Vol. 59    November, 2005

About Language

from the National Virtual Translation Center (Part two of a three part installment)

Languages Spoken in the U.S.

Does the U.S. have an official language?

You might be surprised to know that for more than 200 years, Americans have gotten by without declaring English their official language. English Only legislation first appeared in 1981 as a constitutional English Language Amendment but the measure never came to Congressional vote. As for the official language of individual states, only 23 have adopted Official English laws.

How many languages are spoken in the U.S.?

Far from being monolingual, the U.S. is a highly multilingual country. The number of languages spoken in the United States is 176.

How can I find out where these languages are spoken?

Use the Modern Language Association’s Language Map mla.org/census_map to search by language and by state to find out where these and many other languages are spoken. The map uses data from the 2000 U.S. census to display the locations and numbers of speakers of thirty languages and three groups of less commonly spoken languages in the U.S. The census data are based on responses to the question, “Does this person speak a language other than English at home?” The map illustrates the concentration of language speakers in zip codes and counties. The Data Center mla.org/census_data provides actual numbers and percentages of speakers and includes census data about seven additional groups of languages less commonly spoken in the U.S. Try it out, it’s great fun!

Which languages in the U.S. have the largest number of native speakers?

Here’s the answer, according to the 2000 census.

English    215,423,557

Spanish    28,101,052

Chinese    2,022,143

French    1,643,838

German    1,383,442

Tagalog    1,224,241

Vietnamese    1,009,627

Italian    1,008,370

Korean    894,063

Russian    706,242

Were you surprised that there are more speakers of Chinese than speakers of French, and more speakers of Tagalog and Vietnamese than Italian?

Who are ‘heritage speakers’?

The term ‘heritage speaker’ refers to a person who comes from a home where a language other than English is spoken, who speaks or understands the home language, and who is more or less bilingual in English and the home language.

Immigration has made America more linguistically diverse than it has ever been. Data from the 2000 U.S. census shows that over 26% of Californians were born outside of the U.S., and that more than one language is spoken in 40% of California households. Nationwide, one in five children enters school speaking a language other than English.

Unfortunately, these children lose most of their native language in the process of learning English. Heritage languages typically die out within three generations. American schools generally ignore or even suppress the languages immigrant children bring with them. Giving up one’s native language often is seen as a natural result of assimilation.

By adolescence, most immigrant children speak their heritage language haltingly. Most of them lose or never develop the ability to read and write in it or to speak it formally. Nevertheless, they have a head start on individuals who have to learn the language ‘from scratch.’ This is particularly true of less commonly taught and strategically important languages that are never taught in schools and offered only at a small number of universities.

Endangered Languages

What is an endangered language?

Endangered languages are languages that are on the brink of extinction, much like endangered species of plants or animals. Languages are considered to be nearly extinct when only a few elderly speakers are still living.

The world faces enormous challenges in maintaining language diversity. Of the more than 6,800 languages, half may be in danger of disappearing in the next several decades. Some language communities have been so ravaged by warfare or disease that they are dying out. Other languages are dying because parents are teaching their children English, French, Spanish or some other dominant language instead of their own language for social and economic reasons. It is hard to imagine that at least 10% of the world’s living languages are now spoken by fewer than 100 people. Clearly, communities cannot sustain serious daily use of a language for even a generation with such a small number of speakers.

Why do languages die?

Some of the forces that contribute to language loss are the impact of urbanization, Westernization, global communication, discrimination, war, disease, hunger, and population movements. These forces diminish the self-sufficiency and self-confidence of small and traditional communities. As a result, parents do not pass their language to their children because they feel that speaking the majority language better equips their offspring for success in the majority culture than speaking their own less prestigious language.

A case in point is North America. Prior to the arrival of Columbus, 300 indigenous languages were spoken in North America. Since then, roughly half of these languages have become extinct for some or all of the reasons described above. Many of the remaining languages are near extinction with only a few elderly speakers left. According to some projections, only twenty indigenous American languages will remain by the middle of the twenty first century. Sadly, the same is true of hundreds of languages in Australia, Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.

