Wednesday, December 31, 2008

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

And... no more resolutions

Try to do something useful every day. Or don't. Relax. Or don't. Life is short.

Beyond this,

General goals for 2009 and beyond:

Maintain and improve Italian, French and German.

Spanish: from absolute beginner to intermediate
Russian: from beginner to intermediate
Japanese: Start with Pimsleur and/or vocabulearn? Postpone? I don't know.

Do some reading and serious audiobook listening


P.S. I just love the edit button.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Art of War for Language Learners

I. LAYING PLANS

1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.

26. Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

II. WAGING WAR

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

8. The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.

16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.

III. ATTACK BY STRATAGEM

2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

4. The rule is, not to besiege walled cities if it can possibly be avoided. The preparation of mantlets, movable shelters, and various implements of war, will take up three whole months; and the piling up of mounds over against the walls will take three months more.

5. The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to the assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken. Such are the disastrous effects of a siege.

6. Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.

7. With his forces intact he will dispute the mastery of the Empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph will be complete. This is the method of attacking by stratagem.

8. It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.

9. If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.

11. Now the general is the bulwark of the State; if the bulwark is complete at all points; the State will be strong; if the bulwark is defective, the State will be weak.

18. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

IV. TACTICAL DISPOSITIONS

1. Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.

3. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.

4. Hence the saying: One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.

6. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.

8. To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.

9. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you fight and conquer and the whole Empire says, "Well done!"

10. To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

11. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.

12. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage.

13. He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.

14. Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.

15. Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

17. In respect of military method, we have, firstly, Measurement; secondly, Estimation of quantity; thirdly, Calculation; fourthly, Balancing of chances; fifthly, Victory.

19. A victorious army opposed to a routed one, is as a pound's weight placed in the scale against a single grain.

20. The onrush of a conquering force is like the bursting of pent-up waters into a chasm a thousand fathoms deep.

V. ENERGY

5. In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.

6. Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.

10. In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack--the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.

12. The onset of troops is like the rush of a torrent which will even roll stones along in its course.

13. The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.

14. Therefore the good fighter will be terrible in his onset, and prompt in his decision.

15. Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.

16. Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.

21. The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize combined energy.

22. When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped, to go rolling down.

VI. WEAK POINTS AND STRONG

1. Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.

2. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.

7. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.

15. And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.

28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.

29. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards.

30. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

31. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.

32. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.

VII. MANEUVERING

3. After that, comes tactical maneuvering, than which there is nothing more difficult. The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.

5. Maneuvering with an army is advantageous; with an undisciplined multitude, most dangerous.

6. If you set a fully equipped army in march in order to snatch an advantage, the chances are that you will be too late. On the other hand, to detach a flying column for the purpose involves the sacrifice of its baggage and stores.

7. Thus, if you order your men to roll up their buff-coats, and make forced marches without halting day or night, covering double the usual distance at a stretch, doing a hundred LI in order to wrest an advantage, the leaders of all your three divisions will fall into the hands of the enemy.

8. The stronger men will be in front, the jaded ones will fall behind, and on this plan only one-tenth of your army will reach its destination.

9. If you march fifty LI in order to outmaneuver the enemy, you will lose the leader of your first division, and only half your force will reach the goal.

10. If you march thirty LI with the same object, two-thirds of your army will arrive.

11. We may take it then that an army without its baggage-train is lost; without provisions it is lost; without bases of supply it is lost.

13. We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country--its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.

14. We shall be unable to turn natural advantage to account unless we make use of local guides.

16. Whether to concentrate or to divide your troops, must be decided by circumstances.

17. Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest.

21. Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.

31. To be near the goal while the enemy is still far from it, to wait at ease while the enemy is toiling and struggling, to be well-fed while the enemy is famished:--this is the art of husbanding one's strength.

33. It is a military axiom not to advance uphill against the enemy, nor to oppose him when he comes downhill.

36. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.

37. Such is the art of warfare.

VIII. VARIATION IN TACTICS

2. When in difficult country, do not encamp. In country where high roads intersect, join hands with your allies. Do not linger in dangerously isolated positions. In hemmed-in situations, you must resort to stratagem. In desperate position, you must fight.

3. There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must be not attacked, towns which must be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.

4. The general who thoroughly understands the advantages that accompany variation of tactics knows how to handle his troops.

5. The general who does not understand these, may be well acquainted with the configuration of the country, yet he will not be able to turn his knowledge to practical account.

7. Hence in the wise leader's plans, considerations of advantage and of disadvantage will be blended together.

8. If our expectation of advantage be tempered in this way, we may succeed in accomplishing the essential part of our schemes.

9. If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.

12. There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general:
(1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction;
(2) cowardice, which leads to capture;
(3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults;
(4) a delicacy of honor which is sensitive to shame;
(5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him
to worry and trouble.

13. These are the five besetting sins of a general, ruinous to the conduct of war.

14. When an army is overthrown and its leader slain, the cause will surely be found among these five dangerous faults. Let them be a subject of meditation.

IX. THE ARMY ON THE MARCH

2. Camp in high places, facing the sun. Do not climb heights in order to fight. So much for mountain warfare.

3. After crossing a river, you should get far away from it.

15. Country in which there are precipitous cliffs with torrents running between, deep natural hollows, confined places, tangled thickets, quagmires and crevasses, should be left with all possible speed and not approached.

31. If the enemy sees an advantage to be gained and makes no effort to secure it, the soldiers are exhausted.

37. To begin by bluster, but afterwards to take fright at the enemy's numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence.

40. If our troops are no more in number than the enemy, that is amply sufficient; it only means that no direct attack can be made. What we can do is simply to concentrate all our available strength, keep a close watch on the enemy, and obtain reinforcements.

41. He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them.

12. If you are situated at a great distance from the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal, it is not easy to provoke a battle, and fighting will be to your disadvantage.

19. When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be rout.

21. The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances, constitutes the test of a great general.

22. He who knows these things, and in fighting puts his knowledge into practice, will win his battles. He who knows them not, nor practices them, will surely be defeated.

23. If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding.

24. The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.

25. Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.

27. If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.

28. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, but are unaware that our own men are not in a condition to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory.

29. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, and also know that our men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the nature of the ground makes fighting impracticable, we have still gone only halfway towards victory.

XI. THE NINE SITUATIONS

19. Rapidity is the essence of war: take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots.

20. The following are the principles to be observed by an invading force: The further you penetrate into a country, the greater will be the solidarity of your troops, and thus the defenders will not prevail against you.

