mileage out of that massive video display that had been installed on the floor of the Maracaná Stadium.
As is tradition at the Olympics, the closing also paid a hefty tribute to the next host city, Tokyo. Tokyo’s new mayor (technically a governor) Yuriko Koike, the city’s first female leader, was on stage along with Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes. But Koike wasn’t the highest ranking Japanese politician to attend the event – that honor went to prime minister Shinzo Abe, who made his entrance out of a giant green pipe in the center of the stadium, dressed as Mario from the Super Mario Brothers. But instead of bursting in with a chipper “It’s-a-me, Shinzo!”, Abe looked remarkably underwhelmed as he entered, almost saddened, with a look on his face that seemed to say that the only reason he had bothered with the pipe and Mario getup was to rack up shares on social media (by the way, mission accomplished). Perhaps he would have felt a bit peppier if he had grabbed a giant red mushroom before taking the stage. But for language nerds like myself, the highlight of the whole ordeal was right before Abe’s Mario moment, when the massive Maracaná display lit up with a message thanking its attendees. But in honor of both Rio and Tokyo, that message was put into both Portuguese and Japanese: “Obrigado”, “Arigato”. And in doing so, it perhaps prompted viewers to ask a question that has long perplexed many Japano-Brazilian polyglots: does the word “arigato” derive from “obrigado”? The short answer is that no, it doesn't. Though this theory has been bandied about by many would-be linguistic historians, it has been dismissed pretty decisively: see this link, or this link if you’re not yet convinced. Nevertheless, the idea that “arigato” is some distant cousin of “obrigado” is not as far fetched as you might think. The connection between Portuguese and Japanese actually goes way back, long before Japan had become the land of Mario and Murakami, to the time when Portuguese explorers dropped anchor off the shores of Shogun-dominated Japan. Wikipedia has a long list of Japanese words stemming from Portuguese; particularly notable are words like “irmao”, which means simply “brother” in Portuguese, but thanks to an influx of missionaries from Portugal, became “iruman” in Japanese, referring to a “missionary next in line to become a priest”. Presumably, Portuguese missionaries in Japan would call each other “irmao”; curious Japanese onlookers, who already had a word for “brother” but lacked a good word for a missionary in that very specific situation, eagerly adopted it into their own mother tongue. This is also good news for English speakers, since several of the words the Japanese adopted from Portuguese are directly related to their English equivalents. The word “alcohol”, for instance, is “alcool” in Portuguese and “arukoru” in Japanese. Nice to know for anyone looking to take in a swig of sake. The Olympics may be coming to a close, but anyone around the world curious about the origins of “arigato” and “obrigado” can be thankful to the event for shining a light on this frequently misunderstood linguistic coincidence. That's it for our special on language-related Olympics goings-on, but you can check out our earlier pieces, Part 1 on the history of "The Girl From Ipanema", and Part 2 on how bad behavior at the Olympics knows no language barrier. Check them out! "I wish this medal was a brain". Okay, Lochte didn't say that here. But he should have. Image: Getty Ryan Lochte is one of the greatest swimmers in the world. And it's a good thing too, because he has virtually no other talent. Thinking clearly isn't his thing; a compilation of interviews he's given shows he's not a particularly thoughtful person, nor does he come off particularly well off the cuff. One clip shows him telling an interviewer: "What I was always good at was letting things go through, like, through one ear, out the other.” Math isn’t exactly his strong suit either. In another interview in the same clip, the interviewer asks him what seven times four is equal to. His response: “21”. He may have the muscle mass to win 12 Olympic medals, but he barely has the brain matter to count to 12.