The last speaker of a dying language

Mary Smith, 83, of Anchorage, Alaska, says she is the last speaker of Eyak, a claim verified by linguists. She doesn’t like to be the last one. “It’s horrible to be alone,” says Smith who grew up speaking Eyak. “I am the last person that talks in our language — the last of the Eyaks.” How sad is that!

What is being done to preserve dying languages?

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) is actively involved in fostering the world’s language diversity. Click on UNESCO’s interactive map tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/Redbook/index.html to see where these languages are spoken.

The Foundation for Endangered Languages ogmios.org/home.htm supports the documentation, protection and promotion of endangered languages. Scholars know that they need to record and analyze these languages before they disappear off the face of the earth. Only about one third of the world languages have writing systems, so once these languages disappear, we will have no record of them. For instance, many languages of Africa are on the verge of extinction, but 80% of them have no orthography.

For languages that can’t be saved, it is still possible to document them for scientific purposes and for the sake of future generations who might want to study or even revive them. A computer scientist at the University of Melbourne is leading an international mission to digitally preserve thousands of the world’s endangered languages. Since most of these languages have no writing, their cultural heritage will disappear forever along with the loss of their speakers’ knowledge of the environment and of medicinal plants.

Why try to preserve endangered languages?

Wouldn’t the world be simpler if there were fewer languages? Why care if languages die out? The truth is that a people’s identity and culture are intimately tied to their language. Each language is unique. No one knows what riches may be hidden within an endangered language. We may never learn about the cultures whose languages have disappeared. And the wholesale loss of languages that we face today will greatly restrict how much we can learn about human cognition, the nature of language, and language acquisition at a time when we are just beginning to understand these areas.

We all share the responsibility of ensuring that no language will disappear and that as many languages as possible will be maintained and transmitted to future generations.

Success stories

Language preservation is difficult, but there are some success stories. Some languages are literally coming back from the dead. Below are just a few of them.

Hawai’ian had become nearly extinct when the U.S. banned schools from teaching students in Hawai’ian after annexing Hawai’i in 1898. Today, close to 10,000 Hawai’ians speak their native tongue as compared to under 1,000 in 1983. This remarkable resurgence is supported in part by the use of technology.

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma uses the Internet to teach Choctaw to widely spread members of the tribe. Incidentally, if not for the success of the Choctaw Code Talkers in World War I, it is unlikely that another Native American language, the Navajo, would have been used in World War II.

Hebrew evolved in the past century from a written language with no native speakers into Israel’s national tongue, spoken by 5 million people.

The Irish have succeeded in preserving their native Gaelic to the point where it is now spoken by 13% of the population of the Republic of Ireland.

Read about McElroy’s localization services.

Progressive Project Management

(continued)

As he described his vision for the future of project management and business, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that he was describing McElroy’s organizational direction and goals. Some examples of what he envisions in the future (which he defines as approximately 2010):

-    Companies will have real-time information available to all staff (not just management) via a network or web-based system

-    Employees will be able to telecommute because information is available remotely

-    Projects will be “sold” and developed with input from project managers and from line staff

-    Project Managers will be expected to understand business processes and goals, rather than simply act as technicians

-    Project Management principles will be encouraged company-wide

-    Companies will adopt more informal project management: for example, eliminating as much paperwork as possible (he refers to much of the paper generated in companies as “hernia reports”), excessive project team meetings, charts and graphs—and replacing that with a culture of communication, trust, and teamwork. Instrumental in this culture is free and uncensored access to project information, such as that we provide in our ELJOTS® network (this is much more unusual than you would think!).

