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Bolt, Crook and Payne: What’s in A Name?

Patrick Cox — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:45:41 +0000

Usain Bolt bolts, Anna Smashnova was a tennis pro, Bob Flowerdew is a gardening expert. Coincidence?

In this episode of the pod, criminal defense lawyer Frances Crook and vicar Michael Vickers discuss their own names and vocations with John Hoyland of New Scientist. Hoyland first became interested in nominative determinism—a term he coined—after being told about a study of incontinence authored by JW Splatt and D Weedon. On the same day he came across a book on the Polar regions by Daniel Snowman.

Among the questions discussed: why do some people feel drawn to professions predicted by their names? Why do others enter professions that their names suggest might be inappropriate (Dr De’ath or airline planner Rod Muddle)?

Of course in the old days, people were often named after the family profession—Smith, Baker, Potter, Cooper. But that doesn’t happen any more.

Hoyland hasn’t come upon conclusive research on any of this. All he has is a hunch. A slight one. As he puts it, “there’s something going on here, or maybe there isn’t.”

Also in the pod:

Clemson Smith Muñiz has been the play-by-play voice of Los Knicks en español. He talks about how basketball terminology in Spanish has many regional variations. The word dunk for example, translates as donquear in Puerto Rico, mate in Spain, volcada in Argentina, and clavado in Mexico and central America. You’d have thought Smith Muñiz was spoiled for choice. But no, he’s come up with his own expression: martillazo, which means a hammer blow.

In the wake of the death of Kim Jong Il, it’s a good time to check in on freedom of expression south of the DMZ. While it’s in as short supply in the North as food and electricity, that’s not the case in South Korea. But there are limits. We have a report on a podcast that’s hugely popular there. It’s a part satirical, part serious indictment of South Korea’s president Lee Myung Bak. It’s called (in translation) I’m a Petty-minded Creep. On December 22, 2011, one of the podcast’s hosts was sentenced to a year in prison for spreading false rumors. The host, who was once an opposition politician, is also barred from running for office for ten years. So now we know a little more about the limits of free speech in South Korea. More Korean language coverage here and here.

And, the late Christopher Hitchens discusses the power of debate with his brother Peter Hitchens. The two disagreed on just about everything—except for the value of argument as a means to arrive at principled positions.

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Jazz Saxophonist David Murray Plays Nat King Cole

The World — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:00:55 +0000

Anchor Marco Werman speaks with jazz saxophonist David Murray about his homage to Nat King Cole’s recordings of Latin standards.

Below David Murray performs live at Village Vanguard in New York in 1986 with Ed Blackwell (drums), John Hicks (piano), Fred Hopkins (bass).

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Chicas! Spanish Female Singers 1962-1974

The World — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:00:13 +0000

Like the mini skirt and beehive, it wouldn’t be the 60s without carefree female singers.

England had Dusty Springfield.

The US had Nancy Sinatra.

And Spain was no exception. It had Marisel.

But Marisel was just one of the many artists featured in a new CD called “Chicas: Spanish Female Singers 1962 to 1974.”

Most of the tunes on the CD were released as original singles, composed by Spanish song writers.

They had been influenced by British rock, American soul and dance crazes like twist.

Anchor Marco Werman tells us about a new CD collection that gathers the best in Spanish girl pop from the 1960s and early 70s.

Hablamos Español

The World — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:40:25 +0000

You may be among the millions tuning into the NBA Finals this week. Many fans are listening to Spanish language broadcasts of the series that pits Los Mavs against el Miami Heat. So our Geo Quiz is this: how many countries are there around the world, where Spanish is an official or national language?

Our list includes countries on 3 continents. It begins with Argentina and ends with Venezuela. In fact there are so many countries, that announcers sometimes have a hard time coming up with the one word that suits all:

“And it was a challenge everyone would put out their dictionaries, my Chilean dictionary, my Puerto Rican dictionary, my Royal Academy of Spain dictionary and it’s a challenge.”

The answer is 20! What does that have to do with the excitement surrounding the current NBA Finals? Anchor Marco Werman speaks with leading Spanish language sports announcer Clemson Smith Muñiz.

Here’s our list:

Europe: Spain

Africa: Equatorial Guinea in West Africa

North and Central America : Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama

South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Puerto and the USA are not on the list:
Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. where Spanish and English are the official languages.
USA: The United States holds the world’s fifth largest Spanish-speaking population, outnumbered only by Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Colombia but Spanish is not an official language.

Re-learning Spanish, and Super-Injunctions

Patrick Cox — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:42:07 +0000

Thousands of kids from the United States are enrolling in Mexican schools. The reason: their Mexican parents are moving back from the United States. There are many reasons for this. Among them: deportation, fear of deportation, the poor economy in the U.S. Some of the children were born in Mexico, some in the United States. But now they are in Mexico after years of English-language education, they are struggling to learn or re-learn Spanish. We have a report from the border city of Nogales, Mexico.

The language of the border and immigration has long been politicized. Whether you call someone who has jumped the border an illegal alien or undocumented worker depends on your politics. Neither term works for children whose families sneak them across the border. We have a report on these expressions, and many more from Michel Marizco of the Fronteras desk, run by several public radio stations based in the US South West.