If all this sounds like I’m being too hard on the guy, it won’t after you hear about his destructive antics in Rio. Far from being a kind, considerate soul during those moments when all his neurons are firing correctly, Lochte all too often becomes a pompous, vandalism-prone jerk. The episode in question took place about mid-way through the Olympics. After a night of partying on Saturday the 13th, Lochte and his merry band of fellow dude-bros from the US swim team stopped at a gas station on their way back to the Olympic village. Presumably intoxicated, they proceeded to urinate on some of the walls, destroy the door of a bathroom, a soap dispenser, and a sign at the gas station. Understandably unhappy with the situation, private security demanded repayment for the damage done, at one point threatening Lochte and the other athletes with a gun. But after the episode played out, Lochte filed a police report in which he neglected to list the acts of vandalism he himself committed, categorizing the incident not as a rightful, if jarring, request for payback for those actions, but instead as armed robbery. Though initially inclined to believe Lochte’s account, after video surfaced of the event, authorities decided instead to go after the four men who had caused the trouble and then lied about it to authorities. Two of these four were intercepted while they were about to leave the country on a flight back to the states. But Lochte himself was long gone, brushing the incident aside with a brief apology on Instagram. The incident blew up into an international scandal, with negative reactions in both the Brazilian and US media. The New York Post (of all places) labeled Lochte as “the ugly American”, others cited the incident as proof positive of his white privilege. But there’s another lesson that can be gleaned from this, too: being a jerk is something that carries through all language barriers. It’s interesting to try to picture the scene at the gas station. Though there is video of the event, there’s no audio – presumably a great deal of shouting in Portuguese was involved. But beyond this, the whole episode begs the question of just how much the two parties: the boozed up swimmers and the security guards, actually understood of one another. The vandalism element, presumably, is an action that requires no translation. But is it reasonable to then assume that the swimmers, despite their lack of Portuguese skills, could then infer what exactly was going on? Specifically, if you destroy a gas station bathroom, people will probably want you to pay for it? The answer will probably have less to do with any high-minded linguistic calculations and more to do with the blood-alcohol levels of the gentlemen involved with the vandalizing. But, despite this factor, and Lochte’s reasonable assertion that the language barrier played a role, it still would be reasonable to assume that, even if you don’t speak a word of Portuguese, vandalizing a bathroom is seen as a bad thing by its owners. And if they ask you for money after you do it, that doesn’t exactly qualify as robbery. In this case, Lochte’s thick skull might work in his favor. If he ever faces any legal consequences for this, his demonstrable denseness can be put forward as evidence that he really had no idea that “fake police” waving guns at him had nothing to do with his bathroom rampage. Of course, this ploy would require him to have a team of much more mentally adept lawyers at his disposal (and as a 12 time gold medalist, he probably does). But for regular people, less likely to be equipped with gold medals, a smaller than average brain, and a general lack of empathy, there’s a lesson to be learned here too. Even the best intentioned American tourist will probably not be able to learn Portuguese in a matter of days or even weeks before visiting Brazil, or any other language that might be necessary for other travel plans. But that doesn’t mean that you have an excuse to throw common decency out the window. Though customs can vary from country to country, it’s a safe bet that ravaging gas station facilities is viewed in an extremely negative light, no matter where you are on the planet. But, to a certain extent, the opposite holds true too. Go out of your way to be understanding of locals, even if you don’t speak their language, and your time spent in foreign countries is much more likely to be a pleasant, enjoyable experience.
Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz perform "The Girl From Ipanema, 1964. Source: FabTV/Youtube
Tall and tan and young and lovely, “The Girl From Ipanema” is an undisputed musical classic. Released in the mid 60s, it was one of the few singles that succeeded in dethroning the massive hits cranked out by the Beatles on the American charts, if only for a short while. Today, more than 50 years later, it has been remixed and reinterpreted more times than it’s possible to count.
It also holds a special place in the hearts of Brazilians. And with Brazil at the center of the world stage thanks to the Rio Olympics, it was only natural for the song to be featured in the opening ceremony of the games. Organizers even picked out famous Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen to represent the girl from Ipanema, proudly strutting out on the catwalk assembled in the middle of the Maracaná stadium.
Gisele Bundchen as the girl from Ipanema at Rio's 2016 Olympics. Photo: New York Times
But English speaking listners familiar with the standard English translation of the lyrics would be surprised to find that they have almost nothing to do with the literal meaning of the original Portuguese lyrics. How different? We’ve put together a handy, 3 column comparison of the original lyrics in Portuguese, the literal translation of them in English, and the standard version of the song most English speakers usually hear:
What a difference! First of all, it’s clear why the official translation is always used. It flows much better with the melody of the original, and brings in a rhyming scheme that would be hard to add to a more literal version of the lyrics.