Kerzner is now working on a new edition of his most recent book, “Best Practices in Project Management.” I suggested that he consider taking a closer look at medium-size companies, as much of the cutting-edge theory and practice emerges in such settings, in large part since smaller companies are not overburdened by layers of bureaucracy and process. The case study that I documented tracks the progression of project management culture at McElroy. It will be included in a chapter entitled “ The Journey to Excellence in Project Management.” With the inclusion of this case study, McElroy will join the ranks of companies like Dell and Raytheon that have been  studied by Kerzner.

It is tempting to look at “big companies,” and think that McElroy should emulate them. It should be heartening to know that we are actually on the cutting edge of business, and that relying most heavily on the strengths of our people in addition to technological solutions is what differentiates us, in a positive way, from our competitors.

Tina Cargile’s case study of Project Management at McElroy appears in this issue.

Even long-time clients can be surprised at the extent of the services McElroy provides. Clients benefit from being able to manage all their translation and localization needs efficiently through one vendor.

Project Management Evolution at McElroy Translation

(continued)

• How would you describe the business problem you are trying to solve?
• What is the current system in place for addressing translation needs?
• Please describe content authoring.
• How will the translations be used?
• What is your desired output?
• What resources will be available to the translators? Do you own existing translation memories or terminology glossaries?
• Please quantify historical and projected translation activity.

(For less complex projects, the simple question “What are you planning to do with the deliverable?” often yields important information that can result in a more effective project plan.)

• Lengthy team meetings on selected projects were replaced with a daily meeting, generally lasting no longer than 15 minutes, reviewing daily and weekly project status, giving representatives of all departments the opportunity to make suggestions, ask questions, or engage others in problem-solving. This activity proved to be particularly valuable when dealing with high-risk projects, but also consistently identified solvable problems in more routine projects that previously would not have been discussed in a team setting.
• Project managers established an open-door policy, and were encouraged to communicate freely with all staff regarding decisions and assumptions, and to incorporate staff feedback into current or future project plans. Management’s visible respect for the technical expertise of the employees in the trenches improved morale and trust, and often allowed project managers to proactively renegotiate deadlines or staged deliverables.
• Deadlines were assigned to best accommodate client needs and internal workload. Projects were prioritized using a simple coding system, designed to indicate the relative urgency of deadlines and also to indicate where deadline flexibility was possible.
• A dedicated customer service department was created to address client issues, to collect and disseminate information regarding post-delivery problems, and to conduct project postmortems to improve understanding of client needs company-wide.
• Analysis of how information was communicated—between upper management, sales, project management, operations, clients, and accounting—led to the development of electronic shipping procedures and customized electronic reporting that eliminated much of the faxing, copying, shipping and filing tasks that had previously required the services of a full-time office clerk.

The availability and sharing of information and the emphasis on project management as a company culture, along with upper management’s commitment to encouraging teamwork and cooperation, has transformed McElroy, which now enjoys niche status as a vendor of choice for extremely high-risk projects that many agencies must turn away due to turnaround requests, complexity, or the need for customized solutions.

Back

Would you like to know what other clients think of McElroy’s services?

Philippines

(continued)

Helpful Hints (continued)

• Never bring shame to a person. This reflects on his family. Personal goals are sacrificed for the good of the family.
• Never directly criticize anyone, especially in public. Never offer insincere comments or compliments.

Especially for Women

• Foreign women will have little problem doing business in the Philippines.
• Men may make comments about women walking on the street. These should be ignored.
• A foreign woman should not pay a bill for a Filipino businessman. It would embarrass him and might harm the business relationship.

-- Excerpted from the “Put Your Best Foot Forward” series by Mary Murray Bosrock. These publications are available for the U.S., Asia, Mexico/Canada, Russia, Europe and South America.

Not visiting the Philippines? Read our Ebuzz archives for information on doing business in other countries.

So what IS the hardest language to learn?

(continued)

The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim!
So our English, I think you will all agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there.
And dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I’d learned to talk it when I was five,

And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five!

Want to know more about how McElroy’s language experience can help your business growth?

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