21. Make forays in fertile country in order to supply your army with food.

22. Carefully study the well-being of your men, and do not overtax them. Concentrate your energy and hoard your strength. Keep your army continually on the move, and devise unfathomable plans.

23. Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve. Officers and men alike will put forth their uttermost strength.

26. Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared.

29. The skillful tactician may be likened to the shuai-jan. Now the shuai-jan is a snake that is found in the ChUng mountains. Strike at its head, and you will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle, and you will be attacked by head and tail both.

42. When invading hostile territory, the general principle is, that penetrating deeply brings cohesion; penetrating but a short way means dispersion.

43. When you leave your own country behind, and take your army across neighborhood territory, you find yourself on critical ground. When there are means of communication on all four sides, the ground is one of intersecting highways.

44. When you penetrate deeply into a country, it is serious ground. When you penetrate but a little way, it is facile ground.

45. When you have the enemy's strongholds on your rear, and narrow passes in front, it is hemmed-in ground. When there is no place of refuge at all, it is desperate ground.

46. On facile ground, I would see that there is close connection between all parts of my army.

48. On open ground, I would keep a vigilant eye on my defenses. On ground of intersecting highways, I would consolidate my alliances.

49. On serious ground, I would try to ensure a continuous stream of supplies. On difficult ground, I would keep pushing on along the road.

50. On hemmed-in ground, I would block any way of retreat. On desperate ground, I would proclaim to my soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives.

51. For it is the soldier's disposition to offer an obstinate resistance when surrounded, to fight hard when he cannot help himself, and to obey promptly when he has fallen into danger.

53. To be ignored of any one of the following four or five principles does not befit a warlike prince.

57. Confront your soldiers with the deed itself; never let them know your design. When the outlook is bright, bring it before their eyes; but tell them nothing when the situation is gloomy.

65. If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.

66. Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear, and subtly contrive to time his arrival on the ground.

67. Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle.

68. At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you.

XII. THE ATTACK BY FIRE

15. Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.

16. Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

17. Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.

18. No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

19. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are.

20. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.

21. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

22. Hence the enlightened ruler is heedful, and the good general full of caution. This is the way to keep a country at peace and an army intact.

XIII. THE USE OF SPIES

1. Sun Tzu said: Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State. The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways. As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.

2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.

3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory.

4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.

6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

New movie production by country and by language

Top 50 movie-producing countries ranked by number of feature films produced 1997, 2003–2007:



Click on the image for an enlarged table or simply scroll down through the spreadsheet:



Source: Screen Digest July 2008 and older

Films produced by country in 2002:

1 India 1200
2 US 543
3 Japan 293
4 France 200
5 Spain 137
6 Italy 130
7 Germany 116
8 China 100
9 Philippines 97
10 Hong Kong 92

It has been estimated that anime accounts for 60 percent of Japanese film production (2002). Manga - 40% of all books and magazines published. Anime accounts for more than 60 percent of all TV cartoons worldwide.


UNESCO yearly averages 1988-99:

India 839
China + Hong Kong SAR 469
Philippines 456
United States of America 385
Japan 238
Thailand 194
France 183
Italy 99
Brazil 86
Myanmar 85
United Kingdom 78
Bangladesh 77
Egypt 72
Pakistan 64
Germany 63
Rep. of Korea 63
Turkey 63
Islamic Rep. of Iran 62
Sri Lanka 58
Argentina 47
Russian Fed 46
Spain 45

For newest figures (2013) click here and search by language.

Movies by language total production accounted by IMDB as of December 2008

IMDB has been around since 1990 and its database is searchable by language (dialogue). It lists movies since the early days of cinema. It’s hardly precise but it's the most comprehensive, easily accessible database that features this sort of information. These foreign titles are also the most likely to be available on DVD.

English 267,023 titles
Spanish 41,201 titles
German 35,150 titles
French 31,358 titles
Japanese 17,888 titles
Italian 17,747 titles
Portuguese 8,314 titles
Hindi 8,278 titles
Russian 7,745 titles
Dutch 6,878 titles
Danish 6,814 titles
Serbo-Croatian 6,414 titles
Tagalog 6,020 titles
Greek 5,601 titles
Turkish 5,423 titles
Mandarin 4,666 titles
Cantonese 4,371 titles
Swedish 4,300 titles
Korean 4,254 titles
Czech 4,083 titles
Polish 3,882 titles
Hungarian 3,676 titles
Malayam 3,491 titles
Finnish 3,484 titles
Arabic 2,759 titles
Telugu 2,149 titles
Norwegian 2,081 titles
Hebrew 1,993 titles
Tamil 1,894 titles
Romanian 1,676 titles
Bulgarian 1,575 titles
Persian 1,570 titles
Bengali 1,155 titles
Catalan 1,060 titles
Albanian 1,026 titles

Source: IMDB December 2008

Brain, memory and language learning

The brain learns in two different ways. One, called declarative learning, involves the medial temporal lobe and deals with learning active facts that can be recalled and used with great flexibility. The second, involving the striatum, is called habit learning. There is convincing scientific evidence that highly automatized language skills are processed at this level.

Overlearning leads to automatization. Repetitio est mater studiorum etc.

Breaking news! Multitasking hinders learning!

The gist of it is that when someone is distracted, habit learning takes over from declarative learning. One learns better particular habitual tasks while declarative learning suffers.

The Zeigarnik effect

Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik discovered the phenomenon after noticing that waiters remembered seemingly endless orders only so long as the order was in the process of being served. They immediately forgot what they had served. The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks considerably better than completed ones. Adults may remember things even 90% better. Ms Zeigarnik thought that an incomplete task or unfinished business creates a sort of a “psychic tension” which acts as a motivator and drives us toward completing the task.

According to some information obtained "online" since the original study, researchers trying to reproduce the said effect have had varied results. New experiments have not determined the characteristics of tasks (tasks to be performed vs tasks to be recalled verbally, length of task) which best reproduce this effect.

Keith thinks that using a dictionary is not beneficial because of the Zeigarnik effect.

My (easily swayed) opinion is that using the dictionary IS actually the operation that interrupts a very important task (READING, remembering the sentence). While you might not remember the pesky word, you’ll remember the sentence.

