Language

Tapping out smartphone messages using shorthand such as “btw” (by the way) or “tbh” (to be honest) may feel breezy and efficient – but a new study warns these and other common abbreviations may make it less likely to get a response.

Whether you’re on a dating app or messaging with fellow gamers, it turns out that using abbreviations makes people believe you’re putting less effort into the conversation. They’ll find your message less sincere and not as worthy of a reply as the exact same text written in full.

“Abbreviations imply informality and casualness – so we thought if somebody uses one, you might read that as a signal of closeness and be more likely to respond,” says study co-author Sam Maglio, a marketing professor in the department of management at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.

“We figured that was perfectly plausible and we found out that was perfectly wrong. An abbreviation makes the other party tune out.”

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, was based on the results of experiments in the lab and the field, survey data and archival field data.

One experiment examined Tinder conversation histories submitted by 700 users across five continents. Researchers calculated the percentage of abbreviations participants used in their messages on the popular dating app. They found that for every one-per-cent increase in abbreviations, average conversation length decreased by about seven per cent.

When other Tinder users were surveyed, 80 per cent believed their matches wouldn’t care if they used abbreviations. But that wasn't reflected in the data – regardless of profile characteristics, topics discussed, message length or the sophistication of word choices.

Another experiment focused on Discord, a messaging platform popular among young people. They sent almost 2,000 messages to members of a Discord channel dedicated to anime TV shows, asking for a show recommendation.

“We set ourselves up to fail. We tried to find the most challenging arena for this effect to work: young people who live online – and it still worked,” says Maglio.

The Discord messages were probing whether reactions changed based on the type of abbreviations used. That includes: phonological abbreviations that condense words based on how they sound, such as “plz” or “thnx”; acronyms and initialisms like “hru” (how are you?) and “ttyl” (talk to you later); subbing letters or numbers for words, as in “u 2”; and contractions, which shorten words by removing letters, such as “rlly” or “wud.” All forms of abbreviations were less likely to get a reply than their spelled-out counterparts on the platform. The only exception was for the messages that used phonological abbreviations (although this exception was not noted in a subsequent experiment).

In a virtual speed dating experiment, roughly 200 young Americans were paired up for five-minute dates. Half were encouraged to integrate words from one of two lists – an abbreviated version and a spelled-out one – into their conversations. Dates had a much greater desire to continue talking to non-abbreviated texters and viewed them as more sincere. More of their dates also offered to share their contact information to continue chatting after the experiment.

The researchers’ lab-based tests yielded similar results – and the thousands of participants who participated in these studies all rated how much effort they felt were put into the texts, how sincere they felt the sender was being and how likely they were to reply.

The results were the same across the board: abbreviations meant less effort, less sincerity and a lower desire to reply.

“It’s possible that some participants treated the sincerity question as a kind of general ‘good or bad’ evaluation,” says study co-author David Fang, a �鶹��Ƶ alumnus.

“We mainly chose sincerity because it's important for relational building. Participants are taking a stab at defining what they perceive sincerity to be – for instance expressing genuineness in the interaction.”

Prof uses comics to explore students' linguistic identities, lived experiences

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:12:10 +0000

Prof uses comics to explore students' linguistic identities, lived experiences

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 11/10/2022 - 09:12

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Ai Taniguchi, an assistant professor of language studies, is using comics to share student stories about their lived experiences with language (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

When Ai Taniguchi immigrated to the United States with her family at age six, the permanency of the move hadn’t completely sunk in.

Taniguchi – now an assistant professor in the University of Toronto Mississauga’s department of language studies – remembers goodbye parties and saying farewell to friends in Japan. She also recalls arriving in the United States and heading on a family trip to Disney World, which felt more like a vacation than a move. And she remembers driving to Georgia and settling into her new home in Peachtree City, an Atlanta suburb.

But when Taniguchi started school, that’s when it finally hit her: She was now permanently living in a new country, didn’t speak a word of English and had trouble communicating with teachers and other students.

“I cried all the time,” Taniguchi says, adding that there were very few options for English as a second language (ESL) classes in suburban Atlanta in the mid-1990s. “It was very, very scary.”

