Babbel On: September 2018 Language News Roundup
Low foreign-language class enrollment, misleading etymologies and more from the world of language this past month.
By Thomas Devlin
Only 20% Of American Students Are Studying A Second Language
This is probably not entirely surprising, but Americans study languages way less than Europeans do. Pew Research recently wrote an article on the topic, pointing out that the median percentage of people learning in Europe is 92, while the United States is at 20 percent.
These overall percentages don’t tell the full story, though. Even the countries in Europe that fall at the bottom of the scale are more multilingual than the United States. Belgium has the lowest overall percentage of second-language learners at 64 percent, but that doesn’t reflect the fact that 90 percent of upper secondary students (the rough age equivalent of American high school students) are studying a second language.
On the other side of the ocean, the United States’s 20 percent figure doesn’t communicate that some parts of the country have a lot more language students than others. New Jersey is on top at 51 percent, whereas New Mexico is at the bottom with only 9. You can check out the full map with this infographic we made last year, which used data from a different source:
The primary reason for the paucity of language learners in the United States can be traced back to graduation requirements. Only ten states and the District of Columbia make students study some amount of another language before high school graduation. Of course, the requirements themselves are a reflection of American attitudes. Only 36 percent of Americans in a Pew Research survey thought learning a foreign language was “extremely important” or “very important” for workers. And the fact is that it’s much easier to be a monolingual American than a monolingual European. It will take an attitudinal shift for foreign languages to be taught more widely.
The Trend Of Language Representation On TV
A few decades ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find TV shows in languages other than English on American television. Yes, there were a few Spanish stations, but it was a very rare occurrence for a show on primetime to be even partly in another language. But now, thanks to streaming, there’s more and more non-English representation.
Netflix has been leading the charge in many ways, and an article in the New Statesman looked at various shows that have positive language representation. There’s the sci-fi show Altered Carbon, which presents a future in which pretty much everyone is multilingual and speaking English, Japanese or German. Then there are more traditional linguistic presentations, like the Spanish-English bilingual families in Jane the Virgin and One Day at a Time. There’s also a healthy amount of Japanese-language shows, such as the Netflix Original Switched and the wildly popular reality show Terrace House that Netflix acquired. Netflix’s trust that American consumers are willing to watch shows in other languages is paying off, which is great news for multilingual media.
Read Further: Unrelated to Netflix, there’s another show that’s leading a slightly different kind of language renaissance. The Starz series Outlander, which is about the Jacobite rising of 1745 in Scotland, has led to a renewed interest in Scots, which is a language that has been in danger of extinction for decades now. The Scotsman wrote about the TV show and this history of the language, and delightfully, you can read the article in both English and Scots. If you want to know more about Scots, you can check out our brief overview of the language.
Want To Stream Shows In Other Languages? We’ve compiled guides to our favorite Italian, French, Spanish and German shows, which are especially chosen for people who are hoping to learn a new language.
Don’t Always Trust Internet Etymologies
Sometime during the past month, you may have seen an internet meme that revealed a great etymological discovery: “tag” is short for “touch-and-go.” Linguistic buzzkills were quick to point out, however, that this is just not true. Dictionaries like Merriam-Webster aren’t entirely sure where “tag” comes from in relation to the game, but it’s definitely not an acronym.
According to writer Ben Zimmer in The Atlantic, this is a really common phenomenon. This example in particular is an example of “acronymphomania,” which is a funny name for the fact that people are easily fooled into thinking words come from acronyms. The most famous modern example is likely “bae,” which is a shortening of “babe” and not, as some media outlets have written, an acronym for “before anyone else.” Other instances of acronymphomania include “wop” (which comes from the Italian guappo, not “without papers”) and “posh” (which does not mean “port out, starboard home”).
Why do we fall for fake etymologies? Well, we really like things to be clever. In the case of “bae,” for example, the simplest explanation for its use is obviously that it’s a shortening of “babe,” which is already a shortening of “baby.” “Before anyone else,” though, is witty, and it provides a definition that anyone can understand. Another example of false etymology in Zimmer’s article is “wife-beater.” Some people have erroneously said this comes from a kind of medieval chainlink outfit called a “waif beater.” This would be a preferable etymology because it would make the modern “wife-beater” less misogynistic and horrible, but alas, it’s just not true.
As your teachers have long warned, there is lots of erroneous stuff online, and it’s best to remain on guard. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “Don’t trust everything you read on the internet.”
Babbel Bites
The Babbel staff’s favorite language articles from the last month.
There Are Polyglots, And Then There Are Hyperpolyglots
Learning even one language can be a challenge. Learning 20? That’s a whole different league. The New Yorker published a long article that looks at hyperpolyglots — people who speak at least 11 languages—and wonders how it’s even possible to hold so many languages in your head at the same time.
Can Meditation Help You Learn A Language?
There are lots of language-learning methods out there — some more out there than others. This past month, Babbel Magazine tried using meditation as a supplement to language lessons, and the results were pretty positive.
Where Men And Women Literally Speak Different Languages
In a small community in Nigeria called Ubang, two language are spoken: the men’s and the women’s. Each has its own vocabulary, though everyone is capable of understanding both. The BBC went to Ubang to create a small documentary on the only place in the world where gender determines the language you speak.
The Secret Language Of Secret Societies
Love secret codes? Babbel Magazine looked into some of the most famous ones that belong to secret societies. Obviously they’re not the most secret anymore because, well, we’re writing about them. But they used to be!
Who Knew “Mmhmm” Was So Controversial?
You probably say mmhmm several times per day, but you might not have thought of it as a word you could learn. NPR’s Code Switch reports some historians and linguists believe it’s a word that comes from Africa, and it was added to English during the slavery era. Others say it’s always been English. As with many linguistic ideas, things get contentious.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Declares She’ll Teach Her Daughter Maori
Maori is a language indigenous to New Zealand, and it’s even one of the official languages of the country, but only 2.5 percent of the population speaks it. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, who became one of the first world leaders to have a child while in office, has affirmed her commitment to the language by saying she’ll raise her daughter bilingually (the other language being English). The New York Times looks at the current status of Maori.
R Typos Teh Future Of Wrting?
It’s probably a contentious thing to say, but millennials are revolutionizing language online. Some might call it the fall of the English language, yet purposeful misspellings on Twitter, Tumblr and other social media sites are being used to communicate emotions and humor more effectively.
Facebook Algorithm Threw Confetti During Indonesian Earthquake
If you’re still on Facebook, you may know that when you type “Congratulations,” the website will “throw” confetti and balloons. It’s kind of silly, but this past month, Facebook had to apologize after their algorithm threw balloons when Indonesians wrote the word selamat during the earthquakes. Selamat does mean “congratulations,” but it can also mean “to survive,” and the algorithm couldn’t tell the difference.