Indian scientists Dutta & Kanungo reinterpreted the Zeigarnik effect:

The intensity of emotion (positive or negative) caused by the completed or the interrupted task is the critical factor in memorization. An activity that provokes a strong emotion is remembered better than a (boring) ordinary everyday activity. They called this phenomenon the emotionality effect.

Some characteristics of short-term memory:

• Short-term memory can hold 5-9 chunks of information.

Position Effect:
• Better recall of items at the beginning of the list.
• Most recent items are remembered better than others.

Auditory memory

Short-term auditory memory

Preference for spoken terms
Most recent items are remembered better than others.

Long-term auditory memory

Language “probably” stored in terms of its meaning rather than sound.
Voice recognition:
familiar person: good
stranger: poor

Now, how would a scientifically-minded person go about language learning? They'd learn English - the hard way and spend the rest of their lives stating the obvious? :)

I suppose the answer is that the brain is too complex and both declarative and habit-learning portions are involved in the process.

Language learners could be compared to ants trying to move a mountain of sugar from one place to another. We cannot grasp it or contemplate it in full but simply toil away. As long as we're lugging sugar...

Friday, December 26, 2008

2008 recap

Last year, at about this time I opened this blog. The plan was to learn a new language, perhaps Spanish or Japanese. After some meandering by March I settled on Russian. This did not prevent me from daydreaming but by December I managed to finish:

Pimsleur Russian I 1-20 (sad)
Vocabulearn I (woohoo!)
A handful of movies (watched repeatedly, ad nauseam)
Russian pictionary (600 words)
several children's stories
1 whole book
several audiobooks

I am not terribly satisfied but my comprehension of Russian has improved substantially.

On July 14, 2007 during a brief Russian exploratory stint I wrote:

"I also listened to the Russian audiobook channel. I actually understood a thing or two. In reality my comprehension was rather disappointing. Anyway, hopefully next week I will get out of my Russian dilemma (more of a gridlock) and finally settle on my future language lineup. I do not intend to drop anything I "officially" adopt."

I was trying to decide on my next language. I was also trying to figure out a long term list. I distinctly remember that spoken Russian was little more than gibberish. After "sampling" Russian I spent a couple of months on Japanese, learned 200 kanji, lost steam, zoomed through Pimsleur Spanish I in a couple of days, spent hundreds of dollars on learning materials, meandered and daydreamed until December when I made this New Year's Resolution to "learn" a new language. As it turned out that resolution was not broken. I was secretly hoping to really shine - it turned out that I barely managed to keep with my resolution. However, Russian is firmly in the list of languages I intend to keep studying and I managed to achieve a visible breakthrough. I managed to learn Russian to a weak but useable passive level.
I also spent some time on German ad Italian watching movies and TV programs. I neglected French which will need resuscitating in 2009.

Time to make a new resolution. This time I hope to be able to report more substantial results.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Worldcat records by language - easy comparison

Worldcat records by language

Worldcat catalogues holdings from more than 69,000 libraries from all over the world. As of December 2008 the catalogue lists more than 125 million bibliographic records and 1.4 billion individual holdings in over 470 languages and dialects.

Results are based on language codes in MARC records and the form of language name on Library of Congress Subject Headings.

A word of caution. Although new libraries from all over the world are constantly coming online, Worldcat is still heavily oriented towards the English-speaking countries and their foreign language collections. The numbers will fluctuate as library membership becomes more international. It is interesting to note that the list of top Worldcat languages resembles the list of Wikipedia languages ranked by the number of articles (top three: English, German, French). Languages like Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese and Polish rate rather high.

Number of bibliographic records:
125,012,234
Number of holdings:
1,354,341,279

Records with linguistic content:

English 40,180,000
German 8,765,000
French 4,491,000
Spanish 3,038,000
Dutch 2,319,000
Chinese 1,693,000
Japanese 1,560,000
Russian 1,313,000
Italian 1,181,000

Portuguese 772,000
Polish 664,000
Czech 398,000
Arabic 380,000
Hebrew 346,000
Swedish 321,000
Danish 294,000
Korean 259,000
Indonesian 245,000

Turkish 175,000
Hungarian 148,000
Serbian/Croatian 135,000
Greek, Modern 131,000
Norwegian 117,000
Persian 109,000
Thai 107,000
Ukrainian 104,000
Hindi 101,000
Vietnamese 102,000

Tamil 84,000
Croatian: 80,000
Romanian 76,000
Urdu 75,200
Yiddish 61,315
Catalan 58,000
Bengali 56,000
Serbian 53,000

Dead/liturgical languages:

Latin 797,000
Greek, Ancient 32,000
Sanskrit 24,000
Church Slavic 4,919
Middle French 3,313
Middle English 2,773
Pali 1,850
Old French 1,713
Old English 917
Egyptian 643
Old Norse 592
Sumerian 72

Sub-50,000 records:

Slovak 35,000
Armenian 32,100
Malay 30,000
Lithuanian 26,300
Slovenian 25,700
Burmese 23,300
Estonian 19,100

Georgian 12,200
Albanian 11,200
Tagalog 10,140

Mongolian 7,300
Khmer 4,900

Pashto 3,650
Mayan 2,200
Bosnian 2,000

Quechua 773
Ainu 29

African languages:

Swahili 5,800
Amharic 5,033
Yoruba 2,480
Hausa 2,525
Zulu 2034
Xhosa 1,415
Oromo 504
Igbo 472
Bantu (other) 1,100

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A language learner’s portable media player

Review of the Cowon O2 for the benefit of audiobook lovers, media junkies and language learners



For a while I have been looking for an MP3 audiobook player, ebook reader and portable video player.

Requirements:

a large, pocketable screen
autoresume
bookmarking
native format support (xvid, divx etc)
multiple language tracks
foreign language text support
subtitle support
clear, readable text
loudspeaker
flash memory
SDHC card
decent battery life

To cut this short, the requirements have necessarily narrowed the choice to a handful of machines.

Audiobooks - Good audiobook support is a rare feature with many players and they were necessarily immediately eliminated. Autoresume, the ability to turn the player on and off and resume listening is apparently high magic and few players do this right. Microsoft’s Zune has very short memory and does not bookmark MP3’s – only podcasts. Ipods are great at bookmarking Apple book format and audible - they don't do it for mp3 audiobooks. You need to convert to their format, edit tags etc. This can turn into a major pain.

ebooks – Obviously the machine should be able to handle foreign fonts and support a variety of formats. That’s a rare feature.

