March 2019 – Educational Sociolinguistics

Apartment Sociolinguistics

Andréanne Langevin

With the return of chirping birds and good weather, Montrealers can finally say “Tis the season for apartment hunting!”. As many know, while the rest of Canada celebrates, in Montreal, the tradition is to move on July 1^st. In the spring season, tenants planning on moving begin the great hustle and bustle of finding a new place and signing a lease.

A co-worker of mine (let’s call her Patricia) recently told me something that piqued my interest. Her friend from New Brunswick (let’s call her Clara) had recently messaged in English a potential landlord because she was interested in the apartment they advertised. She did not receive a reply to her rental application, so she called Patricia to the rescue. Pat proposed to help translate the message into French. She sent it again and, you guessed it, Clara received an answer within the next 48 hours.

Hong Kong Cantonese VS Guangzhou Cantonese

Yidan

As a big fan of Hong Kong TV dramas, movies and songs, I always admire people from Guangdong province where Cantonese is a major lingua franca. They understand Hong Kong Cantonese dramas without subtitles, sing Cantonese songs and communicate with people from Hong Kong without any barrier. According to Norman, Cantonese is considered the prestige variety of Yue Chinese variants, based on the dialect of Guangzhou City (Canto) and the surrounding areas including Guangdong and Guangxi province, Hong Kong and Macau (p.215, 1988). However, a question has always lingered in my mind: is there any difference between Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese? After research and observation, I find that there are mainly two differences to help distinguish Hong Kong and Guangzhou Cantonese.

“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

Max Jack-Monroe

Since November 1^st, 2018, I have taught English online to kids in China. My sessions are, for the most part, one-on-one (I regularly work with a pair of twins or a family member in the room of certain students may occasionally participate, as well). Like most jobs, mine comes with its ups and downs, especially as from around the time I was first hired on, the company has been going through some major changes. And then there’s the oh-so-common tech snafus. And, of course there’s the time difference, which has made for substantial grogginess. All in all, however, I love working with the kids, the freedom to work at home, and not having to lesson plan due to the platform’s provided courseware.

The not-so-pretty reality, however, is that there are teachers far more competent and skilled at teaching English than I am that will never be able to work for a company like the one I work for.

Queering Mexican Spanish

By Brain El Oso

Mexican Spanish is very distinct, as any child or language learner will see. The game “Loteria” is a very common way of teaching both the language and the customs, and it is so ubiquitous in Mexico that you might notice that the logo of Corona Beer is very similar to the “La Corona” card in this game. There are also several words in the game that are specific to Mexico, such as instruments like the “bandolo,” the apache, and the “catrin.” As a result, Loteria is not only a way to learn a lot of vocabulary, it is also seen as a way of co-constructing Mexican identity. I first encountered the game as a Spanish student in Mexico. You play it basically like Bingo: you take a game card with a bunch of squares on it, and then turn over the individual cards and call out the names (there is a very theatrical way of doing this, which my Spanish teacher liked to mimic). The first player to cover all of their cards calls out “Loteria!”

Better English for more employment opportunities: Is it a myth or not?

Yuri

When I was 18, my piano teacher asked me if I wanted her to write a letter of recommendation to go to music school after graduating from high school. I didn’t hesitate to say ‘no’ because I had decided to go to college in the United States. My goal was to become a ‘native-like’ English speaker with ‘perfect’ grammar, lexical knowledge, and pronunciation. I didn’t even think about majoring music at a university in the US (or in other ‘English-speaking’ countries) because I not only wanted to learn the language but also learn about the language to become a native-like speaker. I was actually surprised a few years later when I realized that majoring in music in the US might also allow me to acquire ‘correct’ English, but it was too late to change my major to music because I had stopped practicing piano seriously. It’s not that I regret I didn’t become a pianist. I knew I wasn’t talented enough to be a top pianist, studying abroad had been my dream since I was very young, and I appreciate a chance to learn what I’m learning now. I am just curious whether my life would have been different if I didn’t hope to become a ‘perfect’ English speaker. Maybe if I kept practicing piano seriously, even if I couldn’t be a concert pianist, I could have done something related to music?

Do different languages shape people’s different perceptions of the world ?

