The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/832824
thelinguist.uberflip.com JUNE/JULY 2017 The Linguist 5 'Do North and South Korea Speak the Same Language? Yes, But not Quite', 24/2/17 Division happened only in the previous century… enough time for those countries' vastly different trajectories to impact on the language they use, most noticeably in the case of English loanwords – a veritable flood in the South, carefully dammed in the North. The biggest differences, though, are those of dialect, which have pronounced regional differences both between and within North and South… A dialect doesn't just mean a handful of region-specific words; conjunctions and sentence endings, for example, are pronounced and thus written differently. That's a headache until you crack the code. What the papers say… 'Why an Italian Row Over Place Names is Dredging up Memories of Fascism', 1/5/17 Having bilingual place names for towns and cities is standard practice today in South Tyrol, but many of the names of hills, woods, fields and smaller mountains are still only official in Italian – even though they are situated in mainly German-speaking areas… Says [Governor of South Tyrol, Arno] Kompatscher, "Of course we have to use some Italian names which were originally fascist inventions but are in the meantime just used as names of places by the Italian speaking people living here." 'Juncker Opts for French for Speech as "English is Losing Importance"', 5/5/17 The comments – which were met with applause during a conference of EU dignitaries in Italy – came after an extraordinary row between Downing Street and the commission over leaks of a private dinner. The British prime minister accused Mr Juncker's aides of trying to interfere in the upcoming general election. The latest from the languages world New research finds that languages are marked particularly harshly in the UK Native speakers make the grade NEWS & EDITORIAL A report into the impact of native speaker candidates on A-level language grades was released in April, providing evidence that language exams are marked more harshly than other subjects. Launched in response to concerns from schools and representative bodies, the study by the exam regulator, Ofqual, set out to determine whether non-native students are being disadvantaged due to the comparative marking system. It found that 17% of German A-level students are native speakers, falling to 10.1% for Spanish and 8.7% for French. Spanish native speakers were almost 10 times more likely to achieve an A or A* than non-native speakers, and five times as likely to achieve a grade C or above. German native speakers were 30 times as likely to get at least a grade C in German, and 28 times as likely to achieve a grade A as non-native speakers. "Overall, these findings suggest that native and non-native speakers perform differently on the A-level assessment and that there could be implications for the maintenance of standards. However, quantifying the size of any effect is challenging due to the low response rate in our study and the challenges of identifying native speakers," the report concludes. Ofqual also acknowledged that there are concerns that severe grading may be partly responsible for the continuing decline in the take-up of languages at A level. The regulator has indicated that measures could now be taken to account for the native-speaker impact: "If the ability of the cohorts is similar to previous years we would anticipate small increases in the proportion of students getting top grades in each subject this August," it said. In response, William Richardson, General Secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of Independent Schools, suggested that "a 'compelling case' has been established to allow an increased proportion of students to be awarded top grades in these subjects." Read the report at http://bit.ly/2oxvzS7 © SHUTTERSTOCK