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My senior year of high school I spent an entire semester trudging through Francisco Jiménez’s autobiographical novel, Cajas de Cartón. Though the book was middle grade fiction, my English-speaking mind had to take its time moving in this new language. Sentence to sentence, the new vocabulary padded around in my brain, each phrase a new net of meaning that gave these words a context much beyond my Spanish textbook’s vocabulary chart.
Reading in a foreign language quickly proved to be one of the best ways for me to gather new language, the novel serving as a portable vacation where I became immersed in the language and culture of the story. Writer and translator Lydia Davis explores this idea in her essay, “Learning Bokmål by Reading Dag Solstad’s Telemark Novel,”[1] where she chronicles learning Bokmål through reading. Her method is extreme. She forewent any help from a dictionary or an online translator, and instead used context clues and cognates to piece together the meaning of a sentence. In her experience, any word she could not initially piece together soon reveals itself in later pages, and as she journeys through Solstad’s historical Norway, her proficiency with the language snowballed until she finally was reading with ease.
Though most readers (including myself) do not have the linguistic chops of a professional translator, Davis’s method for language acquisition and translation is certainly worth a try. Reading in a foreign language is greatly beneficial for increasing vocabulary, grammar, speaking proficiency and language comprehension.[2] Using a story to learn language allows for both the wonder of learning new words and the playfulness of romping through a good story. Instead of being stuck in stuffy conjugation charts, verbs rather leap off and race around the page, introducing themselves to you in their natural habitat rather than in an isolated context. In learning vocabulary and grammar outside of the flashcards and quizzical conversations of the language classroom, the inherent connection between language and culture becomes more apparent.
Then, translating a story from language to language becomes an exercise in flexibility, the expert translator having to match meanings as best they can and make the leap from unfamiliar to familiar, connecting two formerly separate worlds. Translating a text helps to create a multicultural understanding[3] where meaning can be expressed in several different modes of speaking, writing, and knowing.
Though I still have a long way to go in learning Spanish, reading Cajas de Cartón, was an essential step in proving to myself that I too can take these steps toward comprehension and understanding of something foreign to me. Translation and reading in a foreign language are skills to be built and developed just like any other practice, and by the end you get to see things brand new.
Publishing Solutions Group knows the value of translation, and is readily available to assist with translation needs. Here at PSG we take pride in connecting a multicultural market of readers, making it easier for these stories to move between communities. Be sure to choose Publishing Solutions Group for your next translation needs!
[1] Lydia Davis, “Learning Bokmål by Reading Dal Solstad’s Telemark Novel” from Essays Two.
[2] https://lingtuitive.com/blog/5-reasons-reading-is-the-fastest-way-to-learn-a-language
[3] https://opentextbooks.library.arizona.edu/scolina/chapter/chapter-3-why-translation-in-the-language-classroom/
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Though most teachers roll their eyes at the class clown, humor can actually have a beneficial role in the classroom. While the usual comic interruptions to a lesson may not be helpful, incorporating play and laughter into a lesson plan is an effective way of encouraging children’s social emotional development, particularly for children with developmental disabilities.
Clowning is a form of comedic performance that focuses on physical movement, gestures, and character work. A good clown frequently brings the audience into the performance, using suggestions, movements, or ideas generated in the crowd to inform their act. Clowns have a long history in performance spaces, and recently have become more professional, working with children in hospitals and schools to develop a child’s social emotional sense through productive play.
In the school setting, clowning is a welcome break to the “seriousness” of a typical lesson. When learning clowning, children are often encouraged to create a clown persona of their own, bestowing this new character with traits and histories as boundless as the child’s imagination. In embodying a new persona, children can gain a self-reflexive awareness of themself.[1] Clowns are klutzy! And silly and frequently make mistakes. In encouraging mistakes and stumbles and misunderstandings all in service of making one another laugh, clowning works a bit like fiction. Children can experience the small drama of a misunderstanding within the safety of play. A good clown often uses their own flaws as material for their persona, allowing the child to examine their own identity safely. Clowning then is not just a means of passing some time and laughing together but is a generative type of play where mistakes are encouraged and laughed at together.
