Multilingual Connections

A drive up Milwaukee Avenue (or should we say a bike ride along the avenue’s seven-mile bike lane) from its downtown origin at Kinzie to the northwesternmost reaches of Chicago is a tour of the city’s rich linguistic history.

The Chicago History Museum calls immigration Chicago’s “hallmark characteristic,” and Milwaukee Avenue remains a loose but living timeline of settlement, particularly Polish and Latino, but also German, Russian, Jewish and Korean.

The biggest influx of Polish immigrants came to Chicago between 1850 and 1950, due to political turmoil including the Second World War. The triangular intersection of Milwaukee Avenue at Ashland and Division streets became known as Polish Downtown, and swaths of the Avenue are still home to recent immigrants and the descendants of those original settlers.

A little later in history, Latino settlers took residence along Milwaukee Avenue heading north. By 1929 Chicago was known to emigrating Mexicans as the largest colonial outpost outside the Southwest (NIU.edu). Because the area surrounding Milwaukee Avenue north of downtown, known as Jefferson Township, remained unincorporated until 1889, it may have seemed a natural fit for new settlers, and Latino immigrants followed suit. Nowadays, could anyone visit Logan Square without overhearing conversations in Spanish between multiple generations?

The present linguistic and cultural lines are not so clear cut, but it seems that as immigrants poured into Chicago, they settled along Milwaukee Avenue starting in the industrious downtown and then heading northwest as populations grew. Milwaukee Avenue could be Chicago’s longest multilingual street, where storefront signs in Polish, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Lithuanian and Korean contain no English translation, and even monolingual English speakers know that zimne piwo means “cold beer” in Polish.

While so many other Chicago avenues and boulevards have transformed into the streetscapes of Anymetropolis, USA, Milwaukee Avenue has retained the characteristics and the languages of its scores of settlers. The avenue has a cultural staying power – perhaps those immigrants were onto something when they developed neighborhoods of their families and compatriots. Over the years, the residents and their cultures have blended and relocated and spread to such an extent that the City could rededicate the street as Multilingual Avenue.

A storefront on Milwaukee Avenue near Belmont Avenue contains Spanish, Polish and English.

Some words make me cringe. Not necessarily words that have a negative meaning. Some are completely benign, but just sound off, like “moist” and “crisp.” Others drive me nuts when used incorrectly, like “literally” (the other day I read on a box of blackberries: “Literally a piece of heaven in every bite!”).

Many people would jump at the chance to get rid of their most loathed words… and as it turns out, they did. The New Yorker recently posed a question to its readers: if you could eliminate a single word from the English language, what would it be?

Many readers shared my hatred for “moist” and “literally.” Other popular suggestions included “actually,” “awesome,” “phlegm,” “bling,” and “efforting.” “Comorbid” got honorable mention.

In the end, the New Yorker weighed responses not by their particular level distaste, but by their purpose in the English language. For example, we could get rid of “moist,” but then how would we describe something slightly wet? “Moist” is here to stay, people.

So, which word is equally hated and useless? “Slacks” ended up taking the cake:

We zeroed in on a set of suggestions that sought to update the language of everyday fashion. It wasn’t something we had considered until it was mentioned; then it seemed obvious, even inevitable. They took aim, mainly, at a pair of words for a pair of pants, “trousers” and “slacks,” proposing that they had overstayed their welcome. After a protracted backroom session—arguments were impactful on both sides of the issue—we settled on slacks.

Read the full article here, and stay tuned for more thought-provoking questions from the New Yorker’s new Twitter and Facebook based game called “Questioningly.”

There are many “driveway moments” for me when listening to NPR – times when I’ve long since arrived at my destination but I find myself still sitting in the car, listening to a news or special interest segment (though given that I live in Chicago, I’ll expand the meaning of “driveway” to include alley, parallel parking space or the occasional parking lot).

This morning I was struck by an interview (To Predict Dating Success, the Secret’s in the Pronouns) with James W. Pennebaker, department chair of Psychology at UT Austin, who studies the psychology of word use.  Pennebaker distinguishes between content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs) and function words – the words that fill in between content words, like the, and, I, this and that.

He recorded the conversation that took place during speed dating sessions and found that, by analyzing participants’ language use, he could predict who would end up going on a date. He explains:

“The more similar [they were] across all of these function words, the higher the probability that [they] would go on a date in a speed dating context,” Pennebaker says. “And this is even cooler: We can even look at … a young dating couple… [and] the more similar [they] are … using this language style matching metric, the more likely [they] will still be dating three months from now.”