To express her feelings, Taniguchi turned to drawing: creating comic-style art inspired by her love for Manga, a style of graphic novels that originate in Japan and are a big part of Japanese culture for both children and adults.

The other children took notice of her drawings. It soon became a way for her to connect with her peers when linguistic communication was hard.

“I wasn’t the weird kid that couldn’t speak English. I was the kid that could draw and my classmates treated me like a friend,” she says. “The power of art is pretty universal.”

This early experience planted the seed for Taniguchi’s Language, Identity, Multiculturalism and Global Empowerment (L'IMAGE) project. She is working with linguistic-diverse and culture-diverse students at �鶹��Ƶ to create digital comics about their lived experience with language and how they navigate their identities via language. The project is funded by �鶹��Ƶ’s International Student Experience Fund (ISEF).

Taniguchi says digital comics give students an outlet to share their experiences with language (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Starting in the winter semester, the digital comics will be shared through �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga’s International Education Centre via social media, as well as classrooms, student orientations and student-leader training programs to promote intercultural competence and empathy in the university community.

While her own early experiences laid the foundation for the project, Taniguchi says she was also inspired by her students’ stories about how they cope with their own language barriers – and how similar their stories were to her own.

“Students will tell me things like, ‘I'm so sorry, my English is so bad,’ or apologize about the language that they use,” she says. “That’s heartbreaking to me as a teacher because language is so strongly tied to your identity. It's a part of who you are.”

Taniguchi related to their struggles and wanted to provide these students an outlet to share their experiences. She felt that digital comics were a great way to do it: they can tell a story in a simple way, and they are accessible to everyone.

“There are a lot of things you can communicate with comics,” she explains, adding that they can be valuable tools for teaching technical aspects of language like sentence structure.

As a linguistics educator, Taniguchi feels that linguistics should be centred around lived experiences.

“I think comics humanize the discipline because you tell stories about a person, you see that person, you see the character telling us stories,” she says.

As part of the L'IMAGE project, each digital comic will also include an infographic that educates the readers about the language’s linguistics – for example, a comic about the Arabic language experience will be accompanied by an infographic about Arabic linguistics.

Taniguchi hopes that the project will empower linguistic-diverse and culture-diverse students at �鶹��Ƶ.

“I hope that they feel that their linguistic identity is valid and that it's OK for them to have a complex multilingual identity. I hope they feel more proud of who they are after this project,” she says, adding that the project can also serve as an education tool for all students. “If you've never heard some of these stories before, I hope that you will learn to empathize with communities that you are not a part of. I think we can create a wonderfully inclusive, diverse and welcoming environment. That's my ultimate goal here.”

Pilot project uses VR simulations to help newcomers learn English

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 18:46:22 +0000

Pilot project uses VR simulations to help newcomers learn English

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 11/02/2022 - 14:46

Cutline

Liz Coulson, Ji-young Shin and Paul Alexander run through a demo with some of the VR equipment they use to help newcomers to Canada learn English as part of a pilot project with the federal government (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Syria

�鶹��Ƶ Mississauga

Would you be more confident in a job interview if you had a chance to practice first? For newcomers to Canada, the answer is often a resounding “yes.”

With the help of virtual reality (VR), a pilot project at the University of Toronto is helping those who are new to Canada learn English by giving them a chance to practice their skills in simulated scenarios such as job interviews, shopping or ordering food at a restaurant.

The approach has been shown to not only to improve learners’ comprehension and speaking skills, but also their confidence.

“In VR, it is more hands-on to learn the language – it’s a very interesting experience,” says Baian Alkailani, who is one of the students involved in the pilot. “Learning it in a more fun and interactive way is very helpful to improve language skills.”

Alkailani says the VR simulation helps her practice real-life scenarios like shopping, banking, or ordering a coffee. “I think this is what we need,” she says.

The three-year pilot project is funded by the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the university. It was developed by �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga’s language studies department in conjunction with the Syrian Canadian Foundation (SCF).

“They’re super motivated and we see an increase in self-confidence,” says Paul Alexander, the assistant principal investigator on the project who oversees the technical elements related to VR.

“This is a new iteration with the technology,” adds Liz Coulson, an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the department of language studies and the education studies undergraduate program co-ordinator who oversees the research elements in the project.

