We need to make a detour through Japanese to put words on the complex one feels when speaking a foreign language. Yet, we know how the French doubt their abilities to speak in another language: fear of sounding ridiculous, fear not to be good enough, fear of pronounciation, intonation or …
In the cinema dialect, we often talk about the “missing picture” to give credit to an artistic project aiming at showing on big screens minorities until then invisible or not visible enough. A lot of books thrive on bookstores’ shelves to unveal words that we would be missing. I tend …
The author tries and alters the set imagination we have about languages. We have crafted a whole system of language frontiers. First, there is the nation-state language divides whereby there is a sole language per nation that thus needs surrounding borders. We can imagine a clear line where on one …
They are the first words a pupil on exchange will learn: swear words! No matter the language, it will be the first topic of discussion with the following justifications: being cool when back in the playground of the school or to understand when insulted, “just in case”. French and English …
The following words are in Swahili, a language that adopted many English words. This language doesn’t like having 2 consonants following one another and words always end with a vowel even if it didn’t in the original word! Here is an example: skirt > s-i-k-e-t-i. An “i” to separate the …
The choice of words give away a whole culture, and in particular the way verbes are built. A concept such as owning something is translated in most European languages the same way: to have, avoir, tener, … A European possesses things, the thing is owned. Conversely, other cultures focus rather …
I used to think all languages had opted for a similar way to accept or decline, to confirm or deny. 2 little words, short to be as efficient as possible. yes – nooui – non sí – noja – neinда / da – нет / niet The first language to …
Little brass signs set in every step of the staircase, a guessing game for the line-14 commuter. I am talking about the 19 steps leading outside the BNF metro station written in 19 languages. Here are a few illustrators of the languages chosen by the architect Antoine Grumbach: When you …
We oppose in vain reality and fiction, this is what I will remember from Nancy Huston’s book. Any human group invents stories that imply actions from that given group. We are driven by stories, social background, country, religion, family story and so on. Stories have an effectiveness in our reality …
Each great space power crafted its own word to design a space traveler. It was a conscious choice, showing a geopolitical positioning. First the Americans send astronauts (1928), that is to say, star sailors. The USSR forges its own word in 1961, космонавт or cosmonauts, the universe sailor. The Europeans …
