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Mix of Japanese-Indigenous Languages Survives in Taiwan

Raohe Street Night Market in Taipei – Taiwan.

In the town of Hanhsi in the northeastern mountains here, where many of the Atayal indigenous people reside, a language resembling Japanese — “Yilan Creole” — can be heard being spoken.

According to remaining records in Yilan County, the Japanese language school in Hanhsi was established in January 1914. However, right before that, this area was completely uninhabited. Beginning in 1903, the Japanese government forcefully moved the indigenous peoples from the mountains and closer to flatter areas so they would be easier to govern. The people of Hanhsi were part of this policy, with the Atayal and linguistically different Seediq people moving from villages deep in the mountains to live there.

See the full article here.

Justice Ministry to Close Study Abroad Loophole For Foreign Students to Work

The Justice Ministry plans to tighten rules for running Japanese-language schools from October in a bid to close loopholes that allow foreign students to work in Japan based on the pretext of studying abroad.

As the number of overseas students in the country surges, the current system is thought to be allowing many students to become de facto migrant workers, and the ministry aims to make sure that all those who come are genuinely here to study.

The ministry plans to introduce a set of new standards, including obliging Japanese-language schools to provide classes throughout the year, to redress an imbalance that effectively permits students to work full time for extended periods once they have received the mandatory minimum number of hours’ tuition.

 

See the full article here

Caretakers Japanese Level Raises Concerns in Nursing

Japan eased the language ability requirements in its move to bring in foreign technical trainees in nursing care. Although the relaxed requirements have been lauded as a way to alleviate the chronic shortage of caregivers in Japan’s rapidly graying society, others warn of potential health risks caused by miscommunication.

It is the first time Japan has opened its door to foreign interns in a field in which they are expected of having basic communication skills.

The government’s official position is that the program will enable technical interns to learn nursing skills at Japanese care homes and use the experience in their home countries after they return.

But it is also clear that Japan is in desperate need of care workers to tend to the ballooning population of elderly people.

Japan has accepted technical interns from many Asian countries under the Technical Intern Training Program since 1993 in a number of fields, including construction, agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing and food processing.

Nursing care was added to the program when it was overhauled in November.

 

Read the full article here

Nebraska Students Get Teachers From 2 Continents

Japanese language classes already are scarce in Nebraska: Southwest is the only high school in Lincoln Public Schools — and one of the few in the state — that offers them.

And, for the next two years, students will get to learn the language not only from Tammy Cunningham, the teacher who began the program at Southwest, but from Yu Hiraoka, who taught in her native Japan, as well as Africa and France, before landing in the middle of America.

Southwest was selected as one of nine sites in the country to host a teacher exchange program called the Japanese Language Education Assistant Program through the Laurasian Institution, a nonprofit educational and cultural exchange organization.

Read the full article here

Austria Scraps Turkish Driving Tests

Austria will no longer offer its written driving test in Turkish, according to the country’s transportation minister. Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) claimed the move was to cut costs but added that the government hopes it will serve as an “encouragement to learn German.”

Over a quarter of a million people with Turkish heritage live in Austria. Under current regulations, Austrian residents can take driving lessons in Turkish and take their written tests in the same language.

Turkish is the second-most-popular language among test takers. Last year, 3,631 out of nearly 300,000 driving tests (1.2%) were taken in Turkish, while 2,301 were taken in English, 2,112 in Croatian, and 139 in Slovenian. Hofer said tests in English, Croatian, and Slovenian will continue, although he claimed it was a cost-cutting move: “It’s a question of costs, but also for me, it’s essential to clearly establish in which languages it is sensible to have the exam.”

“Each additional language for training costs the state a five-figure sum that isn’t justifiable,” he told public radio station O1, and then he switched tack to argue that eliminating Turkish would reduce discrimination against other minorities.

“The current offering of exams in Turkish also discriminates against other ethnic minorities, who would like to have the tests translated into Chinese, Arabic, or Albanian,” he said.
The Austrian government must offer the test in Croatian and Slovenian due to the Austrian State Treaty signed after World War II that defines the rights of those two minority groups, but the government said that offering Turkish was “merely a concession” made by the government in 1998.

The anti-immigration FPO took leadership of several key government offices after the 2015 elections, which brought a coalition government into power.

The Austrian leader, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, has repeatedly asked the European Union to end negotiations regarding Turkey’s membership.

After Turkey’s June elections, deputy FPO chief Johann Gudenus said, “All those who voted for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Turkish presidential election are clearly better off in Turkey than in Austria,” adding that the election proved that integration of Turks in Austria was a “miserable failure.”

Report Challenges California’s System for Identifying English Learners’ Needs

.Study of local plans identifies key improvements to fix the system

 

Californians Together is releasing a new report today entitled Masking the Focus on English Learners. The report questions the efficacy of California’s accountability system for identifying the needs of English learners accurately. The report claims that by combining data from two English learner subgroups (current and reclassified), the system fails to recognize the distinct needs of each subgroup. It also diminishes the urgency to address the educational needs of current English learners. This undermines the central equity intent of the Local Control Funding Formula.