Then, the pod travels to the UK, where British gag orders known as supin-injunctions aren’t working, thanks to Twitter. British judges can prohibit British newspapers and websites from talking about certain topics, but they can’t prohibit people tweeting from say, the United States. Britain isn’t China: it can’t maintain an internet firewall around its citizens. So politicians have concluded that the laws on injunctions will have to change. The lesson of this episode may be that it’s no longer possible to keep a secret about a public figure. And if you try, you may well find that the secret rapidly becomes subject to the Streisand effect. (Yes, that’s Barbra).

Staying in Britain, we ask this: does Obama heart Britain as much as the Brits heart Obama? It’s not clear, even after the President’s recent trip to the UK, where he spoke many fine and admiring words about British institutions.

However, it seems that the so-called Special Relationship, held dear by British politicians and journalists, may no longer be so special.

When it comes to its relationship with Downing St, the White House appears not to want to be pinned down to an exclusive dating arrangement. Instead, the Americans are trying to balance multiple partners: Israel, China, Russia, India, Afghanistan and others. None of these partnerships is a candidate for a new special relationship; most are based on geopolitics and expediency rather than trust. But it’s nonetheless galling for Britain. After all, Tony Blair risked his political future on the Special Relationship when he stood by George W. Bush and sent British troops to war in Iraq, for better or worse. So soon after cementing the Special Relationship, the Brits are now watching it fade into relative insignificance.

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English-only in the US, translating tweets in Japan and satire in Egypt

Patrick Cox — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:28:56 +0000

The English Only movement in the United States is always active during times of high immigration (check out my previous interview with US English lobbyist Tim Schultz). Now, the movement has got a shot in the arm from the Tea Party. It may help convince lawmakers and voters in the 19 remaining states that don’t yet have a law on their books declaring English to be the official language.

The issue with most of these laws is that they are ineffective (here is a map of English Only legislation in the United States). Many are symbolic only: they don’t specify how and when English must be used. Some do get specific. In Arizona and Oklahoma, for example, you can’t take a driving test in a foreign language. But even then it’s not clear how much English Only laws affect linguistic behaviour.

There’s a long-established pattern of English acquisition among immigrants and their children. The first generation often speaks little or no English. The second generation, born in the United States, is bilingual, but often more proficent at English than the home language. The third generation is usually monolingual English, unable to communicate with their immigrant grandparent. People like language writer Robert Lane Greene, interviewed in my story, believe that pattern is again playing itself out.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Tea Partiers from bumper-sticking their love of English and fear of (mainly) Spanish from Florida and Texas all the way to Wasilla, AK. This video has more than 14 million hits on YouTube, and the duo have performed it numerous times at Tea Party events.

Also in the pod this week, a conversation with Aya Watanabe, who has spent much of the past month translating earthquake-related tweets from Japanese to English.

It’s part of a project started by Japanese blogger Gen Taguchi to collect tweets that may give succor and inspire Japanese people in the face of this tragedy. Volunteers have translated tweets into at least 17 different languages.

In English, many of the tweets have more than the 140-characters maximum permitted by Twitter. That’s partly because a single Japanese character conveys more information than a single letter in the Roman alphabet. It’s also because Watanabe has sometimes added contextual details (eg ” on Kyushu Island, a thousand miles south of Tohoku”).

Below are some of Aya Watanabe’s favorite tweets, starting with the two that inspired her to start translating them into English.

At a jammed crossing
I was driving home after the quakes. Streets were extremely jammed and at many crossings only one car could cross the street per green light. At a spaghetti crossing, all traffic was paralyzed for more than 5 min. All drivers, I encountered, waiting to cross streets were calm, giving way to others. All thru my 10 hr driving, I didn’t hear any honking except those showing gratitude to others. Of course this travel was scary but also heart warming. This experience made me like Japan all the more.

At Tokyo Disneyland
They distributed sweets that are part of their merchandise. High school girls with heavy makeup took away more candies than they would possibly eat and that raised my eyebrows. Later, I saw those girls giving the candies to kids at evacuation areas. Families with kids had limited mobility and couldn’t get to where the candies were distributed. Go girls!

My mother’s foot warmer
Mom goes, “Oh! My little foot warmer got away!” My sister goes, “No I did not! ;D” And Mom goes, “Oh, there you are :) :) ” … Mom and sister were sharing a futon during a blackout and Mom was searching for my sis’s warm feet. Cute mom :) :)

A little knight
I was walking behind a mother with a little boy and a baby in a carriage. The mother said to her young boy, “What if another earthquake hits? Scary, isn’t it?” The kindergarten boy said, “No worries, Mom. I will do THIS!” Then the boy bent over the baby in the carriage to protect his young sibling. What a little knight in a shiny armor. My heart felt warm.

Disgraceful
A teenage boy walked into a drugstore, a package of toilet paper in hand. He said, “My parent hoarded and bought two packages yesterday. How disgraceful. I would like to return one.” –My friend who works for the drugstore was impressed to hear a word “disgraceful” from a high school boy. We have bright future ahead in this country.