The pilot project uses VR equipment to help newcomers learn English by giving them the chance to practice in simulated scenarios such as a job interview (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Coulson has been involved with �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga’s language classes for past last five years through the department. But it’s only this year that VR and artificial intelligence were introduced to the lesson plan through the help of partnerships and collaborations.

The language program is eight weeks long, running every Saturday at �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga. This fall, the university is holding two VR classes per week. There are 12 students per class, but close to 50 students total for the whole project. Classes are divided between standard language classes (without VR) and VR classes. Over a three-hour class, teachers will give a lesson before students use VR headsets in “role-play” segments with newly learned material.

The project uses Oculus Quest or Meta Quest headsets, which are standalone VR headsets capable of displaying different environments and settings.

“For the most part, all the students are first timers,” Alexander says.

For now, the project remains focused on refugee and newcomer populations. �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga’s work with the Syrian Canadian Foundation began five years ago, which is when Coulson took on the initial language program before VR and AI were implemented.

“I took it on wholeheartedly because I think it’s such an important project,” says Coulson, who applauds the work done by the foundation. “It was their inspiration at the beginning and partnership that has led to all this. It’s just an incredible team on that side.”

The team includes Coulson, Alexander, Ji-young Shin, Ilan Danjoux, a group of teachers who are graduates of the education studies program, teaching assistants and �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga students, including two that went on to work with the foundation because of the language studies program.

“This turned into employment opportunities for lots of students,” Coulson says, noting the department also works with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). “It’s really a family unit of UTM, OISE and department of language studies people.”

Coulson and Alexander are also monitoring the pedagogical effectiveness of using VR to teach, pointing to the opportunities it offers beyond language studies.

The current program wraps up later this month and resumes in January.

Understanding babies' minds: �鶹��Ƶ researcher examines how infants learn language

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 20:56:41 +0000

Understanding babies' minds: �鶹��Ƶ researcher examines how infants learn language

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 09/15/2021 - 16:56

Cutline

Researchers in Elizabeth Johnson's �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga lab track babies' motor responses and where they look for insights into how they learn language, but will soon be able to measure brain activity, too (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

Topic

Research & Innovation

�鶹��Ƶ Mississauga

For more than 20 years, the University of Toronto’s Elizabeth Johnson has studied the ways babies and children acquire language: How do children begin learning the meaning of words? How do they cope with unfamiliar languages and voices? How do they learn language so quickly?

Now, with the support of the Canadian Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund, the professor of psychology and director of the Child Language and Speech Studies (CLASS) Lab at �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga has the chance to delve deeper into the mysteries of language acquisition by effectively tapping into the minds of infants as young as six months old.

While Johnson’s team focused on more traditional behavioural measures such as eye-tracking, looking time and motor responses in her CLASS lab, her new Baby Brain and Behaviour Lab (BaBBL) will carry out event-related potential (ERP) studies to better understand how children acquire language. ERPs are an electrophysiological measure reflecting the brain’s activity in response to specific stimulus or events in the world. The researchers will use electroencephalograms (EEG) to measure infants’ neural response to speech sounds and words.

“It’s all really exciting because we haven’t been able to do ERP work in my lab, so it’s going to be a whole new lab component,” says Johnson, adding the procedure is safe and well-established for use in infants. “With this new tool, we will have a more complete window into the initial workings of the human mind.”

As Johnson and her team study what’s happening in infants’ brains, they will also be able to physically observe reactions and behaviours.

“The ERP measure will allow us to actually see how the brain is responding to words when they hear them, so I will be able to look at how neural responses line up with behavioural responses that we observe,” Johnson explains.

Researchers will examine how infants’ brains respond to words through the ERP measurements. The babies will then return multiple times, at different ages, so researchers can monitor changes over the years.

“By analyzing changes in those responses over time, we can learn a lot about what children are picking up on in the world,” Johnson says. “And, we can look at the way their brain responds to different words early on in development at six months of age, and how that might predict how well they’re speaking, and how many words they’ll know when they’re a toddler or when they’re older.”

She adds that researchers will also look at the ways caregivers interact with their children, and how it might impact children's neural response to the words they hear. For example, the research team will record and analyze caregivers’ different interaction styles to see how they support children's language development.