E-ink is amazing but Sony Reader and the Kindle do not support non-western letters and characters. Sony reader needs to be hacked in order to display Russian. The internal memory is puny (counted in MB) and SD expansion is limited. They’re too bulky. Ipod apparently supports foreign characters (which is great) but the screen is too small for me. Ipod touch is simply not worth it because of the other issues.

Video - Most players will support a few formats (often proprietary ones) and require that all files be prepared at a certain resolution. That’s unreasonable. In the end I’d prepare a few videos and abandon the effort. I need something where I can just drag and drop most popular formats like divx etc. and simply play. Dual language support would be great.

Music – well if it can do all of the above, lol, I doubt that it wouldn’t be able to handle music. A few online reviews stating that it has a decent sound should suffice.

Loudspeaker – this is a desirable extra. It sucks battery but sometimes you want to listen without any earphones.

I settled on the Cowon O2

It will do everything I described. It has a 4.3-inch, 16.7 million color, 480 x 272 TFT LCD touchscreen.

It supports AVI, WMV, ASF, MP4, MATROSKA(MKV), OGM, MPG/MPEG, DAT, MTV video files and MP3/2/1, WMA, ASF, AC3, FLAC, OGG, M4A, MATROSKA(MKA), TTA, APE, MPC, WV, WAV audio formats.

32 GB internal flash drive

SDHC Expansion Slot - fully functional. Memory currently expandable by an extra 32 GB.

Battery Life(Audio Playback) Up to 18 hours
Battery Life(Video Playback) Up to 8 hours
Recharge Time 4.5 hours

It offers open-source SDK for user-developed programs.

The O2 does not have instant autoresume - a bummer. It's slightly on the bulky side when compared with a regular flash mp2 player. It remembers where you left off through a recent file function - which I consider more convenient than regular manual bookmarking. I rarely remember to set manual bookmarks. The seek bar should prove useful for both audio and video files. Audio files and ebooks are both automatically "bookmarked" in the recent files folder along with video files. The player actually “remembers” where you left off in the text file! After some experimenting I was able to display Russian without any problems. I have not tried with Japanese, but I have no doubt it works as advertised. Unfortunately natively it only supports txt files. Pdfs need to be converted with Cowon software. I haven't tried it, but apparently this feature needs some work. SDK support means a third party might come up with a PDF viewer. Videos look lovely, it played everything I threw at it. Some users have complained about navigation through the touchscreen. Remember to calibrate when you first use the unit. I don't use fingers nor the square stylus (which doubles as a stand). Instead I use my laptop's stylus which has a very fine point. I have no issues navigating the icons. The loudspeaker is ok for audiobooks and shows if you're alone and don't feel like wearing earphones. It is not adequate for music.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Gross National Income by language

Another chapter in our "choosing a language" series. The numbers are sound but approximate for languages that span many countries (including multilingual ones) and regions. Japan was a cinch to look up. How do you account for Hindi or Arabic?

A good companion piece for this might be a list of countries that are the largest trading partners of a particular country or region. I'll leave that for everyone's own homework.

GNI (Gross national income) by language/area/country

Estimates based on World Bank figures for 2007 and other sources (for regions)
in millions of US dollars

English (US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, SAR) $19,000,000

Japanese $4,813,341

German $4,000,000

Chinese (China, Taiwan, HK) $3,740,000

Spanish $3,300,000

French (France, Quebec, Belgium, Suisse Romande) $3,350,000

Italian $2,000,000

Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique etc.) $1,400,000

Russian (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan) $1,308,000

India $1,069,427

South Korea $955,802

Arabic below $1 trillion

Economic weight of Spanish-speakers in the US estimated at $800 billion (not included).

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Chinese and "the language of the future"

"CHINA will be the dominant power in the 21st century and the employment opportunities that speaking Mandarin will give are immense."

Anthony Seldon, headmaster of Wellington College, at a
conference in 2006 entitled "Why every school should offer Mandarin".

Chinese vs. English

2nd half (of the current century that is): China is rising! China is rising!

The economic factor, business opportunities and visions of world dominance

According to some optimistic economic predictions (Goldman Sachs) China might have a somewhat larger economy than the US in 2050.

Chinese speakers with good English skills are not a rare commodity. The Economist Nov 22nd 2007 article entitled "Reasons not to study Chinese" mentions that there are many Chinese speakers with reasonably good English skills and more importantly they are willing to work for a fraction of what most westerners would be willing to accept. Sorry, the article is subscription only. Some 30 million foreigners are studying Mandarin in the world today and Chinese authorities expect the number to rise to 100 million by 2010. For comparison purposes, some 120 million foreigners are studying French. This adds to the general prestige and image of the language but it also further depresses the market price for a skill, which, at least according to the Economist article, is not yet in terrible demand.

With time the numbers of foreigners fluent in Chinese will increase, but it is unlikely that the numbers will ever reach such a critical mass that functional knowledge of the language would be expected in the marketplace, as is now often the case with English. Half of the world's population are native speakers of Indo-European languages. The other half are heavily influenced by one or more European languages. Some 300 million Chinese are learning English and the numbers are rising. The majority of humanity will therefore find it far easier (and more useful) to learn English followed by another European language. The likelihood is that the rise of India and China will seal the success of English as an international language well into the 21st century.

Chinese will certainly increase in importance, it is a fascinating civilization but Chinese as a "goldmine" phenomenon is terribly overrated. The opportunity cost is too high:

Why Chinese is so damn hard

The article also indirectly exposes the problem of teaching Mandarin (and expecting resuts) in the West. Seriously, does anyone believe that a system that struggles to successfully teach Spanish and French has any hope of succeeding with a language that requires three times as many hours of study?

Friday, August 29, 2008

Total historical world book production

How many unique books have ever been printed or published worldwide? In what languages? What languages dominate the world’s publishing industry both past and present?

We can find some estimates:

“From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages.”

M. B. Iwinski estimated that 10,378,365 books was the total historical book production as of 1908. L.C. Merritt calculated in 1941 that by the end of 1940 the total book production had risen to 15,377,276 books.