But it’s amazing to see how, despite mixing in some of the original words (“tan”, “sway”, etc.), the official translation flips the narrative of the original song around. In the original, listeners can perhaps picture a guy laying out on the beaches of Rio, watching a pretty girl go by, knowing he doesn’t have a chance and finding it to be a bit of a downer, but nonetheless finding a positive spin to put on it: that the “smiling world fills with grace, and becomes prettier because of love.” On the other hand, the official translation has a much sadder tone, that of a hopeless lover, desperate for the admiration of a beach beauty, but completely shot down, and without any consolation from a smiling world as the song wraps up to a few gentle toots from a tenor sax. Is there any explanation for such a difference? Looking at how the song was composed, and later translated, might give us a clue. The original music for the song was composed by Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim (the namesake of Rio de Janeiro’s airport), with lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. The pair composed the song in 1962, during a get-together near (where else?) Rio’s Ipanema beach, in admiration of one of the prettier girls walking by. Though the song was recorded in Portuguese immediately after it was written, the authors had no intention of translating it into English. Little did they know that, as they were relaxing on the beach, ogling hot girls, the well-known American sax player Stan Getz was getting ready to introduce their musical style, samba, to a US audience. Getz got the idea from guitarist Charlie Byrd, who toured Brazil the year before. Together, they released “Jazz Samba” in 1962, including a song written by Jobim. It was an immediate success in the States, leaving Americans eager for more. In response to this, Getz brought in Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto to record a new album, "Getz/Gilberto" on which Gilberto was to sing a few Brazilian classics in Portuguese. But since Gilberto didn’t feel comfortable singing in English (his English skills only extended to a few sentences), his English-speaking wife Astrud was brought in to sing in English. Though Astrud Gilberto didn’t do the translating herself (that was done by Norman Gimbel) and it wasn’t her husband doing the ogling, it’s hard not for her to imagine getting a bit of pleasure singing out the story of a man, possibly an unfaithful husband, getting shot down as he goes after pretty young things on the beach when he should be at work. But, despite the comparatively less upbeat tone of the song, it went on to be a huge hit. And there were even versions of the song made in other languages too: Spanish, French, and even Japanese! The flags of Britain and the European Union. Photo: Wikipedia For months now, the global media has been buzzing about the latest furor to sweep Merry Old England: Brexit. For those of us outside the Commonwealth, “Brexit” might sound some kind of delightful pastry to be daintily consumed during tea time. But for the Bits, it’s no joke: Brexit is a vote referendum that will decide whether or note the country stays a member of the European Union. The fate of the country hangs in the balance.