Johnson says it’s important to study how children learn language in linguistically diverse environments since many Toronto children grow up in households that speak a language other than English (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

With the help of her Canada Research Chair grant, Johnson will also study how children learn language in linguistically-diverse environments – a reality for many children in the GTA.

She says more children today are growing up in households that speak a language other than English, meaning they are learning more than one language and hearing different accents.

One eventual application of her work could be to predict reading and speech difficulties in children – especially in linguistically-diverse populations.

“Traditionally, infant research has been largely focused on children learning one language,” Johnson says. “But many – if not most – of the children in the world are learning more than one language, and being exposed to more than one language variety.

“If we want to understand how language acquisition and speech development works in the real world, we have to study how children learn language in linguistically-diverse environments.”

�鶹��Ƶ's Bonnie Jane Maracle on preserving Indigenous languages via Google Earth

perry.king — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:25:43 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ's Bonnie Jane Maracle on preserving Indigenous languages via Google Earth

perry.king Mon, 08/12/2019 - 16:25

Cutline

Celebrating Indigenous Languages is found on Google Earth’s educational storytelling platform and features 50 Indigenous language speakers (photo by Google)

Topic

The University of Toronto's Bonnie Jane Maracle says the launch of an Indigenous language preservation project on Google Earth is validating “our languages and what we’re working at in our communities.”

Appearing on CBC News Network, Maracle, a learning consultant at �鶹��Ƶ's First Nations House, says the Celebrating Indigenous Languages project makes her hopeful that the work being done in Indigenous communities is being supported.

This project can contribute to the growth of Indigenous identity in Canada and may prove to help reconciliation, she says.

“There are some really valuable sources like [the Google Earth project] being developed that we could utilize internally or in the education system to bring about that information on languages.”

The project can be found on Google Earth’s educational storytelling platform and features 50 Indigenous language speakers so far.

Watch the interview with Maracle on CBC News Network

Lost words: how dozens of Indigenous languages in Canada are in danger of disappearing

ullahnor — Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:18:15 +0000

Lost words: how dozens of Indigenous languages in Canada are in danger of disappearing

ullahnor Mon, 07/31/2017 - 16:18

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Ryan DeCaire, an assistant professor at �鶹��Ƶ's Centre for Indigenous Studies and department of linguistics, learned how to speak the Mohawk language (Kanien’kéha) in his early 20s. He now teaches it to students (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Author legacy

Nikki Wiart

Indigenous

Language

Truth and Reconciliation

“Vrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiibbbbbb.” Jennifer Sylvester’s hands grip an imaginary steering wheel; her foot presses hard against an invisible gas pedal. The 40-year-old student and mother is sitting on a colourful, padded chair in the common area of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Indigenous Studies, located at 563 Spadina (or ishpadinaa, the Anishinaabemowin, or Ojibwe, word for high hill). She’s surrounded by about a dozen other people. It smells of sage, and of winter.

Sylvester is about to get up and walk away from her make-believe car, when someone in the circle shouts: “Maaciipiso!” – Anishinaabemowin for leaving a vehicle. The group is playing a game called Baapaase, or woodpecker. It’s a marriage of Jenga and charades: blocks with Anishinaabemowin words and phrases written on them are stacked one on top of the other. Participants tap, tap, tap the blocks out of the stack, and then perform whatever action is on that block. Sylvester had an easy one – there’s also aagonigebagizo (skinny-dip) and boogidigwaami (fart in one’s sleep).

Baapaase was invented by Jenny Blackbird – co-ordinator of Ciimaan/Kahuwe’yá/Qajaq (CKQ), the Indigenous language hub within the Centre for Indigenous Studies. In this role, Blackbird, who is part Nehiyaw (Plains Cree) and part Finnish, organizes events such as the Indigenous Language Games that Sylvester took part in, and offers support and resources to students in the Indigenous Studies program. She also co-hosts Indigenous Waves, a weekly show on campus radio station CIUT that features music, storytelling and interviews.

Read about �鶹��Ƶ's response to the report

In the months and years to come, Sylvester hopes to see “more emphasis on the importance of reclaiming Indigenous knowledge, because a lot of our Indigenous knowledge is entrenched in language, and we need to ensure that this is protected and preserved.”