Johannes Gutenberg is often credited as the inventor of the printing press in 1454. Ok, printing was invented in China. Modern printing was invented in Europe. Printing books and pamphlets was cheap in the 1600s, the century of the rise of the modern nation-state and improved literacy among urban males (dead white males). William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes both died in 1616. Fifty years after Gutenberg's press was introduced, 12 million books were printed in Europe. In 1790 alone, Europe produced some 20 million books. Between 1950 and 1975 according to some estimates as many books were published as during the 500 years since Gutenberg. Today, ten billion books and over one million new titles are printed each year all over the world. According to some estimates the worldwide number of original book titles is around 65-74 million. Some estimates go as high as 100-174 million.

Spread of the Gutenberg printing press (country names refer to modern political entities):

1454 Mainz, Germany
1460-1480 some 30 German-speaking cities

1465 Subiaco, Italy
1467 Rome
1469 Venice
1470 Milan
1471 Florence
1477 Bologna

1470 Paris, France
1470-1500 some 20 French cities

1472-1500 some 8 Spanish cities
The oldest, still running publishing house in the world is in Monserrat, Spain (Catalonia).

1476 London, England
1478 Oxford

1553 Moscow, Russia
1711 St Petersburg

North America

1638 Cambridge, USA
1686 Philadelphia, USA
1693 New York City
1735 Germantown, USA
1752 Halifax, Canada
1764 Quebec City, Canada
...
1821 Hawaii, Kingdom of Hawaii
1846 San Francisco

Latin America

1539 Mexico City
1581 Lima Peru
1640 Puebla, Mexico
1660 Guatemala City
1700 Paraguay
1707 Havana
1736 Bogota Colombia
1776 Santiago de Chile, Chile
1780 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Until 1808 Brazil did not have any printing activities – Portuguese law prohibited the existence of any press in Brazil. The first printing press was introduced to Brazil in 1808 when the Portuguese crown fled to Rio de Janeiro from Napoleon. During the imperial era (1822-1889), “editorial activity in Brazil was completely secondary and even the first national publishing houses used to print their books abroad”. Carlo Carrenho, The Brazilian book publishing industry and its current challenges.

Between 1500 and 1750 the most prolific languages by far were Latin, German, Italian, French, Spanish and English. Between 1750 and 1950 English began overtaking other languages followed by French and German. French remained a lingua franca well into the 20th century. German was at its height as the language of science in 1914. The 20th century saw the rise of Russian.

In 1957 according to Bowker and UNESCO nearly 22 percent of the world's new titles were in the English language. Russian accounted for 16.9 percent followed by German. According to the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences five languages (English, Russian, Spanish, German, and French) accounted for 75 percent of the world book production and 40 percent of the readers in the 1960’s.

Modern book production

Graddol is often quoted in some recent studies and papers although his numbers are based on UNESCO numbers from mid 1990’s. World's yearly book production by language:

English 28%
Chinese 13.3%
German 11.8%
French 7.7
Spanish 6.7
Japanese 5.1
Russian 4.7
Portuguese 4.5
Korean 4.4
Italian 4.0
Dutch 2.4
Swedish 1.6
Arabic 1.1%

Graddol, Future of English 1997 (figures for Arabic pulled from a UNESCO report). According to data from UNESCO, over 850,000 books were published worldwide in 1996. Book production increased 50% between 1985 and 1996.

Germany published 94,716 new titles in 2006. One in ten books published in the world today is in German.

France 60,376 new titles were published in 2007.

The 90's were not kind to Russian which fell from 17% of the world's book output to a little less than 5 percent. Russian book publishing is in the meantime recovering. In 2005 Russia published 95,489 titles of which 82,273 titles were new publications, up from 36,237 books in 1996. In 2003 9,652 translated titles were published in Russia.

In 2004 and 2005 English-speaking countries produced around 375,000 books. According to a 2005 Bowker press release some 375,000 English books equal 40% of all new book content in the world. This seems excessive based on other countries' book production numbers but it may include translations.

More about this here

Non-European languages

The two major centers of large-scale book production outside of Western Europe were in China and Japan. The average annual book production in Western Europe from 1522 to 1644 was 3750 titles, or about 40 times higher than the highest estimates for China in the same period. According to one estimate between 1644 and 1911 126,000 new editions were published in China. The average annual output was 474 – lower than the output of any major European country. China produced 17,212 book titles in 1979 and 73,923 in 1990. In 1994 China produced 100,951 titles. In 2001 China produced 140,000 titles and 89,950 new publications. In 2005 it published 222,000 titles "for an education-minded readership" (Frankfurt Bookfair). China is now one of the world’s fastest growing book markets and the world’s third largest producer of books. The problems facing the book industry in China include the lack of professional skills in editing and translation, low print runs and market fragmentation. Translations made up 6 percent of the books printed in China in 2004. An additional 8000 titles were translated in Taiwan. China is still closed. Some of the problems facing the Chinese translation business may be glanced here. A budding language learner and book enthusiast should keep in mind that according to Chinese statistics textbooks account for nearly half of all purchases. The situation is similar in India with the dubious benefit that some 45% of books are published in English. It is worthy of note that India's book production numbers have soared from 11,903 in 1996 to over 70,000 in 2004. Here you may read about some curious Chinese books.

The New York Times article tells us that a Chinese company has so far digitized 1.3 million titles in Chinese, which it estimates is about half of all the books published in the Chinese language since 1949.

Japan – according to one estimate, in the three cities of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto between 1727-1731 some 400 new titles were produced annually and almost 600 between 1750-1754. France produced more than 1,500 books annually from 1727 to 1731 and 2,350 per year from 1750 to 1754. Japanese levels of book production were considerably below those of France and most other European countries, but nonetheless higher than in China or anywhere else in the world. Japan produced 42,217 new titles in 1981 and 45,430 in 1985. In 1996 Japan published 56,221 books. In 2004 new publications were 77,031. Japan is still one of the most prolific book producing countries offering an extremely wide variety of books. Japan faces the main problem of a mature market - declining readership. According to the Publishers Weekly, 40% of Japan’s publishing revenues comes from the manga market. Translations account for 8-10% of the annual publication of new books in Japan. Of this, 75% are translations from English.

Korea The first printing press was imported from Japan in 1883 for publishing Korea's first Korean-language newspaper Hansong Sunbo. Korea has cornered about 3% of the world’s book production. In 2003 Korea produced 35,371 new titles (roughly the same as in 1998). Comics account for 25% of sales and fiction for 13.5%. Around 29% of Korea’s book production consists of translations. In 2007 a Korean newspaper published this celebratory headline: “Korea Leads World in Translated Books”. Unfortunately the lead is in percentage of total book output rather than in the number of translations. Some 26% of translations are comics and 21.8% are children’s books. The problems facing the industry have been detailed in the book `"Are Translators Traitors?" by Park Sang-ik. Park was “disillusioned and shocked” to see how shoddy and cursory the translations were, even those done by “renowned” scholars." Many translations are retranslations from Japanese texts. More about this here.