The battle lines ares drawn, though note as neatly as they usually ares. The “in” camp consists of a strange bedfellow coalition of the country’s center left and center right, with conservative (but not ultraconservative) PM David Cameron leading the charge. On the other side are many of Cameron’s former voters, angered that he hasn't done enough to make England great again, and a few standalone parties who have fully committed to the “out” campaign, notably Nigel Farange of the UK Independent Party (UKIP). But the "out" camp has also pulled in some nominal support from Britain’s far left, whose support stems from their irritation at the EU’s pro trade maneuvering, the desire to serve up a political defeat to Cameron, and perhaps the fact that their concern for the well being of the poor only extends to their own little island. While the "in" camp has floundered while searching for a convincing message (the best they seem to come up with is something along the lines of “yeah, the EU is kind of crappy, but leaving it is even more crappy”), the "out" camp has wasted no time in seizing on some of the nastiest, most bigoted sentiments brewing in the country to gain momentum. Farange’s UKIP published a billboard showing thousands of migrants, telling Brits that they should be afraid, very afraid, that those migrants might end up in England lest they vote “out”. One likely "out" supporter even gunned down a member of parliament who was in favor of the in vote. But it’s possible that what might be fueling the hatred within the out camp, beyond good old fashioned bigotry, is a specific form of bigotry: the irrational bias against other languages, or as I call it, “linguophobia”. Over the course of the Brexit campaign, and more generally, during the prolonged refugee crisis affecting all of Europe, languages such as Arabic, spoken by many refugees, are frequently portrayed as one of the main reasons why migrants are not to be trusted. But it’s not just Arabic that’s whipped Brits into a frenzy. Many campaigners for the out group have lashed out at the languages of continental Europe, painting them as tools of oppression used to subjugate good honest Brits. One viral meme features a typecast French-speaking official from Brussels pleading with Britain to stay in the EU: “Please, monsieur, vould you reconsidaire your vote?” The linguophobia that has done so much to drive the Brexit movement is by no means unique to Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump’s campaign for president has stoked hatred for Latinos, based in large part on the fear generated by the fact that many speak Spanish. Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter, once called Spanish “the language of the ghetto.” Other examples of language driving fears and bigoted attitudes can be found around the world. How do we overcome linguophobia? It’s not easy. Learning new languages is something that takes time and is frequently frustrating, even for people like me. There’s a reason why people talk about “language barriers”: when people speak a different language than us, it becomes much harder not only to communicate with them, but to empathize with their struggles. But in this case, it’s helpful to look at the very same chunk of territory some Brits want to break away from: continental Europe. While folks in Britain aren’t too keen on learning their languages, mainland Europeans learn English in droves. And while this hasn’t exactly made them bastions of tolerance, they certainly seem to be doing better in this regard than England. I think that by learning just one foreign language, you gain a lot of insight about not just that language but all languages. For the monolingual crowd, the sound of a language they don’t understand may seem hostile or threatening. But once you learn another language, it’s easier to picture other languages, even ones you haven’t learned, as simply what they are: a way to communicate, not that different from the language you yourself use. Stamping out linguiophobia may be difficult. But if the Brits manage to say no to the Brexit vote, perhaps their next step should be to start studying other European languages instead of mocking them. Brazil's new interim president, Michel Temer. Photo: Telam. Chaos in Brazil. The country's president of six years, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached by congress on corruption charges last week - specifically, that she overstepped her bounds in the budgeting process. But the country's new interim leader, ex-VP and former Rousseff ally turned foe Michel Temer, is even more deeply embroiled in corruption than Rousseff, as are the many congressional representatives that made the controversial vote (one who even did so praising the country's 1960s era dictatorship). Or, as a friend of mine from Brazil put it, "This place is like a season of Game of Thrones and where Westeros is led by Frank Underwood."
But amidst the tumult, people paying close attention to the issue were treated to a mildly goofy incident, also serving as a reminder of the how weirdly similar-yet-not Portuguese is to Spanish. On the day Temer took over, he received a phone call, which he was told was from the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri. Temer, presumably much less adept at humor than he is at stabbing his allies in the back, thought it was genuine. He also used it as a way to show off his halfway-decent skills at speaking Spanish. But it turns out those skills weren't enough. First of all, Temer didn't quite catch what the caller on the other end of the line was asking him - after asking him how his day was going, Temer responds that he wants to visit Macri in Argentina. But more importantly, Temer had no idea that caller on the other end of the line was in fact not Macri, but one of a pair of crafty radio hosts from Argentina, unhappy with the political situation in both their own country and in Brazil, who had decided to prank call him live on air. How did this happen? Chalk it up to the weird mix of Spanish and Portuguese that speakers of these two language use to communicate with each other, dubbed "Portañol" (a combination of "Portuguese" and "Español", the Spanish word for "Spanish"). Though speakers of either of these languages can understand basic sentences when they speak among themselves, communications break down when they begin to have elaborate, slang-laden, fast paced conversations. And what also gets lost is the nuance of the particular way each person has of speaking their own language. Case in point: to a native Spanish speaker, the voice of the radio host wouldn't sound at all like Macri's distinctive, medium-to-high pitched intonation in Spanish. But to Temer, happy simply to be simply communicating in "Portañol", that nuance was lost, and the voice of a morning shock-jock chatting him up could easily be confused with a presidential phone call. But this incident doesn't appear to have hampered relations between Temer and the real president Macri, who himself phoned Temer soon after and has been one of the few world leaders to openly show support for Temer, his ideological ally. After all, crafty political gamesmanship is something that all world leaders are happy to engage in, even if they don't speak Portañol. The Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Repbulic. Er, Chechia. Image: Traveltipy, creative commons The Czech Republic: best known for its weird clocks, beers, and mountainous landscape. Okay, the same could also be said about Switzerland, but you get the idea. But there is one thing that, at least according to Czech officials, sets their country apart from other mid-sized European countries: its name is too awkward.