Sylvester, who’s Anishinaabe, with family from Chimnissing, or Christian Island, in Georgian Bay, already speaks a bit of Anishinaabemowin and is now learning Kanien’kéha in DeCaire’s class.

“There is a spiritual connection when learning any Indigenous language,” she says, “but learning Anishinaabemowin connects me to my family and my ancestors.” On top of raising an 11-year-old son, Sylvester is president of the Indigenous Studies Students’ Union, is in the final semester of her Indigenous Studies degree and has applied to law school for the fall. She hopes to be part of the federal government’s reconciliation process, as an adviser or advocate with respect to Indigenous languages.

Despite growing up in Toronto, Sylvester has retained the traditional knowledge passed down to her by her parents and her relatives still living on Chimnissing – something she hopes she can share upon entering, and eventually graduating from, law school. Her spirit name is Mandaagtaagozid Bneshiinh Kwe, or Beautiful Sounding Bird Woman, and it suits her. She’s quick to laugh – a contagious, song-like laugh – but that’s not, she’s decided, the reason for her given name.

“It hit me within the last year,” she says. “I always thought it was because I was a singer. But it’s because I’m going to use my voice to fight for Indigenous rights. I’m going to fight for revitalization. I’m going to fight for reclamation.”

The story was originally published at �鶹��Ƶ Magazine.

Nikki Wiart is a freelance writer and a farmer with Métis roots tracing back to the Batoche settlement in Saskatchewan. She has written for The Walrus, Maisonneuve and Maclean’s.

Thanks to K-Pop and Korean dramas, Toronto's Korean speech contest at �鶹��Ƶ gets bigger each year

ullahnor — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 22:24:03 +0000

Thanks to K-Pop and Korean dramas, Toronto's Korean speech contest at �鶹��Ƶ gets bigger each year

ullahnor Fri, 03/03/2017 - 17:24

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Students speaking at the Korean Speech Contest 2016

Kim Luke

Author legacy

Kim Luke

Topic

Global Lens

Language

East Asian

Faculty of Arts & Science

Korean

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Subheadline

The competition will be held March 11

The Korean Speech Contest held each year at �鶹��Ƶ's Munk School of Global Affairs keeps getting bigger and better since its launch 10 years ago – an upsurge in popularity that mirrors a wider trend in Korean language study.

This year, 45 university and high school students from across Canada will give speeches in Korean on topics ranging from pop culture and food to Korean friends and their own language study experiences.

�鶹��Ƶ launches class on ancient Ethiopic language with a donation from The Weeknd

geoff.vendeville — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:14:44 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ launches class on ancient Ethiopic language with a donation from The Weeknd

geoff.vendeville Tue, 01/10/2017 - 10:14

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Professor Michael Gervers (right) also donated $50,000 for the course. He sat in on the first class and got pointers from classmates Gelila Tilahun (centre) and her daughter Tseday Drudge, 16 (photos by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Author legacy

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Arts & Science

Language

Ethiopia

Global

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations

Medieval Studies

Subheadline

The university is now one of the only places in the world where students can learn Ge’ez

Tens of thousands of ancient Ethiopic manuscripts – maybe more – have collected dust for over a century because they are written in what is now a rarely studied language, Ge’ez.

But a new course at the University of Toronto is teaching a new generation of students to understand the ancient Semitic language so that one day they can access this long-lost trove of knowledge.

This week, Professor Robert Holmstedt of the department of Near and Middle Eastern civilizations welcomed 25 students and members of Toronto’s Ethiopian community to the first day of an introductory course on Ge’ez, which like Latin, is only used in religious services, in this case for the Ethiopian Orthodox and Catholic churches.

Hear CBC Metro Morning talk about the course on Ge'ez

Michael Gervers, a history professor at �鶹��Ƶ Scarborough, helped launch the course with a $50,000 donation and a call to Toronto's Ethiopian community to contribute.

The call was answered and the donation matched by none other than Toronto native and Grammy-award winning artist Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd.

Read about The Weeknd’s donation

The campaign for the language course has a $200,000 goal and has received support from the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Bikila Awards organization, a local Ethiopian community group named after Olympic marathoner Adebe Bikila.

On Monday, just as he had promised, Gervers sat in on the class, hoping to be one of the first to learn the language at �鶹��Ƶ.

