Anyone who shares my fascination with language and uncovering the obscure will enjoy browsing the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. There are reckoned to be over 6,000 languages in the world with some half of those under threat of extinction this century.

The atlas’s excellent print edition was updated last year and there is an searchable online language map, which is great for random investigation.

For instance, there are 144 languages listed for China: from Adi, spoken by about 170,000 people in Siang, to Zaiwa with only a thousand speakers. There are 11 languages listed for the UK, including Cornish and Manx. The latter is listed as “critically endangered” with the atlas noting:

The last speaker of traditional Manx, Ned Maddrell, died in 1974. Since then, however, the language has been undergoing active revitalization in family, school and institutional contexts.

Personally I have found the atlas an absorbing way to wile away an hour or two. Of course, beyond pure fascination, there is a serious point about how we are all culturally poorer by allowing these languages to die:

With the disappearance of unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge embedded, in particular, in indigenous languages.

So if you find yourself with an hour or two to spare this long weekend, I urge you to have a look round … and let us know of any gems you uncover!

Bilingualism – mental recycling?

Debates have raged for many years about just how children learn language so quickly and so well but most studies agree that the earlier children learn a second language, the better they are with that language. Some psycologists used to believe that the confusion of learning two languages at once impeded a child’s cognitive development. This view has been much criticised. Indeed The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists issued guidance in 2006 that “bilingualism in a child or adult is an advantage and does not cause communication disorders”.

Now a new study has confirmed the benefits of bilingualism but at the other end of the age scale. It seems the skill confers some protection against the onset of Alzheimer’s, with bilingual speakers holding the disease off for an average of four years longer than monoglots. Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist from York University in Toronto, said:

“Being bilingual has certain cognitive benefits and boosts the performance of the brain… It won’t stop them getting Alzheimer’s disease, but they can cope with the disease for longer.”

Her research, published in Neurology, looked at more than 200 Canadians with probable Alzheimer’s – half of whom were monolingual and half of whom were bilingual. Cognitive impairment started later on average in the bilingual patients. In patients who were matched for cognitive level, education, job history and immigration background, bilingualism delayed the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms by four to five years on average.

Bialystok said switching between different languages seems to stimulate the brain:

“It seems to be adding to people’s ‘cognitive reserve’, like other social, mental and physical activities that give some protection against dementia in older people who maintain an active lifestyle… It is rather like a reserve tank in a car. When you run out of fuel, you can keep going for longer because there is a bit more in the safety tank.”

Interestingly, the effect seems most pronouced in people who speak two languages every day, and have to choose between two sets of words all the time.

Another study, by Judith Kroll of Penn State University, supports the idea that bilingualism boost brain power. She found that bilingual speakers could outperform monoglots in mental tasks and focusing on important details. Kroll concludes:

“We would probably refer to most of these cognitive advantages as multi-tasking… Bilinguals seem to be better at this type of perspective-taking… The received wisdom was that bilingualism created confusion, especially in children. The belief was that people who could speak two or more languages had difficulty using either.

“The bottom line is that bilingualism is good for you.”

The 95-page book and accompanying CD has become a runaway success among Japanese students of English, according to a recent BBC report.

The book contains many of Obama’s speeches, dating back to his now famous address at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Each English transcription is accompanied by a Japanese translation.

The title has surged to No. 2 in the best-seller list, with more than 400,000 copies flying off the shelves.

Many students learn the speeches off by heart. But their appeal is not only their timeliness and topicality. According to one English teacher, it is also the clarity and rhythm of Obama’s language.

WorldAccent’s London-based Japanese typesetter agrees: “Obama’s speeches are very poetic, but very clear. They pack a lot of meaning into a few words, and the language really flows.”

A spokesperson for the publisher commented that they would not, though, be publishing speeches by just any president. “Would you buy the text of former President George W. Bush’s speeches?” he asked.

First the good news. State schools in the UK are starting to offer a much broader range of foreign languages than the traditional French or German. Since 2005 the number of schools offering Mandarin as an option has increased from 2% to 14%, while Italian has increased from 7% to 18%. The availability of Urdu, Russian and Arabic has also increased.

With China’s growing influence in the world, making Mandarin available as a foreign language option can only be a good thing. And learning it from an early age is no bad thing either, as some people find it difficult to adapt to the Mandarin pronunciation later in life.

Many also find it difficult to get to grips with the writing system which uses individual characters for particular words or concepts. The examples featured in the Chinese GCSE specification (PDF) I looked at were written in Simplified Chinese, as one would expect for people learning Mandarin with an eye to interacting with mainland China (or more correctly the People’s Republic of China).

This at least reduces the number of characters that need to be learned, although there are still thousands!

And it is interesting to note that many Traditional Chinese characters seem to be gaining currency even in the PRC as the influence of Hong Kong is felt.

There is a down side exposed in the CiLT report though. Although the decline in foreign languages in our schools has bottomed out, this summer saw just 44% of Key Stage 4 (ie 16 year old) pupils sit a language GCSE. Compare this to France where the teaching of English is compulsory up to age 17.

Although many schools are taking up alternative qualifications to GCSE to tempt pupils to learn languages, we still lag some way behind many other EU countries.

My daughter is currently going through the process of chososing her GCSE subject and to try to ensure she takes at least one foreign language I will be directing her here – 700 reasons why it is good to learn another language.