Really? Forgive me if I'm a bit skeptical of this claim; it's not like there aren't other countries with awkward names in Europe, or the rest of the world for that matter. Just take the aforementioned Switzerland. Or Lichtenstein, a country that I just had to look up on Wikipedia to make sure I spelled right. And if we're willing to also consider capital cities, there's Ljubljana, Slovenia. Good luck saying that one three times quickly. So why are Czech officials so intent on changing the name of their country? It turns out the proposed name change has nothing to do with the name of the country in the Czech language, and everything to do with how its name is translated in English. Average Czechs are cool as cucumbers with their name as it is said in their native language: Česko. But, ever since the country broke away from Slovakia in the "velvet divorce" after the Cold War, the new country's name has been difficult to translate into English and many other languages. What are the country's renaming options? In a write-up on the issue, the New York Times has an overview of the alternatives for the Czech Republic's new name in English: "'Czechlands,' 'Bohemia' and, simply, 'Czech.' (Pilsner Urquell, the storied beer maker, uses 'Brewed in Czech' on its cans.)" But ultimately, the global-marketing-minded Czechs settled on a different name: "Czechia". Sounds so much better, right? Presumably, as an English-speaking reader of this article, you had up until now been avoiding the "Czech Republic" like the plague, appalled by its ghastly two word name. But now that it's called Czechia, you've booked the next flight to Prague, eagerly anticipating sipping a nice cold beer next to the 600 year old Prague astronomical clock. Because, you know, that's how these things work. Or not. Sure, always saying "Czech Republic" was a bit awkward, but the name "Czechia" is not exactly a step forward. For instance, one of the reasons for changing the name was that, in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, there was an outpouring of rage by irate Americans, who had confused the Czech Republic with Chechnya (way to win at geography, guys). But changing the name to Czechia would possibly only make that worse. Bottom line is, Czechs overly concerned with how their name is said in another language should just be happy that in their own language, the name of their country has a nice ring to it. As a prime tourist destination, the fact that the never-ending stream of English speaking tourists to their country have a bit of difficulty with their name is bound to get on Czech's nerves. But in the end, fussing over how their country's name is rendered in a language that isn't native to their country only serves to muddy the waters flowing underneath the trippily-decorated Charles Bridge. in other words, before changing its name, the country could have used a reality Czech. Countries of the world, categorized by the date format they use. You may be wondering what the hell this has to do with Pi Day - read on to find out. Image: Wikipedia It's time to get excited, because today is a holiday you didn't know you needed: Pi Day! Also known as π day, or #PiDay, as this relatively obscure holiday has suddenly become a massive trending topic on Twitter and other social media. What is Pi Day? As a glowing article at Time Magazine explains: March 14 (3/14) is celebrated annually as Pi Day because the date resembles the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — 3.14159265359 or 3.14 for short. ' If that explanation sounds horrendously nerdy, that's because it is. While Pi Day may be a day for the pocket protector prone among us to rejoice, others of us made sure to erase terms like "circumference" and "diameter" from our memory the minute we got out of geometry class back in 9th grade. For the less nerdy among us looking to make sense of the definition of Pi, think of it this way. Imagine you just ordered a 12 inch (one foot) pizza. Why is it called a 12 inch pizza? Because that's the distance of a straight line from one side of the pizza to the other - the length of the cut you'd have to make to cut the pizza in half. But the distance around that pizza is longer than one foot. For that same foot-wide pizza, the distance around the entire crust would be somewhere around 3.14 feet, or if the pizza chef has measured it really precisely, 3.14159265359 feet: Pi! For people like us, nerds of a more linguistic rather than mathematical variety, the fact that the English word "pie" (round baked goods that come in handy for explaining abstract mathematical concepts) is so similar to "pi" (originally a letter of the greek alphabet chosen arbitrarily to represent a precise geometric value) is just a happy coincidence. The origins of the word "pie" have nothing to do with the letter/word "pi", though the similarity offers plenty of opportunities for cheesy pie-based explanations of pi, as well as an opportunity for English speaking pie purveyors to cash in on Pi Day. But there's another curious and equally nerdy factoid about Pi Day that few people appear to be talking about: it only really makes sense in the date system used in the United States. Think about it. If you're from the States, referring to March 14th as 3/14 seems like the most natural thing in the world. But in many other country in the world, March 14th would never be called 3/14. Instead, it would be called 14/3.