Translations

"By the early 1970s, close to half of the world's book production was made up of translations, the chief source languages being English, French, Russian, German, Spanish, and Italian, the chief target languages German, Russian, Spanish, English, Japanese, and French. Because of worldwide demand for translation of all kinds, the 20th century has been referred to as ‘the age of translation’". Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, 1998.

This figure is based on US - USSR Cold War statistics. In the early 1970s 70 percent of all titles printed in the Soviet Union were translations (Literary Translation in Russia by Maurice Friedberg 1997). Around one half of all translated books worldwide are based on English-language originals. (Unesco, 2002). English-speaking countries published only 14,440 new translations in 2004, accounting for about 3% of all books available for sale. Many current novels sell fewer than 5,000 copies. In 2005, of the 172,000 new titles published in the U.S., fewer than 1,000 were literary works in translation.

The Guardian reports about the state of affairs being described by translators as "shocking", "pathetic", "scandalous". More about the "rampant imperialism of the English language" here. Yes, the author is French. A hard-boiled American prose retort to these figures and the multi-kulti tree-hugging nonsense can be found here

More recently in Germany 13% of books were translations. In France some 14%, Spain 28%, Turkey 40% and in Slovenia 70%. In 2003 11% of the 35,590 new Brazilian titles were translations (65% from English, 10% from French and 7% from Spanish). Smaller European countries tend to have a higher percentage of translations. French and German offer most translations from other languages. The free interchange between markets, cultures and languages is far from being rosy. The dominance of English may threaten the accumulation of cultural capital. Truth be told, some 2-3% of the English-language book production is more than most countries translate from English or any other language. The world's cultures are essentially talking to themselves and consuming translations from English. One needs several languages only to patch things up. Looking at Unesco's index translationum and eliminating the main Western languages as sources (English, French, Spanish, German and Italian) the following languages offer the highest number of translations for the majority of the world's languages.

1 French
2 German
3 English
4 Spanish
5 Japanese
6 Russian
7 Italian

The top three offer the highest number of translations, followed closely by Spanish. Japanese offers less than half as many translations as Spanish, however it's often the first choice for some major Asian languages including Chinese. Portuguese and Dutch rate rather high in the overall number of translations but once we eliminate the main Western source languages they move down the list. These seven languages offer access to a wide number of translations from languages ranging from ancient Greek to Dutch, Polish, Arabic and Chinese.

Language collections

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with a collection of more than 32 million books and other print materials. Approximately half of its book and serial collections are in languages other than English.

Worldcat catalogues holdings from more than 60,000 libraries from all over the world. As of January 2008 the catalogue lists more than 96 million bibliographic records and 1.4 billion individual holdings in over 470 languages and dialects. The majority are books but it also catalogues other items. As of December 2007 out of 91 million records 72 million were related to "books" (probably monographs). As of January 2005, out of some 55 million records about 41 million were "monographs". Removing records describing theses or dissertations and government documents we get some 32 million print books. Real books. Out of these there are a little over 26 million distinct works. This is where Google's figure about digitizing 32 million books comes from. Of these, some 52 percent or 16 million books are in English. A similar paper examining efforts to scan the Google 5 collection (some 32 million books held in 5 major libraries) looks at unique books and finds that English-language works represent 49 percent of the collection. Other languages with the highest number of UNIQUE titles were German (10 %), French (8 %), Spanish (5 %), Chinese (4%), Russian (4%), Italian (3%) and Japanese (2%). The Worldcat system was described in 2005 as still "heavily oriented toward North American libraries." Note the jump from 55 million records and 41 million books in 2005 to 91 million records and 72 million books in 2008. Google signed on its first French-language library, The Library of Lausanne, Switzerland in May 2007. In 2005 the Worldcat system was estimated as collecting about two-thirds of the total recent book production. Extrapolating from the above information as of January 2008 there were 56.2 million "real" books in over 450 languages that had been accounted for. Of these, some 46 million were unique works. On April 1 2008 a record for a publication from the U.S. Fisheries Laboratory marked the 100 millionth bibliographic record entered into WorldCat. By August 29 the system had 110,291,437 records. Of these there were 40,180,000 English language records, 8,765,000 German records and 4,491,000 French records. More about this here

Let's mention another attempt to "digitize everything", the Universal Digital Library. This is where the 100 million book estimate comes from. According to UDL Google is biased.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Spanish through (in)comprehensible input - bilingual books

This little project is on hold until I can successfully claim that I can read/understand Russian. The plan is to learn Spanish through extensive reading. No courses, textbooks etc. Here's the list of Spanish dual-language books, readers, parallel texts, bilingual books etc. I have gathered so far:



SPANISH

Bilingual Readers, Dual-language Books in French and German

A collection of dual-language books, parallel texts, bilingual books in German and French. Recommended. A self-contained comprehensive course for the adventurous. Other languages to follow. Recent purchases, except for one or two beginner's readers which I added for completeness. Aren't they pretty?

FRENCH


GERMAN

Monday, June 2, 2008

Sir Richard Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (March 19, 1821 – October 20, 1890) was an English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.

Wikipedia

From The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton
by Isabel Burton (1896)

“The college teaching, for which one was obliged to pay, was of the most worthless description…

The worst of such teaching was, that it had no order and no system. Its philology was ridiculous, and it did nothing to work the reasoning powers. Learning foreign languages, as a child learns its own, is mostly work of pure memory, which acquires, after childhood, every artificial assistance possible. My system of learning a language in two months was purely my own invention, and thoroughly suited myself.

I got a simple grammar and vocabulary, marked out the forms and words which I knew were absolutely necessary, and learnt them by heart by carrying them in my pocket and looking over them at spare moments during the day. I never worked for more than a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that the brain lost its freshness. After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a week, I stumbled through some easy bookwork (one of the Gospels is the most come-atable), and underlined every word that I wished to recollect, in order to read over my pencillings at least once a day. Having finished my volume, I then carefully worked up the grammar minutiae, and I then chose some other book whose subject most interested me. The neck of the language was now broken, and progress was rapid.