Packing for a move
When I was packing for my move, my mother handed me a flashlight and survival food she had kept for the family, saying “Take these and don’t buy new ones. There are people who really need them now. Us? We are fine. We have family and neighbors. We can help each other if a disaster strikes our area. You will be living by yourself, a stranger in a strange land. You have all the reasons to be anxious about your new life. No need to be anxious about us, your family.” I felt so proud to be my mother’s daughter, to be part of this family.

Mom’s Pep Talk
Called my Mom to let her know I survived the quakes. She lives in Kagoshima, on Kyushu Island, a thousand miles south of Tohoku. Thought she was worried about me and wanted to calm her down. Instead of tears, what I got from her was a pep talk. “Know, with all your heart, the meaning of your being where you are, at this timing and age in your life. Do the best you can to serve others.” Mother, I am proud to be your son. I will live through all this.

In the podcast, I also mention an interview on the Big Show with Tik Root, a Middlebury College student. Root was arrested in Syria where he was studying Arabic. He was detained for 15 days, suspected of being a foreign agent provocateur in Syria’s pro-democracy protests. Here’s the interview.

Finally in the pod, we hear from Egypt about an instantly popular news satire show whose host is being compared to Jon Stewart. Below is a translation of a clip from the show

TALAT ZAKARIYA: You must have heard what’s happening in Tahrir Square.

BASSEM YOUSSEF : No! What? What?

T: Drums and horns and dancing…girls…and boys…and drugs…and full sexual relations.

Y (on the phone to someone): Didn’t I tell you we need to go to Tahrir Square? Dude, they’re saying there’s music and women and sex, and we’re sitting here? … Sorry, sorry.

Y: Mr. Talaat, is there a video that proves what you’re saying?

[Belly-dancing video]

Y: Sorry, clearly we got the video mixed up. We’ll fix it. Mr. Talaat, sorry, go ahead, tell us what else is happening in Tahrir Square?

T: What happening right in Tahrir Square is a carnival.

[Carnival clip]

T: There’s a band..there’s a one act play..all of it against the president..there are snacks and drinks and sodas and tea.

Y: I’ve finally learned what’s happening in Midan Tahrir. Out of solidarity with the eminent Mr. Talat Zakariya, I’m going to show you the proof.

T: Drums and horns..

[Crowds singing the national anthem]

Y: So ill-bred. People singing in Midan Tahrir.

T: Full sexual relations…

[Protesters fighting police]

Y: You’re right. It was an orgy…Anything else to add, Mr. Talat?

T: And who knows how many Muslim Brothers, and God knows what else, there…

Y: What, with the music and the girls and the drugs and the sex? What kind of Muslim Brothers, dude?

Mr. Talaat, concentrate for a moment–are you sure of what you’re saying?

T: And I take full responsibility.

Y: So when we write the history of the revolution… There was music and dance, girls and boys, drugs and sex, and Muslim Brothers. They had a carnival, they ate snacks and this lead to the fall of the regime.

Y: Mr. Talaat, is there anything else you’d like to add– anything else bothering you?

T: “Depart”: What does that mean? What does it mean to simple people?

[Video of Wael Ghonim and friends]

“Depart” means get out of here! What don’t you understand?

Y: I hope we answered the question.

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Photos: Sage Ross, Wikimedia Commons

From Cicero to Lynne Truss with Robert Lane Greene

Patrick Cox — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:10:27 +0000

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As soon as I saw the new book by Robert Lane Greene You Are What You Speak, I know he and needed to speak. Not just because we both speak Danish (we didn’t even talk about that). It’s mainly because the book takes on so many of the same issues that I do in The World in Words podcast. It’s like the pod on steroids, done with proper research.

Underlying You Are What You Speak is a love of the relative chaos of language. We can’t predict, let alone control how language evolves, Greene argues, so why try? Well, it seems we can’t help ourselves.

Sometimes it’s governments that issue linguistic admonishments: France and Turkey have been especially active. Sometimes it’s individual armchair stylists: Cicero (“At some point…I relinquished to the people the custom of speaking, I reserved the knowledge [of correct grammar and pronunciation] to myself”); Strunk and White (“Do not join independent choices by a comma”); and Lynn Truss (“Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation”). Of that lot, Turkey’s switch from Arabic to Roman script appears to have been the most successful. In France, the Académie française is admired but largely ignored. And most of the armchair stylists lose out to common usage. The more free, open and democratic a society is, the less it is likely to follow anyone else’s language rules.

Here in the United States, the Tea Party has embraced the English Only movement. This video, uploaded in 2007, has more than 14 million hits on YouTube, and the musicians have performed it at numerous Tea Party events:

This is just one way in which language is bound up in identity. Another is via the power of our mother tongue: how much does our first language set and restrict how we think, and how we perceive the world? Think of all those people who write in a second or third language.Lijia Zhang, who grew up in China, but writes in English, is convinced that her English self is different from her Chinese self. For one thing, Zhang says, she’s ruder in Chinese (the Big Show’s science podcaster Rhitu Chatterjee says the same of her native Bengali self).