The map at the top of this piece shows the countries of the world arranged according to the date format they use. The massive sea of light blue indicates countries that primarily use the "day-month-year" format, i.e. "March 14, 2016" becomes 14/03/2016. The countries shown in yellow use "year-month-day" format: March 14, 2016 becomes 2016/03/14. The smattering of green, red, and gray shows countries that use some combination of these or other formats. And that lone blob of magenta in the top left of the map, the US, represents one of only three countries in the world to use a very special format: "month-day-year", the only format in which March 14, 2016 becomes 3/14/2016 and bears any meaningful resemblance to Pi. (The other two countries to use this format are Belieze and the Federated States of Micronesia; for a full explanation of the map, see this Wikipedia page.) Why is the US the only major country to use this format? Perhaps the most credible answer is that this format originated in Britain, and was later changed in Britian and other British colonies. But since the change happened after America broke away from the rule of Her Majesty, it never made it to America's shores. Actually, the "month-day-year" format may make sense linguistically, at least for languages (like English) that tend to speak dates in those terms. In other words, there's no reason that a language couldn't evolve so that saying "March 14th, 2016" didn't sound natural. It would then make sense to use "month-day-year" when writing dates numerically, following the accepted spoken format. But from a purely data-based point of view, this makes much less sense. Why should the month, the calendar value ranking higher than the day but lower than the year, be put first? It would be like referring to yourself with your middle name first. Logically speaking, the only formats that really make sense are either "day-month-year" or "year-month-day". Presumably, the industrial revolution and its proximity to the very heavily day-month-yearified continental Europe put pressure on Britain to make the switch, while the US remains steadfastly month-day-year. Today, Brits are slowly shifting their actual linguistic standards to fit this mold; read any article in a British news outlet, and you're likely to see "March 14th, 2016" written instead as "14 March 2016". Chalk it up to America's innate standoffishness with the rest of the world; the same thing that keeps us using ancient units of measure while the rest of the world uses the much more clean and simple Metric system. But hey, it does come in handy for oddities like Pi Day. Under our system, it comes every year; since there is no 14th month of the year "day-month-year", folks using that system will have to wait until January 3rd, 4159 - under their format, 3/1/4159 - to celebrate a Pi Day of their own. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Photo: Christian Times Republican debates are reliably passionate, and candidates can be counted on to dispense heated words with one another. And sometimes, those heated words aren’t particularly mature – if you need any convincing of this, just look at Trump’s defense of his, um, hands at the last debate. But for language nerds like us, one moment that stood out in the Republican shenanigans happened a couple of weeks ago, and oddly enough, in Spanish.