Clowning and playfulness, on the other hand, may take away from important learning time, distracting children and pulling them from the larger educational tasks at hand. And while clowning may not lend itself perfectly to the pencil-and-paper lessons that are so important in schooling young children, clowning directly teaches the social emotional skills that curriculums often neglect. For children with intellectual disabilities, learning social emotional skills can be particularly difficult. Luckily, learning these skills is most effectively done with play. In a study on the benefits of clowns on the playfulness of children with intellectual disabilities, researchers found that children who played with clowns not only developed better social emotional skills, but they also developed a better sense of play, mainly how to play alone and with other children in a safe, productive way.[2]
Clowning does not just give them the self-reflexive awareness and the confidence as previously mentioned, but also a greater sense of independence. In encouraging play within these children, they gain a greater understanding of themselves and their community of peers, suspending the scary reality of being a child in school and being welcomed into a playful world where mistakes are not so embarrassing, and they can generate a self-image that is explorative and confident. The next time you are faced with a classroom full of grumpy, uncommunicative children, consider teaching play with just as much emphasis as math or reading.
Along with play, another great way to encourage creativity and play within a child is fiction! Reading to and with a young child is a great means of having these imaginative stories jump off the page. Publishing Solutions Group sure loves a good story and loves to see how these stories can help inspire and teach children and adults alike.
[1] Clowning: It’s Effects on Self-Image and Interpersonal Relationships in Nursery Schools
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10100092/
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What is Multicultural Literature?
Culture is everything—it’s how we define ourselves and perceive the world in our own, idiosyncratic ways, and it’s an essential part of one’s identity during childhood. It’s also during the first three years of childhood[1] when one’s foundations for literacy is laid in place, as well as the development of their self-concept including a sense of their own culture and language.[2] That’s why exposure to multicultural literature at a young age is an invaluable tool in both promoting cultural awareness and in allowing students of varying cultures to see themselves represented in the literature they are made to read.
Multicultural literature, broadly defined, reflects diverse cultural perspectives, experiences, and traditions. It includes literature written by and about people from different racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and social backgrounds. The goal of multicultural literature is to promote understanding, inclusivity, and representation by introducing readers to voices and narratives beyond their own lived experiences.
Multicultural literature would also include literature on issues of gender, sexual orientation, and disability, given these themes are typically out of the “mainstream” of traditional society.[3] For younger students, multicultural literature is more invested in literature that targets their reading level, which often involves an educator or someone else reading them these diverse stories.
The Benefits
It’s been affirmed that multicultural literature that tells of different cultures, languages, and lived experiences help students understand the world better and improve self-affirmation.[4] By introducing students to multicultural literature, it also further teaches them about languages, tradition, values, and encourages valuable connections between students of different cultures.[5]
Getting multicultural literature into more classrooms and educating children is largely the responsibility of the educator, whether that be a teacher at a school or even a parent reading to their kids at home. Since classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse, teachers and other educators need to ensure that their libraries, classrooms, and read-aloud’s should reflect all the children’s varied cultures. When children see their culture in literature, they feel a sense of connection and have their self-concept valued and legitimized, too.[6]
The Challenges
There are challenges when it comes to getting multicultural literature into classrooms.
Firstly, there is the actual cost of books and educational supplies that is a hard reality many teachers face in this climate where, according to The Century Foundation, U.S. schools are underfunded by nearly $150 billion annually.[7] Providing adequate and equitable funding for public schools across the nation is a macroscopic way to address this institutional issue. There is also a lot of resistance to including multicultural literature due to political, religious, or ideological reasons. Some books dealing with race, immigration, gender, or social justice themes are facing challenges, bans, or even censorship. This, though, is a larger issue for older students rather than younger ones, the latter of which are most likely not reading or able to read banned books.
Conclusion
Although there are challenges that are faced when it comes to incorporating more multicultural literature in the classroom, it is a worthy cause to fight for. As mentioned above, teaching students about multicultural literature leads to empathy, stable self-concepts, and awareness of what others’ lived experiences are like. It’s every educator’s dream to instill empathy and knowledge into their students, and with multicultural literature, they can do just that.
Publishing Solutions Group
In today’s diverse classrooms, multicultural literature plays a crucial role in fostering inclusivity, empathy, and global awareness among students. As a K-12 content development company, we stay at the forefront of research and trends to ensure that the materials we help create reflect the rich cultural backgrounds of all learners. By integrating authentic voices and perspectives into content, we support publishers, teachers and parents create meaningful learning experiences that resonate with students from all walks of life.
[1] https://wida.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/resource/FocusBulletin-Language-Culture.pdf
[2] https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1034914
[3] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED468866.pdf
[4] https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf
[5] https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1516
[6] https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/dec2019/valuing-diversity-developing-understanding-behavior
[7] https://tcf.org/content/about-tcf/tcf-study-finds-u-s-schools-underfunded-nearly-150-billion-annually/#:%7E:text=The%20United%20States%20is%20underfunding,The%20Century%20Foundation%20(TCF
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]]>As daunting as learning a second language may feel—after all, you have to learn grammar, pronunciation, and even some culture among other things to really effectively communicate—the struggle of doing so pays off eventually. Forget bragging about being bilingual or multilingual! Learning a second language comes with a variety of benefits, ranging from having a higher paying job to improving cognitive skills. Acquiring a second language can essentially alter your brain.