If I came across a new sound, like the Arabic Ghayn, I trained my tongue to it by repeating it so many thousand times a day. When I read, I invariably read out loud, so that the ear might aid memory. I was delighted with the most difficult characters, Chinese and Cuneiform, because I felt that they impressed themselves more strongly upon the eye than the eternal Roman letters. This, by-and-by, made me resolutely stand aloof from the hundred schemes for transliterating Eastern languages, such as Arabic, Sanscrit, Hebrew and Syriac, into Latin letters, and whenever I conversed with anybody in a language that I was learning, I took the trouble to repeat their words inaudibly after them, and so to learn the trick of pronunciation and emphasis.”

Copied and typed by hand directly from the book so apologies for any mistakes. Isabel is unfortunately mostly remembered for having burnt many of Sir Richard's papers after his death.

This passage was later edited by Thomas Wright and published in 1906 with many important details being left out. According to Wright, her book “is little better than a huge scrap-book filled with newspaper cuttings and citations from Sir Richard's and other books, hurriedly selected and even more hurriedly pieced together. It gives the impressions of Lady Burton alone, for those of Sir Richard's friends are ignored--so we see Burton from only one point of view. Amazing to say, it does not contain a single original anecdote… “It will be my duty to rectify Lady Burton's mistakes and mis-statements and to fill up the vast hiatuses that she has left.” Wright’s book is more often cited, it is certainly full of anecdotes and impressions that are dear to him but perhaps a language learner should look into Isabel Burton’s book just because it is a huge scrap-book filled with citations.

It makes perfect sense that a man like Burton who studied some very exotic languages would reach directly for a "real" book and make his own grammar notes (with the help of any available reference books etc.).

Saturday, May 10, 2008

The necessary tools









Pictures speak a thousand words. Imagine a pair of eyeballs and ears dangling from the sides, and you can argue that organs need to be fed etc, but these are the two most important "tools" you need in language learning. One of them, namely the backbone, needs to be taken metaphorically. Incidentally, did you know that language learning and metaphorical use of language are considered excellent mental exercises which may be beneficial for warding off and offseting certain debilitating diseases? One example of this can be found here

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Tackling Russian

During the weekend I've been looping two Russian movies and listening to random things.

One of the movies is Skazka o poteryannom vremeni (The Tale of Time Lost) which is appropriate punishment for my laziness. I have only yesterday discovered that the DVD also has Russian subtitles, which is of great help.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Russian

The blog was closed for a while. I thought it was a distraction but I managed to waste much time in many other ways both online and offline. These last few months I spent doing a little bit of everything, from Italian to Japanese and I cannot account for the time spent or the effectiveness of my efforts. Another reason for reopening the blog.

Well, I am officially undertaking learning Russian. I intend to learn it in as short amount of time as possible, since I have little patience for exploring or "savoring" the language or "having fun" while going nowhere with language studies. I have little to no background in Russian.

I started playing with it a few months ago. So far I haven't spent much time on it, useful time especially - most was "dead time" while doing other things. I've mostly been reading online articles and listening to online radio and a couple of old movies. Reading? Well sort of. Staring, really, and trying to catch the cognates. Listening was mostly done to get accustomed to the sounds of the language, make out individual words and overcome the initial disliking for its sound. After some 50+ hours I am happy to report this is no longer a problem. Why did I undertake learning a language whose sound I don't (or didn't) like? I am not picking people's brains why they are studying a "beautiful" language while ignoring other qualities or shortcomings.

Monday, January 21, 2008

REPETITIO EST MATER STUDIORUM

REPETITIO EST MATER STUDIORUM. There's a reason it's a Latin proverb and also a reason it's a proverb, and a reason that it was repeated ad nauseam to generations of pupils. Watching, reading or listening to something over and over again is very boring and consequently very hard work for most people. The brain tunes out. You need to trick it and give it something else to process while you're also absorbing the language. Because of the visual component movies and series are handy for this purpose. A possible course of action? In the beginning I'd choose a few favorite movies, the ones that I've seen "a thousand times" my favorites and "cult movies" where you can perhaps score a few points by knowing some trivia (that's obviously secondary). It should be something entertaining that I don't mind watching repeatedly. Movies have less dialogue than series but that might not be a bad thing for a beginner. Movies also generally make better and more entertaining repeated viewings. I am now watching in Italian, just for the blast, the Army of Darkness. Dammi un po di zucchero, baby :) Then I'd move on to my favorite series. I would not waste time "refreshing" my knowledge of the "original" vocabulary. What counts is understanding the plot and different situations. It's likely I've seen these episodes several times already, courtesy of the local station. It's been a while so I don't mind seeing it again. A perfect occasion to recuperate hundreds and thousands of hours of otherwise wasted time.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Top IMDB languages titles by genre

Top 6 IMDB languages titles by genre

English 240336 titles
63642 Short
53207 Drama
47350 Comedy
32921 Documentary
28926 Adult
12770 Animation
12056 Action
11399 Thriller
11242 Family
9749 Adventure

Spanish 38892 titles
11950 Short
10394 Drama
6547 Comedy
6178 Documentary
2381 Action
2229 Romance
1744 Thriller
1403 Musical
1382 Crime
1135 Adventure

German 31825 titles
5877 Drama
5059 Documentary
4781 Comedy
4673 Short
1440 Crime
1353 Adult
1261 Romance
968 Thriller
958 Family
833 Music

French 31472 titles
8414 Short
6642 Drama
4870 Comedy
4334 Documentary
1214 Romance
1060 Crime
916 Thriller
889 Adult
779 Animation
727 Adventure

Italian 15470 titles
3471 Drama
2964 Comedy
1668 Short
1179 Documentary
621 Adventure
588 Music
588 Thriller
582 Crime
524 Romance
519 Action

Japanese 15449 titles
3955 Drama
2480 Animation
2058 Action
1743 Comedy
1521 Short
1031 Adventure
996 Sci-Fi
994 Fantasy
780 Romance
681 Crime

Saturday, January 19, 2008

favorite books by language

The previous post was about millions of books in different languages and translations. What about the most popular books to read? How do we rate languages according to how much good stuff is available to read in each language?

Modern Library's list of top 100 English-language novels of all time is interesting. The eggheads voted for James Joyce and Ulysses. The top book on the readers' list is Ayn Rand. Brrrr.

Time's list in similar vein.

Madison's 100 Best Novels English only.