The report’s strongest recommendation is that the state discontinue aggregating the two subgroups. It suggests to instead report them separately for analysis and planning. “There is great potential for California school districts to be misled by the results of the combined EL subgroup. The decision to combine this data from two student groups with distinct language and academic profiles masks and impedes addressing their distinct academic needs,” said researcher and co-author Dr. Magaly Lavadenz. The report also claims that the system fails to accurately identify research-based programs, actions, and services for English learners.

Key findings presented in the report include:

  • All 24 districts are rated at the two lowest levels for English learner performance
    • only six mentioned a concern for achievement in English language arts
    • only one specified a concern for their overall achievement
  • Analysis of English learner outcomes had minimal attention.
    Course access and targeted services were inconsistently provided to current English learners.
  • Teachers of English learners were offered minimal specific professional development.

“Obscuring current English learner results has detrimental effects on districts’ abilities to address goals in local plans, set growth targets, focus programs and services, and allocate funds for this group of students. We call on the State Board of Education to rectify this measurement policy in order to ensure every English learner can best be served,” said Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, executive director of Californians Together.

The study was conducted in collaboration with the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola Marymount University and reviewed local plans for 24 school districts that serve 23% of California’s English learners. The full report is available at www.californianstogether.org.

Free Videos to Learn Italian While Cooking

MIT has released a series of free videos to learn Italian while cooking through their Experimental Study Group. According to their website, “The Experimental Study Group (ESG) offers instruction in the core freshman subjects of biology, chemistry, math, physics, and humanities through small, discussion-based classes designed for students who are interested in taking an active role in their education.

Academics are supplemented by a variety of community activities, including weekly luncheons, evening study sessions, and weekend trips.”

The videos were originally part of an in-person ESG class with MIT professor, Dr. Paola Rebusco. From the course description, “The participants in this seminar will dive into learning basic conversational Italian, Italian culture, and the Mediterranean diet. Each class is based on the preparation of a delicious dish and on the bite-sized acquisition of parts of the Italian language and culture. A good diet is not based on recipes only, it is also rooted in healthy habits and in culture. At the end of the seminar the participants will be able to cook some healthy and tasty recipes and to understand and speak basic Italian.”

The full series of videos, called Speak Italian with Your Mouth Full is available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP62GsvB-6EwEE0F0frXtyhYq

The first video from the series is below:

Italian Play in South Africa

Don Pasquale offers theatre goers the rare chance to take in the beautiful Italian language on a South African stage (with subtitles of course), mixed together with theatrical splendour, presented with truly exceptional opera voices.

The complimentary melodies of lead songbirds, Guest artist Bongani Justice Kubheka and Conroy Scott share the title role, CTO’s Brittany Smith as Norina, Lunga Hallam as Ernesto and UCT’s Luvuyo Mbundu as Dr. Malatesta are nothing short of musical magnificence. Classical Italian tunes combined with the superb upbeat opera singing is a sight and sound to behold, with props and projected backdrops adding a unique sense of dimension to each scene – in a most memorable way.

 

See the full article here: http://www.capetownetc.com/cape-town/don-pasquale-an-italian-masterpiece/

Newspaper Keeps Italian Alive in Tunisia

exists today mostly due to Finzi’s single-handed efforts to keep it afloat. Although a professor at La Manouba University, on the outskirts of Tunis, she still finds time to edit, write stories, print the paper, and every few days, update the website.

Omar Bellicini, a Rome-based Algerian-Italian journalist, recently contributed a column in which he urged Italians living in Tunisia to serve as a bridge between the opposite shores of the Mediterranean. Omar grew up in Tunisia for the most part, though not as a member of the historic community. “I’ve always read the Corriere,” he told Al-Monitor. “It’s an institution for Italians who have lived in Tunisia.”

Il Corriere, mainly covering Tunisian news, is today the only Italian-language publication in the Arab world. Its readership does not exceed 3,000. Finzi concedes that it is at times difficult to find the funds to sustain it. The Tunisian Italian community amounts to less than 800 people.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/08/tunisias-italian-newspaper-maintains-heritage.html#ixzz5PcJLWIhf

Baby Talk Works

The more baby talk (e.g., words that repeat themselves, like choo-choo, or diminutives, like bunny or Mommy) that babies are exposed to, the quicker they grasp language, according to a new study at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh.

The study’s assessments of nine-month-old children suggest that those who hear baby-talk words more frequently are faster at picking up new words between nine and 21 months, and researchers say these findings suggest some types of baby-talk words—more than other words—can help infants develop their vocabulary more quickly.

The team says words that end in y—such as tummy, Mommy, and doggy—or words that repeat sounds—such as choo-choo and night-night—could help infants identify words in speech. As well as analyzing diminutives ending in y and reduplication—which contains repeated syllables—they checked for onomatopoeic words that sound like their meanings, such as woof and splash.

They examined the rate of the infants’ language development by measuring the size of the children’s vocabulary at nine, 15, and 21 months. They found that infants who heard a higher proportion of diminutive words and words with repeated syllables developed their language more quickly between nine and 21 months. They did not find this effect on vocabulary growth for onomatopoeic baby-talk words.

“Our findings suggest that diminutives and reduplication, which are frequently found in baby-talk words—across many different languages—can facilitate the early stage of vocabulary development,” said Dr. Mitsuhiko Ota, School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences.

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