Xin

Imagine that there are a group of people who have various, distinct linguistic repertoires. Then an apple is showed in front of them with a question “What’s this?”. There is no doubt that everyone who has eaten or seen apples before will agree that it’s an apple, right? But what if they are represented with a picture of colour or a record of sound? Will they reach an agreement as well? Probably not. For example, Himba people use the word “zoozu” to refer to a wide variety of colors in English such as dark blue, dark green, dark brown, dark purple, dark red or black (Oaster, 2017). And for Candoshi, the indigenous people from Upper Amazon, there might be no terms for colors in their language (Surralles, 2016). It’s interesting to notice that representation of color is part of the objective reality, but people’s perceptions towards it may vary largely.

Oh, that’s the movie you guys are talking about …

Xin

Once a friend complained to me that he felt at a disadvantage compared with his Korean friends when talking about movies with other international students in English. His Korean friends could immediately get the idea that people were talking about the movie “The Bourne Identity”, while he couldn’t when hearing the name of the movie. And he didn’t, for a single second, relate the name “The Bourne Identity” with the movie, even though he had seen it before. Only after others mentioned the cast and the plot did he realize that “That’s the movie you guys are talking about”.

I know it may sound a bit weird that he had seen the movie but he was unable to recognize it from the name. But the reason lies in the translation. “The Bourne Identity” was translated into “谍影重重” in Chinese, which is one of the best example of English-Chinese free translation. “谍” means espionage; “影”means shadow; “重重” means that there is layer upon layer. So put together, this four characters create a very poetic and vivid scene that there are many different identities of the main character. However, for my friend who didn’t know the English name of the movie, it can be difficult to tell that “The Bourne Identity” and “谍影重重” refer to the same thing.

Should second language teachers teach slangs??

Ken

I teach Japanese at McGill as a teaching assistant. As I am supposed to follow the concrete lesson plan from my supervisor, I do not usually teach slangs. However, many languages have slangs and thus, some language learners want to know them as well. In this post, I would like to share my experience when one of my students asked me one Japanese slang word: Yabai.

Yabai is an adjective denoting that something is bad or dangerous. Its original connotations were that the speaker felt he/she was in imminent danger or was about to be inconvenienced. The word is thought to derive from slang used by professional thieves and con artists and was already in use by the late Edo Period (1603-1868), when it was pronounced yaba. Some say it derives from the word ayabui, meaning dangerous.

How your ways of speaking change when you move around?

Yidan

When you talk to someone who speaks a different version of English than you do, do you keep talking the way you do otherwise or do you find yourself slightly edging towards the way they speak? What about if you travel and you’re surrounded by people with another accent or dialect?

This topic came to my mind because I’ve noticed that my Irish roommate, an exchange student from Dublin, Ireland, who used to have a very strong and distinctive Irish accent is now accommodating to American or Canadian accent and diction. I still clearly remember eight months ago on the first day when we met, greeted and introduced to each other. I couldn’t catch all of what she said because of her strong Irish accent and some of her word use. Basically I was listening to her while guessing, and nodding, pretending I got what she said, which made me feel embarrassed and awkward. Soon after, I told her I went to Ganadara, one of the best Korean restaurants in Montreal. She asked me, “was there a queue?” I was silent for a few seconds while searching the word of queue in my mind since I haven’t heard and used this word for a long time. Then I replied, “yes, there was a very long line” which is typically used in American English. I was impressed again by her Irish English choice of words.

French the language of love

Anne Borgella

According to Google, French is considered to be the language of love because it is the language in which people are more likely to use a romantic expression. However, as a native French speaker, I do not consider French to be the language of love. For myself there is no musicality in French, unless I am reading a poem. Do I consider French as a love language? For me this question has many levels. First, If I am listening to someone speaking French, I am certainly not able to detect the musicality that makes it the language of love. It may be because I speak Haitian Creole, which is a language that has the majority of its roots in French. Therefore, I tend to associate both language with each other, my creole accent makes it difficult for me to see the romantic aspect of French. There is definitely no musicality in the Haitian creole language, I sometimes recall people telling me that when they hear people speaking creole it sounds like they are constantly fighting.

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