Studies have shown that people who speak more than one language tend to have denser grey matter in their brains, which is associated with improved cognition and higher intelligence.[1] They also have a higher white matter integrity, which “boosts their brain’s reserves.” “Reserves” specifically refers to your brain’s ability to improve and its agility.[2] This is all to say that the process of learning new things, but in particular a new language, is a great workout for your brain as it can “form new connections in the brain and strengthen nervous system links.”[3] Your concentration, memory, and communication all improve as you learn a second language. Learning a language makes you more alert and improves your ability to focus, which results in a better attention span and an increased ability in devoting yourself effectively to whatever task is at hand. In the same vein, since learning a language requires so much memorization (mostly at the start) and practice, your memorization and active recall skills improve.[3] Plus, you might even find a specific system or way to remember grammar and rules that is transferable to other tasks.
Your communication skills and knowledge of your first language are also improved by the acquisition of another.[4] “Learning a new language helps you put names to what you learned instinctively in the first language” as you compare and contrast the different structures of each.[4] As for being a better communicator, a new language facilitates your ability to see things from other perspectives and develop a stronger sense of empathy, which in turn sharpens your effectiveness as a communicator. It helps you learn how to approach conversations. Plus, learning requires active listening, which is key to good communication.
Lastly, according to a study discussed by Forbes, learning a language can cause “a delay in the onset of age-related mental decline.”[5] Other studies corroborate this, one specifically stating that it can prevent degenerative neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s.[3]
Now, onto some academic and career benefits. For students, New York University found that those who are bilingual “performed two to three times better on exams compared with students who knew only one language.”[5] A majority of other studies on the subject come to the same conclusion.[3] This is because learning another language tends to improve their creativity and ability to adapt and multitask. The constant switching from one language to another makes it easier for the brain to focus on different tasks.[4] This one undertaking can then have a massive influence over nearly every aspect of your life.
In an increasingly globalized world, it is almost a necessity to know at least one other language than your own.[4] As more companies hire from around the world, being bilingual or multilingual can make you a more competitive candidate. In fact, there are several languages in high demand across the globe, including “Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Japanese, and Hindi,” as companies are willing to pay more to not require a translator for their business.[6] A study also revealed that people who are fluent in more than one language “earned 19% more than single-language speakers.”[5]
So, while learning a new language may feel like you’re Sisyphus, there are real, tangible benefits at the crest of the hill. Keep it steady!
PSG
Publishing Solutions Group is committed to providing high-quality products and services to our clients. Understanding the benefits of multilingualism allows us to better meet our client’s needs. Among these, our related services range from translation to audio and from copyediting to proofreading, which is crucial for effective educational resources.
[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/24831-grey-matter
[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/what-is-cognitive-reserve
[3] https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2022/04/29/learning-language-changes-your-brain/
[4] https://potomac.edu/benefits-of-learning-a-second-language/
[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2023/10/01/improve-your-salary-and-career-by-speaking-a-second-language/
[6] https://www.washingtontech.edu/career-benefits-of-learning-a-2nd-language/
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Language is always a topic of conversation at our office. We love words (no surprise there), but there are certain words that we love more than others. My favorite word is antidisestablishmentarianism because I love the way it sounds and I love that it’s a double negative. Antidisestablishmentarianism was a political ideology that opposed the withdrawal of state support from the Church of England in nineteenth-century Britain. The history of it makes me love it even more!
Here are some other great picks from the PSG staff.
- Annette: defenestration
The word refers to throwing someone/something out of a window or a position of power. “I like the way defenestration sounds and I also love the fact that we have a word for the specific action of throwing something out a window.” - Colleen: her kids’ names
She says, “I got to pick them out—with my wife’s help, of course—and they make me the most happy in the world.” - Don: tintinnabulation
Tintinnabulation is the sound of a bell ringing; “I love winter and it makes me think of sleigh bells.” - Jamaica: penumbra
A penumbra is a partial shadow, somewhere between full shadow and full light. Jamaica says, “I like the word because it makes me think of ambiguous and liminal ideas and spaces.” - Kate: chortle
Chortle is Kate’s favorite word because it’s fun to say and she loves actually hearing someone chortle. “It’s the rarest and most genuine type of laugh. Anyone who chortles is good with me.” - Nora: petrichor
This word refers to the smell of the earth after it rains. Nora says, “I like the sound of the word, but I also love the smell that it’s describing.”