This does not suggest that people who talk alike are better matched for one another, but rather that our language use subtly and automatically shifts when we’re around people that we’re interested in. So while you may put on your favorite shirt or pay extra attention to your hair before heading off to meet your future partner, it’s may just be that what happens at the linguistic level is what matters more.

Tracy Lopez, a blogger for SpanglishBaby, wants her son to speak Spanish so badly that she admits to employing bribery to get him to speak it. She wrote about how her son has now turned the tables on her own tactics, using Spanish as a form of persuasion:

Yesterday he asked me in English to play a dancing video game with him — because I was busy with work, I brushed him off with a “Tal vez más tarde.”

My son put the sweetest look on his face and switched to Spanish, “Mami, ¿no quieres bailar conmigo?… Por fa?”

As a mother to a bilingual kid who has not yet spoken his first word and who desperately wants him to absorb the non-dominant household language (English), this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. I would do just about anything for him to speak my language, but would I resort to bribery?

Most of the commenters on Tracy’s post found her example funny. Some even suggested other rewards such as an increase in allowance for speaking more Spanish. But I was just left with a sour taste in my mouth.

I’m sure every parent resorts to bribery now and then, but when you add language to the mix, doesn’t it get the short end of the bargain? If your kid is bribed into speaking a second language, won’t it then seem like a chore?

The question is, of course, how do you encourage your child to use a less dominant household language without resorting to bribery or other rewards/punishments? I don’t want to have to use any tactics with my own son, apart from speaking with him and enjoying reading and other media in English.

I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. For now, I’ll accept my son’s beautiful 8-month-old babble, whatever language it is.

It’s possible you’ve heard examples of some mistakes companies have made when attempting to market their products internationally without first researching the linguistic and cultural implications in new markets.

The classic example is the Chevy Nova, which flopped in Latin America.  In Spanish, “no va” means “doesn’t go” – not exactly a quality you’re looking for in a new car.  More recently, Clairol’s curling iron, the “Mist Stick”, didn’t go over well in Germany.  Why? Apparently German’s didn’t want to buy what translated as the “Dung Stick”.

Thankfully, many companies with plans to market their products internationally now understand the importance of using focus groups to test their new product names.  However, as Crain’s Chicago Business notes, this method isn’t fool-proof – as Kraft recently learned.

The name that Kraft Foods Inc. chose for its global snack spinoff – Mondelez International – has sparked plenty of comment and snark across the country…pronounced “mohn-dah-LEEZ,” the name means something else to Russian speakers, say those fluent in its language and slang. We were tipped off to the double entendre by a reader who braced us with a “no offense, but this is bad” before explaining the name sounds like the Russian term for an oral sex act.

Kraft claims to have done focus groups in 28 languages, including Russian.  Crain’s argues that this example highlights “the minefield of potential missteps in applying a single name across a multitude of countries”.

It’s no surprise in today’s increasingly global world that being bilingual has its advantages.  From a practical perspective, proficiency in a second language opens up a wealth of job opportunities.  Across virtually ever industry, there is a need for effectively connecting with a multilingual workforce, and of course the importance of connecting with a multilingual customer base – whether domestic or international – cannot be overstated.  From a linguistic perspective, once you’ve studied one foreign language, learning another is significantly easier.  From a social perspective, learning a language opens up new worlds and facilitate connections between people.

Beyond the practical, linguistic and social advantages is yet another: cognitive. Being bilingual makes you smarter.  As if the first three advantages aren’t enough, new bodies of research are highlighting the very real cognitive advantages, as noted in the recent New York Times Article, Why Bilinguals Are Smarter.

The article notes the shifting perspective on second language learning, initially viewing it as an interference that hindered academic development to quite the opposite:

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilingualism not only helps the young in the academic success, but it’s been shown to delay the onset of dementia. Add these to the many other benefits of bilingualism, and it seems that learning another language is a no-brainer.

This morning I had a quick chuckle when this popped up on my Facebook feed:

Get it? Pan = bread, pantuflas = slippers. A silly little joke for the Spanish speakers out there.

It got me thinking about a bookstore chain in Mexico, called “Gandhi,” whose innovative minimalist yellow ads are just about everywhere these days. They’re bringing humor to the idea of reading in a noble attempt to challenge the poor literacy level this country faces, and to sell books, of course!