British reading public has somewhat different tastes. The list includes some foreign authors.

Top 100 novels of all time voted by regular people

Guardian's The top 100 books of all time as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries.

There's more, but you get the idea. Now, for the cool part. LibraryThing advertised as the world's largest book club, lists over 22 million books (copies) catalogued by some 344,000 members. I say advertised as you can enter some 200 books for free and there's a membership fee for extra features etc. What's really interesting here is the catalogue that can be searched by language. The most popular languages ranked by the nuber of copies (translations or originals) on the members' bookshelves are:

French (403,907)
German (306,566)
Japanese (207,903)
Spanish (127,231)
Russian (111,171)
Italian (107,347)
Greek (Ancient) (96,300)
Latin (68,919)
Dutch (58,395)
Swedish (41,332)
Portuguese (34,583)
Chinese (29,015)
Norwegian (24,620)
Hebrew (22,920)
Danish (20,909)
Czech (17,141)
English (Middle) (17,046)
Arabic (14,924)
Polish (14,787)
Old English (7,386)
Finnish (7,085)
Sanskrit (6,031)
Turkish (5,813)
Persian (5,035)

Foreign languages by my estimate account for some 1.8 million copies, lol. Admittedly, the reading public is predominantly English-speaking and for Japanese you'll find "books" like Fruits basket and Death Note but it's a jury of some 344,000 people who generally like books and reading. And manga IS fun. Very funny situation with some languages where most copies are from very few writers.

Finally — "the intellectual works that have been judged to be worth owning by the "purchase vote" of libraries around the globe". In 2005 Worldcat was described as still heavily oriented toward North American libraries but the list includes 60,000 libraries many of which are from all around the world.

Top 1000 Books Owned by Libraries Around the World

information exaflood

According to a Berkeley study How much information? , published in 2003, the total quantity of information stored in all types of media amounts to about 5 exabytes of new information per year. One exabyte is roughly the equivalent of 50,000 years of DVD quality video. The exabyte flood is TV and radio programming, movies, books, DVDs, documents, Internet content etc. English is the dominant language:

"The United States produces about 40% of the world's new stored information, including 33% of the world's new printed information, 30% of the world's new film titles, 40% of the world's information stored on optical media, and about 50% of the information stored on magnetic media..."

Ninety-two percent of new information is stored on magnetic and optical media, primarily hard disks, CDs and DVDs. The Berkeley study mentions that "the U.S. produces 37% of the world's audio CD titles, 50% of the CD ROM titles, and 40% of the DVD titles." Accumulated stock of audio CDs worldwide is some 1.5 million titles (560,000 are original US titles).

Worldwide film production

"The number of motion pictures made around the world from 1890 to 2002 was approximately 328,530,divided into:

Animation Films and Series: 15,790
Documentary Films: 30,475
Silent Films: 49,417
Black and White Films: 113,992
Color: 254,538

Source: The International Film Index, 1895-1990.
How much information 2003

After accounting for some 10,000+ titles produced per year between 2003 and 2008 we come up with 400,000 titles.

"The most obvious trends are the phenomenal rise in filmmaking in the United States between 1991 and 2001, contrasted with the significant fall in filmmaking in at least three other film producing nations - Italy, the Soviet Union / Russia, and Mexico." Accounting for short films and documentaries US has "overtaken India as the major producer of film" with some 1740 films vs India's 1013. Accounting for this factor France is third and Germany fourth (2001).
How much information 2003

DVDs

In 2001, the United States produced about 4,000 DVD titles per year (more than 100per week). According to the DVD Entertainment Group as reported by the study as of January 2003 there were some 20,000 DVD-video titles available worldwide. DVD is now a mature format. More recent figures are too much work to come by, but according to the Content Delivery & Storage Association CD & DVD Replication was segmented in 2005 in the following manner: North America 30%, Asia 30%, Europe 31%, Japan 5% South America 2% Australasia 1% and Middle East 1%. Language learners will note that DVDs produced in North America are likely to have only French and Spanish audio tracks. For some reason even Australian DVDs come with more interesting language options. The new Blueray format provides additional possibilities regarding extra language soundtracks. Hopefully publishers and movie studios will take advantage of this. Properly stored quality DVDs and CDs may have a life expectancy of up to 200 years.

Printed information and books

A note of caution here because a large percentage of printed information is plain old office junk. Without it, according to the Berkeley study, the U.S. accounts for around 10% of the world's original information flow in print. According to Graddol (based on UNESCO figures) in the 1990's English accounted for about 28% of the world's total book production. The total world stock of books, all books ever written is very difficult to measure, and estimates range between 65-100 million unique titles. More about this here

Sunday, January 6, 2008

The most widespread languages in the world

Literally and littorally. Languages officially spoken in countries covering the largest percentage of earth’s surface area:

English 39,500,000 km2, 29% of world’s surface, 53 countries
French 20,600,000 km2, 15% of world’s surface, 29 countries
Russian 20,500,000 km2, 15% of world’s surface 4 countries
Spanish 12,200,000 km2, 9% of world’s surface, 21 countries
Portuguese 10,750,000 km2, 8% of world’s surface, 9 countries
Chinese 9,650,000 km2, 7% of world’s surface, 3 countries
The Arab world stretches across some 12-13 million square kilometers.

World’s emerged surface: 135,000,000 km2 (192 countries - Antarctica not included).

The languages of countries claiming Antarctica (some 14,000,000 km2) are English, Spanish, Norwegian and French. In addition there’s some overlap between French and English. After taking this into account French would cover about the same area as Spanish. The former Soviet Union covered over 22,400,000 km2.

Some significant languages are nowhere to be seen in this list. However, a natural path to world domination is the control of the seas and Italy has a longer coastline than Brazil while Japan has the sixth-longest coastline in the world -longer than those of the US, Australia or China. Since we’ll be conquering the beaches in sandals rather than army boots, it is reassuring that these two countries are located in temperate climates. As for tourism, here’s the list of the most popular tourist destinations that’s as fickle as the target list of a prospective language learner. France, Italy and Germany were on the itinerary of the gentlemanly Grand Tour for over 300 years.

Top tourist destinations in 2006 (millions of arrivals)
1. France 79.1
2. Spain 58.5
3. United States 51.1
4. China 49.6
5. Italy 41.1
6. United Kingdom 30.7
7. Germany 23.6
8. Mexico 21.4
9. Austria 20.3
10. Russian Federation 20.2