Not only does English have words that don’t exist in Chinese, says Zhang. Also, writing in English frees her to say things that in her native tongue are taboo. She recalls a time in the 1980s when she met a young Chinese man “who I rather fancied.” She said to him, in English, “you look cool.” It was somehow OK to say that in English; had she said it in Chinese, it would have meant instant rejection and humiliation.

Now, that may have as much to do with memory and custom as it does with the instrinsic nature of English vs. Chinese. The words in Chinese were available to Zhang. They were just freighted with expectation and fear. In English, Zhang could be irresonsible, and blame it on the language.

Greene deals with this question of language and personality by citing a number of recent studies, some of which we’ve talked about in previous pods (here and here). In linguistic circles, the pendulum has swung back and forth between those who believe that language shapes thought, and those who argue that thought forms language.

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Spanish language loses two letters

The World — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:40:23 +0000

The Royal Spanish Academy has spoken. From now on, there will be only 27 letters in the Spanish alphabet. Not 29. Why? Because the Royal Spanish Academy said so. But that is not sitting well with some of the world’s 450 million Spanish speakers. They like the alphabet just the way it is, including the separate marquee status for “ch” and “ll” that the academy wants to do away with. Ilan Stavans, professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College, discusses the issue with host Katy Clark. Download MP3

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark. This is the world. The Royal Spanish Academy has spoken. From now on there will be only twenty-seven letters in the Spanish alphabet, not twenty-nine. Why? Because the Royal Spanish Academy said so. That’s not sitting well with some of the world’s 450 million Spanish speakers. They like the alphabet just the way it is, including the separate marquis status for CH and LL that the Academy wants to do away with. Ilan Stavans is professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College, and just to make clear to our listeners just what letters and sounds we’re talking about, can you give us some examples of the CH words and the double L words?

ILAN STAVANS: Sure. CH words include chicharon, is a Mexican word or chunga a Peruvian word. And double L meaning ‘ay-yay,’ words include lluvia, rain or llave, key. Those are the two letters that are going to be eliminated from the Spanish alphabet. That doesn’t mean that the sounds disappear. It just means that rather than having in a dictionary words like lluvia and chicharon listed under the CH or the double L they will now appear under the letter L or C.

CLARK: So I mean that seems like it’s simplifying things a little bit, but I mean has the Royal Spanish Academy been up front about why it wants to drop the CH and double L?

STAVANS: I think that they have stated that their mission is indeed to simplify, but as you know language, and the delicious aspects of it are about complication.

CLARK: You are quoted in today’s New York Times saying that this whole episode is a relic of colonial times, and Latin Americans we have to wait for Spain to say how we speak. Is that what’s really irking some Spanish speakers about this?

STAVANS: Absolutely, this is an academy, the Royal Academy of the Spanish language that is almost 300 years old. It is based in Madrid, and often takes very tyrannical dictatorial approaches to the language mostly spoken in Latin America, that is by the former colonies. Although in Latin America there are a number of branches of the Royal Academy, as far as I understand they have little to no influence whatsoever in what the academy in Spain decides. It strikes me that in English the second most important most popular language in the world, we don’t have an equivalent. We don’t have a Royal academy of the English language in England or the United States, that is a federally funded institution that dictates how we the people should speak, should use the language. In Spanish unfortunately we do, and we still have a very submissive approach. What is said and done and ordered in Spain most often is just followed by Latin Americans even when we are unhappy about it.

CLARK : Ilan Stavans teaches Latin American and Latino studies at Amherst College in Amherst Massachusetts. Professor Stavans, enjoy the rest of your holiday.

STAVINS: Thank you. And you do as well.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The English-only movement in America

Patrick Cox — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 20:05:52 +0000

A conversation about making English the only official language in the United States. Tim Schultz, lobbyist with Washington-based US English makes the case for this, ahead of an English-only vote in Oklahoma.

This is not the usual fare on The World in Words: we don’t often offer the microphone to people who discourage the use of other languages. But Schultz argues that English is what keeps America — a land of immigrants and therefore of many languages — intact. He believes that Spanish in particular is fast becoming an unofficial official language here (if that makes sense). He says government agencies use Spanish and other languages without thinking about the message they are sending. What they should be doing, he says, is using English so that non-English speakers are encouraged to learn the language, and succeed in their adopted homeland. Finally, he acknowledges that bigots and racists may be among the supporters of English Only. But as far as he’s concerned, they do not form the mainstream, nor does he share their views.

Also, an election ad in Chinese, aimed at Americans who don’t speak Chinese. This comes courtesy of conservative think tank/advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste, which clearly doesn’t think this glossy ad in a foreign language is a waste of money.

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Speaking in Tongues and Dreaming in Chinese

Patrick Cox — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:58:30 +0000

A new PBS documentary, Speaking in Tongues, follows four students and their families at dual immersion schools in San Francisco. The film offers evidence that the study of math, science and other subjects in more than one language gives students an edge, despite what some disapproving relatives might think.