The drama began about mid—way through a weekend debate, the 10th of the party's seemingly endless procession of debates that, thankfully, seem to be narrowing down. After a good hour or so of bickering, Republican senator Ted Cruz decided to, well, continue bickering – though this time about a favorite issue of his that nonetheless had yet to come up in this particular debate: immigration. Cruz accused his rival Marco Rubio, a fellow second generation Cuban-American (though Cruz would perhaps best be described as Cuban-Canadian-American) of being just a bit too lenient on immigrants. He pointed out that Rubio had gone on Telemundo a few weeks earlier and gave an interview in which he called for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the United States. And to top it off, Rubio gave the interview not in English but in the very un-American language of (gasp!) Spanish. Rubio, despite his penchant for canned responses which earned him the nickname “Marco Roboto”, had a quick response for Cruz: “I don't know how [Cruz] knows what I said on Univision because he doesn't speak Spanish.” Cruz upped the ante, opting to actually respond in Spanish: “I’ll answer you in Spanish right now if you want!” It was perhaps one of the strangest moments of a particularly shouty night for the GOP field. And it also pokes holes in one of my pet theories: that a greater knowledge of languages leads to greater tolerance. After all, the GOP field is actually pretty strong in the language skills department. Both Rubio and Cruz speak Spanish – at least well enough to insult each other en Español. And Jeb Bush, still hanging in the race, speaks fluent Spanish thanks to his Mexican wife. Meanwhile, none of the remaining Democratic candidates speak any other language. Still, it’s hard to imagine that the sizeable Latino population of the US is genuinely convinced by the surface-level nods to their culture. Cruz, Rubio, and Bush may all speak Spanish, but they won’t win over Latinos if they have the wrong message. No matter what language it’s in. Facebook's new reaction icons. Image: Facebook If you’ve been using Facebook over the past few days, you’ve probably noticed that the ubiquitous blue thumbs up “like” button has some company. Hover over the button, or hold it down on a touch screen, and you’ll be offered a whole array of new “reactions”, from cutesy hearts to a red-cheeked grimacing face intended to indicate anger. It’s hard to tell how this is going over. Sure, the fact that “liking” was the only reaction option for Facebook posts for many years (other than actually writing a comment) led to some fun possible alternative proposals: a thumbs down button, or even the more aggressive blue middle finger icon. But the opening up of new options, at least from my own experience, hasn’t led to explosive levels of adoption. Now, a group of linguists is going even farther, claiming that the syntax of the icons is deeply out of whack. Earlier this week, Wired magazine interviewed two linguists to get their take on the new Facebook reaction options. Their biggest gripe was that the words these icons represent are, syntactically, quite diverse. This means that the average Facebook user would have to expend more brainpower than a series of cutesy icons might imply at first. As the article states: “If you click 'Love,' your brain must autocomplete the implied phrase 'I love this.' Fine; just like 'Like.' So far so good. But things get weirder with the adjectives. If you choose 'Sad' or 'Angry,' it’s not 'I sad this' or 'I angry this.' It’s 'This makes me angry,' or 'This makes me sad.' Makes sense! But the mental gymnastics of tweaking this supplied context aren’t easy.” Huh. First off, it’s worth noting that the author of this piece basically disarms the argument being made here within the span of a single paragraph. The syntactic argument for the overcomplicatedness of Facebook reactions is that you can’t “sad something” or “angry” something. But, as it just so happens, you can be made sad or happy by certain things. But what about likes, you can’t be “made like” by things, right? Well perhaps not in English. But when you look at foreign languages, this changes. To give a basic example that probably everyone knows, let’s look at how you say “like” in Spanish: “me gusta”. Though this is the most common way in Spanish to say that you like something, from a literal standpoint, it doesn’t imply that you perform the action of “liking” something, but that that something does the action of making you like it. In English, it would be much more similar to saying something like “it pleases me”. So, with that in mind, “liking” becomes potentially much more similar to “sadding” and “angrying”. For someone who speaks Spanish, for instance, it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to connect “this makes me sad”, “this makes me angry”, and “this makes me pleased”. We only perceive it as syntactically different because of how our language is made up. But at the end of the day, all of this is a moot point. The real point of these lovably dumbed down icons is so that we can flip through of dozens of posts at a time and fire off quick, down and dirty reactions to them all at once. Because God forbid we put enough thought into our responses that we might actually have to form complete sentences. |
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