What’s your favorite word?
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Much like the seas incarnadine, the English language is multitudinous! We have so many words for various feelings and experiences, yet we’re missing some important ones. Luckily, many other languages have evocative words that perfectly describe common situations. Here’s a few I enjoyed!
Tartle (Scottish)
The moment of panic that happens when you can’t remember someone’s name when you’re about to introduce them.
Iktsuarpok (Inuit)
The feeling of expectation you feel when waiting for someone to arrive at your house, which makes you keep going outside to check if they’ve arrived.
Pelinti (Ghanaian)
To move hot food around in one’s mouth in an attempt to avoid burning oneself. Ouch!
Seigneur-terrace (French)
Someone who sits in a coffee shop for a long time without spending much money. I know I’m guilty of being a seigneur-terrace from time to time!
Koi no yokan (Japanese)
The sense you have when you first meet someone that the two of you are going to fall in love.
Age-otori (Japanese)
To look worse after a haircut. I feel like this happens to me nearly every time I get a haircut!
Fernweh (German)
A feeling of homesickness for somewhere you’ve never been.
Nunchi (Korean)
The art of listening to and understanding someone’s attitude, related to the concept of emotional intelligence. We should all aspire to practice the art of nunchi a bit more.
Zeg (Georgian)
The day after tomorrow. Much easier to clarify plans when you can say, “See you zeg!”
Verschlimmbesserung (German)
A supposed improvement that actually makes things worse. Why tell your friend “don’t fix what isn’t broken” when you can just say “avoid verschlimmbesserung”?
What are some of your favorite non-English words?
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Did you know that English is full of little unspoken rules? One of these strange rules happens in ablaut reduplication, which is the repetition of a word with a change in one of its vowels. Terms like criss-cross, Kit-Kat and sing-song are examples of this linguistic phenomenon.
But have you ever noticed that there’s a pattern to these phrases? Try saying them backwards: cross-criss, Kat-Kit, song-sing. It just doesn’t feel right. It turns out that there is a specific order to the vowels we use in these phrases. We always start with the “high” vowels and move progressively towards the “low” vowels. A high vowel, like the iin criss-cross, is formed when your tongue is closer to the roof of your mouth, while a low vowel like the o in sing-song is formed with your tongue in a lower position.
One theory of why we do this is because low vowels are closer to our mouth’s natural resting position, so it’s easier to start in an unnatural position and work our way back to normal. So the order of these phrases will always be I-A-O: sing sang song!
Further Reading
Ohio State University Department of Linguistics,Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Languages and Linguistics (Ohio State University Press, 2016), 59–60.
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Here at Publishing Solutions Group, we are passionate about punctuation. We take joy in seeing em dashes used properly in subway signs and cringe when holiday cards incorrectly include our beloved serial comma before an ampersand. So it should be no surprise that a New Yorker article about the roots of popular punctuation marks as well as more archaic ones quickly made its way around the office.
The article explains that the pound sign (#) originated in the fourteenth century from the Roman libra pondo, which means “pound weight.” The Latin abbreviation for this term, lb, was written with a tilde—a horizontal bar—across the top of the abbreviation. Over time, scribes scribbled this mark in such a way that it morphed into the ubiquitous hashtag we use today.
Professor William H. Sherman notes that a handwritten version of the manicule (☞) was once “the most common symbol produced both for and by readers in the margins of manuscripts and printed books.” First used in 1086 and wildly popular between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, the manicule was used to draw the eye to interesting and important portions of a text. When printing was popularized in the fifteenth century, the manicule symbol and other reference marks were more readily available. This allowed printers to include them in the text and margins and left less room for readers’ own marks. The drawn manicule was replaced with the printed “mutton fist’ character and later by numbered footnotes.
In searching for more articles about punctuation, as we words nerds are wont to do, we came across an Economist article about the interrobang (‽). Invented by Martin K. Speckter, the interrobang is a mark that combines the question mark and an exclamation point. Speckter was a journalist and later an advertising executive, who did not like the look of two ending punctuation marks. Though it never took off, it is included in a variety of current typefaces and could gain popularity on the web, where brevity is boss, leaving us to beg: Can we make the interrobang happen‽
Did You Know?