I heard about this film many months ago. What really intrigued me about it was that the filmmakers — Marcia Jarmel and her husband Ken Schneider — have a big stake in this subject themselves. Ten years ago, they enrolled their older son into a Chinese immersion elementary school. A few years later, they did the same with their other son. It seemed to me that the best way to do a story about the film was to do a story about the Jarmel-Schneider family. So I interviewed them all at their house in the Richmond District of San Francisco (where many local stores are owned by Chinese speakers).

Of the four school students profiled in Speaking in Tongues, one is close in circumstance and motivation to the two Jarmel-Schneider boys. Julian Ennis is a high school sophomore, whose white middle class American parents have no obvious link to China or the Chinese language. Yet their son is taking the highest level of Chinese offered in San Francisco schools. He — and they — are in it for cultural exposure, as global citizens.

Among the the others profiled, Durell Laury is attending a Chinese immersion elementary school. He is the only kid from his housing project going to that school. He mother says learning Chinese is “a way in and a way out.” There’s also Jason Patiño, attending Spanish immersion school. His Mexican parents — who didn’t attend a day of school themselves — listen to other Spanish speaking parents at the school, as they demand more English be spoken. But without the Spanish Jason is learning in class, chances are he’d forget the language of his parents.

Finally there’s Kelly Wong, whose Chinese-American parents speak virtually no Chinese. Kelly is learning both Mandarin and Cantonese. This allows her, among other things, to have a meaningful relationship with her Cantonese-speaking grandmother. There’s one extraordinary scene at a family banquet, at which her great aunt objects to her learning Chinese, while another family member defends the decision to send her to Chinese immersion school. That scene feels like it could one day be America writ large, as migration and globalization bring the world to America, and the idea of bilingualism takes hold — and not just in polyglot places like San Francisco.

Local listings for Speaking in Tongues are here.

Also, I talk with linguist Deborah Fallows on living in China and learning Chinese. In Chinese, she says, rude is polite, and brusque is intimate. This comes out in all kinds of disorienting (no pun intended) ways, but the bottom line is, if people feel close to you in China, they will use a language of intimacy. That’s another way of saying they will dispense with please, thank you and other niceties. Their language is likely to seem harsh and abrupt. Just remember: it’s a compliment! Check out other interviews Fallows did with Time and NPR. Better yet, listen to my interview with her, which is longer, weirder and funnier: we do Chinese names for foreigners, English names for Chinese people, and what happened to the language during the Sichuan earthquake. Here’s her book in the United States and the UK.

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Learning in two languages, and new Zulu words

Patrick Cox — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:04:10 +0000

A back-to-school edition about learning in a second language. We spend some time in the classroom with fourth grade teacher Stephanie Blanco of Gauldin Elementary School in Downey, CA to explore the challenges of teaching English language learners. ELL came to the fore after 1998, when California voters approved Proposition 227, which ended bilingual education. In ELL classrooms, everyone — whether they or not they are proficient in English — learns in English.

Gauldin has a good record of improving ELL students’ English skills, in marked contrast to many of the schools in neighboring Los Angeles. The situation there is so dire that the the U.S. Department of Education has launched a investigation to determine if if the Los Angeles Unified School District is violating the civil rights of English Language Learners. The feds are also taking a look at Boston schools. (A few months ago, Carol Hills and I discussed Arizona’s decision to penalize ELL teachers whose accents are deemed too foreign. Arizona is still defending its policy, which itself has come under federal scrutiny.)

Also in the podcast, a Creole-speaking Haitian girl newly arrived in New York City enrols in a high school, with help from a community group in Brooklyn. The girl fled Haiti after the earthquake there earlier this year. Like most Haitians, she wants to master the language and stay here permanently. But she only has a U.S. visitor visa. Then it’s back to California as an Arabic immersion program gets underway at FAME a public charter school in Fremont, CA.

Reporter Hana Baba provided us with this nice slideshow of scenes from the school, including the photo (left) of school founder Maram Alaiwat. Not surprisingly, many of the students at this K-10th grade school are of Arab and/or Muslim descent. More surprising is that the school has opened its doors to the FBI. The bureau offers FAME 5th graders the chance to become “junior special agents” .

Finally, the first Zulu-English dictionary in 40 years has just been published in South Africa. Some English speakers already know a few words of Zulu (also known as isiZulu) — words like ubuntu. Zulu has also borrowed from other South African languages such as Afrikaans, and many Zulu words offer their own linguistic takes on apartheid and AIDS. We talk with the publishing manager of Oxford University Press South Africa. Download MP3

Speaking in Tongues

The World — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:20:42 +0000

Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel (Photo: Najib Joe Hakim)

A new PBS documentary profiles four kids who are attending dual immersion public schools in San Francisco. The filmmakers are husband and wife team Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel. Their own kids go to a dual immersion school and speak fluent Chinese. Patrick Cox has part four of our ‘Learning in Two Languages’ series. Download MP3

SPEAKING IN TONGUES TRAILER from PatchWorks Films on Vimeo.

Photo slideshow
‘Speaking in Tongues’ website
Find local PBS screenings by ZIP code
Learning in Two Languages
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Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: This week, we’ve been reporting on American students going to school and learning math, science and other subjects in a foreign language. Our final report is on a documentary called Speaking in Tongues. It depicts fours kids in San Francisco. Each one of them is growing up bilingual. As The World’s Patrick Cox reports.