Although he has been studying ancient Ethiopia for 40 years – he has swung from ropes to explore rock-cut monasteries in Ethiopia and created a database of tens of thousands of photographs of Ethiopian art and culture – Gervers does not know the language.

Amharic-speaking students helped him with his pronunciation when he was asked to recite a letter of the alphabet.

Professor Michael Gervers has studied Ethiopian history and culture for four decades and helped start the Ge'ez course at �鶹��Ƶ

The course's first students included members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities, students with an interest in Ethiopian culture, medievalists and students in comparative linguistics.

Before any of the students can uncover the secrets of ancient Ethiopic texts, they must learn the basics. In their first class, they were introduced to Ethiopic letters and to the present tense of verbs like “to sit.”

Hours of memorization come next. Holmstedt urged his students to carry a ringlet of flashcards so they can learn the alphabet on the go.

“Walk around campus memorizing words instead of looking at your phone,” Holmstedt said.

Gervers said he hoped the Ge’ez course would be the first of many classes that would form the basis of an Ethiopian studies program at �鶹��Ƶ. He has proposed a graduate-level course in the history of Ethiopia.

“Ethiopia is usually left out of the curriculum because it’s so different,” he said. “There is no point of entry through European languages like English, French, Spanish or Italian.”

The English of a Millennium Ago: �鶹��Ƶ compiles "Dictionary of Old English"

ullahnor — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:33:31 +0000

The English of a Millennium Ago: �鶹��Ƶ compiles "Dictionary of Old English" ullahnor Fri, 01/06/2017 - 14:33

Brent Ledger

Author legacy

Brent Ledger

Topic

City & Culture

Old English

Faculty of Arts & Science

Centre for Medieval Studies

Language

Subheadline

Now at “H,” the Centre for Medieval Studies' dictionary is close to defining every word from the language’s earliest days

Just when you think you know your own language, along comes a hellwyrgen.

Rob Getz ran across the creature in a 12th-century manuscript, where it was pushing some thieves suffering torments in hell into a pit of boiling tar.

As an interim co-editor of the Dictionary of Old English, a �鶹��Ƶ project that aims to map all of the roughly 35,000 words from the earliest form of the language, Getz is no stranger to challenging words. But this one was a stretch.

Not so much the first part which is obvious – hell. But the second part looked like it might be derived directly from the verb wyrgan or wyrigan meaning “to curse, revile, condemn.” It’s actually identical to the second part of a noun used to describe the mother of the monster Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

So in the end, a hellwyrgen turns out to be something like a monstrous female creature from hell, or hell-hag.

Read about the dictionary at CBC News

Old English, which arose from the Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers who came to Britain from northern Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, is the direct ancestor of our modern tongue.

It has bequeathed us dozens of common words – from “hound” (hund) to “house” (hūs). But the language has changed so much over the centuries that anyone reading an Old English text such as Beowulf would not recognize most of the words. Even the alphabet was different with fewer letters, a different letter for “w,” the wonderful “eth” (ð) and the runic “thorn” (þ) standing in for “th.”

Scholars at the Faculty of Arts & Science's Centre for Medieval Studies have been working on a comprehensive dictionary of the tongue since the 1970s, and with the release of “h” this year, they have now published definitions for more than half the words.

Computers have made things somewhat quicker, and a digitized corpus, consisting of at least one copy of every known text in Old English (from poems to royal records), means that they can now search more easily for words and citations. But scholars still have to organize the words and define their meaning.

Here, there is no algorithm to aid them – just countless dictionaries, Latin sources and the lexicographer’s best intuition.

Some words appear only once in the corpus, while others, such as the Old English for “hand,” “head” and “heart” are both common and complicated. The 39-page entry for heorte (“heart”) contains more than a dozen major meanings, including the seat of love, of courage and even of the intellectual faculties.

The section on the letter “h” was particularly difficult, and not just because it begins with more words than any other except “s” and “f.” It contains key verbs and pronouns, as well as the interrogatives – who, what, when, where and why – all of which began with hw in Old English. The interrogatives “are fairly uncomplicated in terms of their meaning,” says Stephen Pelle, an interim co-editor of the dictionary – but they “can be very complicated grammatically.”

