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A round-up of the latest language-related news from all over the internet + some recommendations from us.
If you’re reading this and are new to this newsletter, welcome! This is a newsletter about language, culture and society. You can check out previous issues in the archive: we’ve written about music in gibberish, glottophobia and the language of dating. And if you enjoy it, please share it with a friend.
After a very very long pause, we’ve decided to relaunch in a different, more sustainable format. From now on, you’ll get a round-up of the latest language-related news from all over the internet, plus a few recommendations from us at the end. We would love to hear what you think about it. And if you like what we do, please consider supporting us with a donation on Ko-fi, however small, so that we can keep this going. Thank you.
It’s been an eventful time for languages around the world in recent weeks – and not just human ones. Sea cows in Florida are chatting away to each other and scientists have been looking into what pigs are trying to tell us when they oink. It has even been revealed that mushrooms use up to 50 “words” to communicate.
In the human world, French-speaking countries celebrated the Semaine de la Francophonie, but Quebec concluded that it wants its own Canadian Francophonie day. In the latest expression of Ireland’s Celtic revival, a group called Kneecap is pioneering Irish-language rap, and we loved this story about a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages. Learning Spanish has always been a good idea and not just for your CV: research now shows that it could actually be good for your physical health. The use of the suffix -ita and -ito, which means “small” and makes things sound cuter, may be contributing to lower rates of heart disease by influencing speakers’ emotional reactions to stress. The power of Spanish to turn un infarto (a heart attack) into un infartito is actually saving lives. Just in case you needed another good reason to get cracking.
If you’ve been following linguistic scandals recently you may remember the French dictionary Petit Robert got into trouble a few months ago when it introduced the gender-inclusive pronoun iel (a combination of “il” and “elle”) to its online edition. The French education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, was not happy: “Inclusive writing is not the future of the French language,” he said. Now the squabble seems to have travelled across the border to Italy, where academics are getting worked up about the use of “shwa” (a letter that looks like an upside-down ‘e’) as a gender-neutral suffix for words like attorə (actor) to substitute the feminine attrice. Going ahead with this “politically correct folly”, the academics argue, could confuse Italians attempting to pronounce certain words, and even result in “involuntary comic” consequences. In other words…it could be quite fun.
On a more serious note, language is playing a significant role in Ukraine, where swearing in Russian has become part of the country’s defiant response to the war. The line “Russian warship, fuck off,” has become somewhat of a national slogan, appearing on T-shirts, billboards and road signs across the country. Meanwhile, the number of people learning Ukrainian around the world has boomed. Duolingo has said that since the start of the Russian invasion, the number of people taking up Ukrainian on its app has shot up by a whopping 577%, and Ukrainian has climbed all the way up from 33rd place to 13th on its list of most popular languages.
But if you too are struggling to keep that annoying green owl happy with a 7-day streak, don’t stress. The Times has put together the definitive guide to learning a language as an adult. It’s behind a paywall, but we can tell you it includes a man impersonating the mannerisms of Captain Jack Sparrow to learn Spanish, aiming to make 200 mistakes a day, and the age-old wisdom of tuning into the music and films in the language you’re learning. If alternative methods are your thing, this web browser extension will even translate keywords on webpages so you can aprender to read textos in Spanglish. Admittedly, though, things could get a bit confusing.
What we’ve been up to:
With travel back to almost normality, tourists are once again filling the streets of the French capital. Julia put together a list of the top 10 best things to do in Paris for those planning a city break.
Speaking of cities, just what is it about New York that allows scammers to thrive? With the release of the Netflix series Inventing Anna, inspired by the fake heiress Anna Delvey, Aisling explored how New York became home to the con artist.
Ahead of the inauguration of Maison Gainsbourg in Paris, the first cultural institution dedicated to the singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, Julia looked into how in 2022 the themes of incest, misogyny and racism in his music make him an increasingly controversial figure in France.
Aisling spent a month in Siena thanks to Hisham Matar’s new book, A Month in Siena. Ponder art and life while staring at Siennese paintings for days at a time, drink espressos with new friends and re-experience the dual pleasure/torture of learning a new language.
Most of us are unaware of the subterranean waterways flowing beneath our feet, but many cities have forgotten rivers that have been buried underground for over a century. For Time Out, Julia wrote about how cities around the world are “daylighting” them to help fight climate change.
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Aisling O'Leary is an Irish journalist based in London, where she works at The Telegraph's travel desk. You can follow her on Twitter @JournoAsho
Julia Webster Ayuso is a Spanish-British freelance journalist based in Paris. Her writing has appeared in Time, The Guardian, The New York Times and Monocle. You can follow her on Twitter @jwebsterayuso