PATRICK COX: There are many reasons to learn a foreign language. There are the ones that parents think about. And then there are the others.

JADEN JARMEL-SCHNEIDER: Most Chinese people if you walk into a store, they don’t usually see a Caucasian boy speaking Chinese fluently, so I get a lot of free stuff, so that’s pretty fun.

COX: Jaden Jarmel-Schneider and his brother go to dual immersion public schools in San Francisco. They take some classes in Chinese, others in English. Their parents don’t speak Chinese.

JARMEL-SCHNEIDER: Also, me and my brother, if we have secrets and my parents are around, that’s another great use of a different language.

COX: So many good reasons to speak a foreign language. When Jaden’s parents sent their elder son to Chinese immersion school, friends and family were perplexed. Four years later, when they did the same with Jaden, people around them nodded in approval.

KEN SCHNEIDER: And we looked at each other and thought well what’s going on here. We haven’t changed. The school hasn’t changed. But what had changed was the world.

COX: This is Ken Schneider. He and Jaden’s mom Marcia Jarmel happen to be filmmakers. So they made a movie, not about their kids, but about four other students in San Francisco public schools who are also doing much of their learning in a second language. Their reasons for learning are different and each touches on a big theme. There’s the son of Mexican immigrants who never went to school themselves but now want their boy to learn in English and Spanish. There’s the son of white middle class parents, who want their boy exposed to Chinese culture. There’s a black kid who lives with his mother in public housing. She says learning Chinese will be a way out and a way in. And there’s Kelly Wong.

SCHNEIDER: Kelly Wong is a second generation Chinese-American whose parents lost the language that her grandparent’s speak and they lost it to assimilation and probably some degree of shame for having been different. Her grandparents, their English is modest at best, so for her and her family the issue is very urgent that if they don’t bring the language back into the household they will be severing not only language, but also the cultural lineage in that family.

COX: The movie unabashedly champions the idea of raising kids bilingually. But it also shows how hard it is, in the face of what appears to be the prevailing public view that it’s not a good thing. Most states in the US have some form or other of an official English law on their books. The film seeks to put arguments against bilingual learning to rest by citing recent research. Research that suggests that the bilingual brain has an edge over the single-language brain. Yet some of most poignant moments in the movie come when doubt sets in.

SPEAKING SPANISH

COX: Here a parent at a Spanish immersion school pleads with teachers for more English and less Spanish. A different parent at the same school raises another concern.

MALE SPEAKER: In the cafeteria there was great art on the wall. Everyone from Latin America. Do they learn about American heroes? I didn’t see Martin Luther King, for example, on the cafeteria wall. Are the teachers aware that, that they’re in the US?

COX: But the fundamental debate takes place at a family banquet in a Chinese restaurant. It’s between two white Americans who are related by marriage to Kelly Wong. The first person to speak is Kelly’s great aunt. She doesn’t think Kelly should be attending a Chinese immersion school.

FEMALE SPEAKER: This country. So much is offered to the children to speak other languages. We don’t have to teach them [INDISCERNIBLE]. We really don’t. It’s taking away from their other curriculum and in America we should speak English. This is America. I don’t think I should be paying my taxes for someone else to learn a language. My son’s giving me the evil eye.

MALE SPEAKER: You’ve got a global economy. You’re able to travel to different countries, you’ve got to be able to communicate with someone in their language. Not everyone’s going to be how we were. Starting here, staying here, not having much contact outside of what we have. They’ve got to have more tools.

COX: The film, of course, sides with that argument. Filmmaker Ken Schneider says he sympathizes with Kelly’s great aunt and many millions of people with similar views. But he says they’re wrong.

SCHNEIDER: I think these folks don’t have all the information. And the challenge again is for Kelly and her family to withstand the slings and arrows of the well-meaning family members and to still exceed the expectations of their family and their teachers.

COX: As for Kelly, she’s come up with yet another reason for learning a second language. On the basketball court, she and her schoolmates call their plays in Chinese. For The World, I’m Patrick Cox.

WERMAN: To see images from Speaking In Tongues and to find out when the film will air on your PBS station, go to TheWorld.org.

Haitian student in New York

The World — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:15:17 +0000

Since the earthquake in Haiti, thousands of Haitians have arrived in the US. Many of them are young people who were in the middle of high school back in Haiti. One grassroots organization in Brooklyn, New York, helps such students finds places at schools over here. The World’s Alex Gallafent has this story in our series ‘Learning in two languages’. Download MP3

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Since the earthquake in Haiti, thousands of Haitians have arrived in the US. Many of them are young people who were in the middle of high school back in Haiti. One grassroots organization in Brooklyn, New York, helps such students find a place in American schools. The World’s Alex Gallafent has this next report in our series Learning in Two Languages.

ALEX GALLAFENT: Darnell Benoit has a message for the young Haitian immigrants she meets.

DARNELL BENOIT: I just always tell young people okay you’re 17, you’re 16, you come here. You don’t go to school, you don’t study English, you don’t do anything. And you’re here for another 40 years, you don’t go back home. What’s going to happen to you? Where you going to be?