Old English portrays another world, a world where rain might be described as “heaven’s showers” (heofonscur), but the language is also a window into the philosophical, moral, legal and linguistic roots of our own.

If we’re to understand those roots, we need to know the language the people spoke, says Getz. To that end, the lexicographers are trying to be as comprehensive as possible, picking up words earlier dictionary makers missed.

“If we’re doing our job right,” says Pelle, “we should be able to catch just about every word that survives in an old English text.”

Illustration: Charles&Thorn

Ten Interesting Words from Old English

Hring – ring. A lot of words that today start with consonants like "r," "l" and "n" began in Old English with h. Thus hleahtor (“laughter”), hnutu (“nut”) and hnappian (“to nap”). (The h was pronounced, at least in the early Old English period so hleahtor would sound similar to the modern word laughter with a huff of breath at the beginning.)

Hē, hēo, hit – the ancestors of our “he,” “she” and “it.” They occur about 200,000 times in the old English corpus.

Hūs – “house,” “building” and, in some contexts, “brothel.” The Anglo-Saxons loved compound words and hūs figures in more than 100 of them, including ealu-hūs (“ale house”), gyst-hūs (“guest house”) and pleg-hūs (“theatre” or “playhouse”).

Heoloþ-helm – a helmet that makes the wearer invisible. A demon wearing one of these figures in a medieval retelling of Genesis. He sneaks into Paradise and tries to trick Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.

Hunig-smæc – It sounds like a breakfast cereal, and it certainly has a sweet side. It comes from the Old English for “honey” and “smack,” or “taste” so it means “taste or flavour of honey.”

Hærfest-handfull – “harvest handful” or the grain given a labourer as his due during harvest.

Hǣmed – marriage but also cohabitation, adultery and even “the intercourse of animals.”

Hwæt – The most famous hard-to-define word in old English, hwæt opens the great Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. As a pronoun, it’s well understood. As a particle or interjection, as in Beowulf, not so much. Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet who translated the poem to acclaim in 2000, rendered it simply as “so.” Others have gone for “lo,” “hark” and “behold.” The Dictionary of Old English’s answer is: It depends. It might mean: “now,” “so,” “listen,” “why,” “now look,” “indeed,” etc..., but it depends on the context. The complete definition covers 26 pages.

This story is republished from �鶹��Ƶ Magazine

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Translating written English to Chinese is focus of new minor at UTSC

sgupta — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 10:24:55 +0000

Translating written English to Chinese is focus of new minor at UTSC sgupta Fri, 07/18/2014 - 06:24

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These four Chinese characters translate to English as "English-Chinese translation" (image courtesy UTSC)

Chris Garbutt

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Chris Garbutt

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Chinese is now the third most commonly used language in Canada

Starting in September, a new minor at the University of Toronto Scarborough's Centre for French and Linguistics will teach students how to translate written English to Chinese.

“The need for professional English and Chinese translation is growing rapidly,” says Helen Wu, senior lecturer in Linguistics at UTSC. “The ability to translate between English and Chinese has become a valuable asset in our global economy.”

Chinese is now the third most commonly used language in Canada, and the demand for translation services is growing in fields such as community service, journalism, tourism, immigration, medical services and legal services. There’s also a need for these skills in government and multinational corporations.

And the program will also deepen the connections between UTSC and its wider community.

“This is a campus that cares about its languages,” says Rena Helms-Park, associate professor in the Centre for French and Linguistics. “The languages we teach reflect the communities around us.”

The minor program will open up 30 spots in its first year. While the focus is currently on translation of English text into Chinese, there are plans to develop programs for Chinese to English translation as well.

Students who complete the program will enter the job market with skills that give them an advantage when those translation skills are required, says Wu, but there are other benefits.

“This program prepares top students who want to go into graduate study in this field because it equips them with both theoretical and practical skills,” she says.

The minor will also give students the skills to get the experience they need to become accredited in translation, both in Canada and China.

For information on the English-to-Chinese Translation program at UTSC, contact Wu at helenxy.wu@utoronto.ca or the centre’s undergraduate assistant at cfl-ua@utsc.utoronto.ca.

Chris Garbutt is a writer with UTSC

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Translating written English to Chinese is focus of new minor at UTSC