In discussing what new punctuation marks we would like to see, our copyeditor, Kate, made a great case for a mark that combines a period and an exclamation point, for when you would like to show a mild level of enthusiasm, but not as much as an exclamation point indicates—ideal for friendly office greetings or simply a semi-interested text response. Just when we thought we had stumbled across a new copyright, however, we found out we weren’t the first to have the idea. It seems that new punctuation is on a lot people’s minds these days.
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In our previous blog about language barriers, former intern Nora Chan went into detail about Google’s translation app, which features a voice-to-text translation option. Nora highlighted the app’s contribution to travel with its ability to translate the sound of your mother tongue into a written translation of another language. Although trying to communicate in a foreign country can be part of the fun and excitement of travel, the fear and anxiety of not knowing the language can put a stop to some great adventures. During a trip to Italy, I had my share of both experiences, finding fun in the challenge of ordering a pizza in broken Italian one day and then dreading the thought of asking for directions to the correct bus station the next.
Luckily, destroying language barriers seems to be a common goal for some new innovations. While translation apps can fit in your pocket, Ili comes in the form of a large flash drive you can wear around your neck or on a keychain. Ili translates and repeats phrases back, which saves you the embarrassment of butchering the pronunciation of the words and ruining the entire interaction. It does not require an internet connection and is voice activated. A downloadable phrasebook is included, equipped with common travel interactions that also offer a chance to learn the new language. The first installment of Ili is only available for English, Japanese and Chinese in order to provide the most accurate translations of each language, but future updates will include more language options.
The Pilot works in a similar way as Ili, but rather than fitting like a piece of jewelry, the Pilot fits in the perfect place for a translator: your ears. Coming in three different colors of wireless ear buds, the Pilot earpiece filters out excess noise and, via its app, sends translations directly to your ear. The Pilot app can also serve as a phrasebook and is equipped with several languages—English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Like the Ili, the Pilot aims to have more languages available in the next installment, once precise translations are ensured. These ear buds are the kind of technology that used to exist only in science fiction.
Of course, there are many challenges to tackle with translation software. Slang, for instance, can certainly gum up the works of translation, as Andrew Lauder found out during his app’s construction. Vocre Translate is a voice and text translation app that is able to translate simple words when you speak into the app. In order to account for nuanced meanings of certain words, Lauder turned to using common word usage rather than simple text-to-text translations by compiling data from public domain recordings. Based on the patterns found in the data, rules for the fluidity of spoken language were created for Vocre Translate software.
With these kinds of devices, language barriers might become obsolete and language will be portable. I wonder what science fiction tech is next in the pipeline?
Did You Know?
A team of inventors in Sweden is developing a headset that will translate what a dog is thinking. Using brain wave signals collected through sensors on the headpiece, the data will be translated into phrases. I’m sure “what’s this thing on my head?” will be a common one.
Image credit: Tsz Yan Tong
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How did you learn how to speak your first language? Don’t remember? Don’t worry…you shouldn’t! Theories and research about human language acquisition have been abounding for decades—from B. F. Skinner’s idea that we learn language from operant conditioning to Noam Chomsky’s opposition that language is innate. Now, recent studies suggest that humans are actually born with biases in language structure.
A team at the International School of Advanced Studies in Italy conducted an experiment designed to examine how infants perceive different types of words. In the process, they viewed how the oxygenation of a specific part of the brain changes over time. In doing so, the researchers analyzed the brain reactions of newborns when exposed to common and uncommon sound combinations. Interestingly enough, results illustrated that even with hardly any knowledge of phonetic conventions, infants reacted in different ways to common sounds than they did to uncommon ones. These results suggest that some components of language may, in fact, be innate.
Iris Berent, a psychology professor at Northeastern’s College of Science, has conducted behavioral studies on infants in Northeastern’s infant phonology lab in conjunction with the Italian study. In Berent’s study, each child involved was seated in front of a video screen that displayed an image that moved in accordance to a specific sound, such as “bnog” and “bdog.” Neither of the aforementioned sounds exists in the English language, but the sound sequences in “bnog” are more popular across other languages. Berent originally hypothesized that when infants heard sounds to which they possess innate bias, they would look longer at the screen. The study is ongoing, but so far results have upheld her hypothesis.
It is fascinating to think that we could be born with a basic knowledge of language structure rather than with blank slates waiting to be written on. Discoveries such as these can help strengthen the way we communicate and change the way we perceive language dysfunctions for the better.
Did You Know?
Modern American Sign Language (ASL) may have been adapted from the French. A person using ASL may recognize some signs from French Sign Language (LSF), but the two have developed into their own distinct languages.
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