GALLAFENT: Benoit runs the Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project here in New York. It’s named after a tree that flourishes wherever it sets root. Flanbwayan concentrates on Haitian immigrants between the ages of 14 and 21. Before the quake Benoit and her staff were seeing one or two new faces each month. But since then the numbers have rocketed up. That means a bigger workload for Benoit, but a bigger community too.

BENOIT: When young people see other young people going through the same things that they’re going through, like the struggles in adjusting to a new life, learning a new language, going to school. When they see other youth that have done it, then of course that’s super right there because they can see themselves

SPEAKING CREOLE

GALLAFENT: Jardonna Constant, 18 years old, and, until this past spring, living her life in Haiti.

SPEAKING CREOLE

JARDONNA CONSTANT: After the earthquake I started going to school under a tent. Then without any warning, my aunt called me to tell me I was coming to the States. She was sending for me.

GALLAFENT: Jardonna left Haiti, leaving behind family and friends. She headed to Brooklyn. That’s where New York’s Haitian community is concentrated. It’s where her aunt lives and it’s where she found Flanbwayan. These past months, Darnell Benoit has been getting Jardonna ready for an American school. And it’s not only about improving her English.

BENOIT: You also have to understand your environment, you also have to be able to use a computer, you also have to be able to analyze something to have a conversation, to have a discussion. All that builds up literacy. So we do that.

GALLAFENT: And Benoit says there’s a real need for that kind of broadening experience ahead of high school, especially since Haitian communities tend to keep to themselves.

BENOIT: We’ve had students who’ve been here two years and they have never been to Manhattan. They’re just here in Brooklyn.

GALLAFENT: But Jardonna Constant isn’t like that. The 18-year-old is on track with her studies. She was in her last year of high school back in Haiti and she’s got plans for the future.

SPEAKING CREOLE

CONSTANT: Before, I wanted to be a flight attendant, but I realized over the years that I wanted to be a nurse.

GALLAFENT: That’s some way off, but in the meantime Constant found herself a casual summer job.

SPEAKING CREOLE

CONSTANT: On Flatbush Avenue in the neighborhood, a clothes shop, helping people choose what they want.

GALLAFENT: Not a Haitian shop, either.

CONSTANT: Jewish shop

GALLAFENT: Jewish shop?

CONSTANT: Yes.

BENOIT: The more you try new things, then your life with be transformed by it.

GALLAFENT: Darnell Benoit wishes she saw that more often.

BENOIT: As an immigrant, that’s not an excuse. “Oh, I’m an immigrant, I’m an immigrant.” Yeah, what does that mean, you’re an immigrant? So is everybody else here. They are immigrants. Everybody’s finding their way. I’m an immigrant and I found my way. So everybody has to do it. You can’t just sit on the side and do nothing.

GALLAFENT: Benoit has high hopes for her model student. Over the summer, Jardonna won a place at one of New York’s best public high schools for immigrant students.

CONSTANT: Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School.

GALLAFENT: It’s a school that specializes in helping immigrant students with their English, without slowing down their achievements in other areas. She starts there this week. But while public high schools enroll students regardless of immigration status, that’s not true for, say, college. Like countless Haitians who came to the US after the earthquake, Jardonna Constant is here on a tourist visa. And, sooner or later, even if she can extend it, it’s going to expire. Constant says she’s confident things will work out. She’d much rather go to college here than in Haiti. But even if she can’t, she’s staying. Darnell Benoit.

BENOIT: Everybody’s staying, there’s nobody here for the moment. So, there’s nobody here for the moment, no one. Everybody’s staying here.

GALLAFENT: And so Benoit knows that however well Jardonna Constant does at her new high school, when she leaves she may end up like so many other immigrants. Undocumented and invisible. For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent in Brooklyn, New York.

Arabic immersion school teams up with FBI

The World — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:20:34 +0000

Some kindergartners in California spend half their days learning Arabic. Muslim immigrant families there like the program but they’re troubled by the school’s partnership – with the FBI. Hana Baba from station KALW in San Francisco has the second part of our ‘Learning in two languages’ series. Download MP3

MARCO WERMAN: The language of the Koran, of course, is Arabic. And more and more Americans are choosing to learn that language. For the most part, it’s college students. But now a public school outside San Francisco is launching an immersion program where starting in kindergarten, students are learning in English and Arabic. Hana Baba of KALW reports from Fremont.

HANA BABA: Fourth graders at the Fame Charter School are reading a poem in classical Arabic. The students are learning how to read, write and count in Arabic. Arabic has been part of the curriculum since the school opened its doors in 2001. And this year, the school is expanding its Arabic experience. It’s launching the country’s first public K-through-12 Arabic immersion program. Half the day’s instruction in Arabic, half in English. The school’s director Maram Alaiwat says they’re starting with the incoming class of kindergarteners.

MARAM ALAIWAT: So they will have two worlds. They will walk into their very American, very English oriented classroom for half of the day and they’ll be moving into a second classroom where the posters and language and the toys and everything are labeled in Arabic. And that teacher will be speaking with them in full immersion Arabic meaning they will be immersed in the language immediately. Everything from asking to use the restroom to where’s my cubby. All of that will be relayed in Arabic.