If you’re a student of Spanish, put your thinking cap on and try your hand at these. (A note that some are purely ‘mexicanismos’!) Explanations at the end.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1. = ‘Before’ (‘antes’) is spelled wrong, with a ‘z,’ and ‘after’ (‘después’) is spelled correctly. The message: your spelling will improve the more you read. Note that the ‘z’ in place of an ‘s’ (and a ‘k’ in place of ‘que’) is something the young text-ing generation tends to do.

2. = This one’s pretty straightforward: “Off. On.” But instead of a television, you see an open book for “on.”

3. = A rough translation: “Don’t say cool (‘chido’) because it sounds bad (‘gacho’).” This is poking fun at the overuse of slang. You have to look closer at the Spanish words to get it — ‘chido’ roughly translates to ‘cool’ or ‘awesome,’ but ‘gacho’ is also a slang word meaning ‘bad,’ ‘mean,’ ‘stupid’… a lot of things, actually, depending on the context! In other words, it’s a hypocritical statement, like saying “You’re grammar is terrible.”

4. = If you’ve ever followed a conversation between two teenage boys in Mexico, you’ve heard the word ‘guëy.’ Coming from ‘buey,’ which literally means ‘ox,’ it’s like saying ‘man’ or ‘dude.’ “Hola, guëy” = “Hey, dude.” The word is an utterly pervasive Mexican  colloquialism. Like you know how, like, people, like, overuse the word ‘like’? It’s like that. So the message of this ad is pretty clear, right guëy?

5. = “Thank you for making the effort to read.”

Smart phones are pretty smart. You can speak a simple instruction or question — “Create a reminder”; “What’s the weather like today?” — and the little handheld robot will respond swiftly to your command. Voice-activated virtual assistants like iPhone’s Siri makes this possible.

That is, until smart phones met the Scottish. A top seller in the United Kingdom, Siri seems to be foiled by the not so user friendly Scottish accent. An LATimes article recounts one episode:

“What’s the weather like today?” Darren Lillie said hopefully into his iPhone recently here in the Scottish capital, in a demonstration for an American reporter.

Lillie, 25, is Edinburgh born and bred, and his thick accent shows it.

Siri thought for a moment, then decided it best to repeat what it thought it heard.

“What’s available in Labor Day?” it asked.

Lillie shook his head. “I don’t even know what Labor Day is,” he said ruefully to the American, who told him.

Even though the language is set to English (United Kingdom), Scots have reported that the even the smartest of phones is not able to follow their speech. Apple encourages users to continue practicing, because the more you use Siri, the better it will recognize your accent. But some users might not have a chance.

Lillie, quoted above, says he finds he has to speak slower to the Siri, like he might speak to a tourist. “Ella Bendall, an Edinburgh native, said she finds her thumbs more reliable than getting Siri to obey her. ‘I don’t even bother using it because I’d have to speak even more slowly,’ said Bendall, 18. ‘It’s quicker typing.’”

To be fair, the Scottish accent is notoriously befuddling to humans, too. Glasgow natives, with their particularly thick accent, even trouble other Scots.

Some users have posted their interactions with Siri on YouTube, with sometimes hilarious results:

• “Create a reminder”
• iPhone commercial for Siri (parody, and a little R-rated for language)

And how do other accents fare? Listen to what Siri interprets of a Boston accent: “Can I park my car in Harvard Yard?”

You’re buying tickets online to a baseball game. You log into the website, pick your tickets and pay — but the transaction isn’t complete until you’ve correctly deciphered a wavy, nonsensical word like “exulatu” or “plicrom.” Those funky words are called Captchas, and only humans can read them. Enter it correctly and you’re on your way to the game!

What you probably didn’t realize is that with each Captcha transcribed, you might be helping digitize an old, historical text. Buy a baseball ticket, check good deed of the day off your list.

The concept is called reCaptcha, a software tool developed by Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. When old texts are scanned into an online database for historical preservation, the character recognition programs make a lot of mistakes. Words flagged by the system end up as Captchas, which are then deciphered by human transcribers: you.

Transcribing old texts can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor if transcribers were hired to compare all the texts. But with reCaptcha, millions of people around the word do it daily, and without even knowing it. From a NYTimes feature on reCaptcha:

Dr. von Ahn’s group estimated that humans around the world decode at least 200 million Captchas per day, at 10 seconds per Captcha. This works out to about 500,000 hours per day — a lot of applied brainpower being spent on what Dr. von Ahn regards as a fundamentally mindless exercise.

So, the next time you groan when those squiggly little letters appear on your screen, know that 10 seconds of your time may be contributing to the preservation of of history for generations to come!

You can read more about reCaptcha in the article linked above, or at reCaptcha’s website: http://www.google.com/recaptcha.