BABA: Fame is open to anyone in the country. But so far, most of the students are the children of Muslim immigrants, from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. At her home, 8-year-old Amal Abdella shows off some of the Arabic she’s learned at school.

AMAL ABDELLA: Jad means grandfather, jadda means grandmother, ab means dad, umm means mom, akh means brother, ukht means sister.

BABA: Her mother, Fatima Abdella, is an Ethiopian immigrant. Abdella wants her children to learn Arabic to better understand the Quran, though the school doesn’t provide any religious instruction. She says the school feels like a safe learning environment.

FATIME ABDELLA: You don’t see a security guard over there. We are like a family. We don’t see any police over there with a gun. We don’t hear anything, drugs going on, this teenagers fighting. So that is very comfortable for me.

RALPH DAVIS: I’m not trying to, as they say, diss the public school system by any means, but Fame is different. It’s fresh and it’s new, and it’s something that is available to all parents and children whether you be American or immigrant.

BABA: That’s Abdella’s husband, Ralph Davis. He’s a former Navy officer who grew up in nearby Oakland. He says learning Arabic will improve his kid’s job prospects in the future.

DAVIS: I know people right here in Fremont who have actually been recruited as Arabic speakers to go to Iraq. As far as working for the State Department, the FBI, even local government, county, city and state agencies, Arabic speakers will definitely be needed.

BABA: And the FBI has expressed interest in the school. Last year, it offered a special partnership for 5^th graders called Junior Special Agents. The program encourages them to be crime-free, drug-free, and gang-free. Parent Ralph Davis says he thinks the partnership is good for the kids, the community and the government.

DAVIS: I think it will help and benefit the different agencies of the FBI, the CIA, whoever. Even local police departments and state agencies to dialogue with immigrants because that way it will give, I feel, the immigrant a feeling of security that they can dialogue with these people rather than be fearful of them. I will want my children to participate.

BABA: But some other parents I spoke with are less comfortable with the idea. They didn’t want to speak on tape. But they question why the FBI chose this predominantly Muslim school for its only partnership in the San Francisco Bay area. Some worry the program is just a way for the FBI to keep a close eye on their community. The FBI’s San Francisco representative Joseph Schadler says the reason was more mundane.

JOSPEH SCHADLER: Realistically, the entire reason we chose that school is because we were in a dialogue with the administrator because she was part of our citizen’s academy, and with her interested and excited about the possibility of the program, that is 80% of our work in getting a program like this started.

BABA: For her part, Fame director Maram Alaiwat says she understands the parents’ anxiety. She notes that many come from countries where government agencies are often abusive. But she says that’s precisely why such a program is needed, to lessen the tension between new immigrants and the feds.

ALAIWAT: My point of introducing it to our parents was to help build bridges among the community, to help the free flow of communication. I think communication is knowledge. And if you don’t communicate, that’s how fear develops and that’s how hatred develops.

BABA: Alaiwat says it’s not clear whether the FBI program will be back this school year. But for now, classes are getting underway. And Alaiwat says they have more applicants than spaces for the Arabic Immersion Program. For The World, I’m Hana Baba in Fremont, California.

Learning in two languages

The World — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:00:25 +0000

Student in Mandarin immersion class (Photo: Najib Joe Hakim)

Most American children don’t learn foreign languages, and the opportunities are decreasing. Schools are cutting back on language programs, especially French and German. But immigration and globalization are creating new circumstances for language learning, along with new challenges. In our four-part series, we hear about some of them.

Native Spanish speakers in Southern California

September 7th, 2010
The fastest growing segment of the American public school population is English Language Learners. These ELL students, the majority of whom are born in America, sit side by side their native English-speaking classmates, but their test scores lag far behind. The U.S. Department of Education has now launched a civil rights investigation of the ELL program in Los Angeles. Officials say only 3% of ELL students at LA schools are proficient at Math and English by the time they reach high school – but some public schools doing far better than others. Nina Porzucki reports from one of them in Downey, California.
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Downey Unified School District

Arabic immersion school teams up with FBI

September 8th, 2010
Some kindergartners in California spend half their days learning Arabic. Muslim immigrant families there like the program but they’re troubled by the school’s partnership – with the FBI. Hana Baba from station KALW in San Francisco has the second part of our ‘Learning in Two Languages’ series.
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Slideshow for this story

Haitian student in New York

September 9th, 2010
Since the earthquake in Haiti, thousands of Haitians have arrived in the US. Many of them are young people who were in the middle of high school back in Haiti. One grassroots organization in Brooklyn, New York, helps such students finds places at schools over here. The World’s Alex Gallafent has the story.
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Flanbwayan Haitian Literacy Project

Speaking in Tongues

September 10th, 2010
A new PBS documentary profiles four kids who are attending dual immersion public schools in San Francisco. The filmmakers are husband and wife team Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel. Their own kids go to a dual immersion school and speak fluent Chinese. Patrick Cox has part four of our series.
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