Lingualogue Blog

Introducing the new Rosetta Stone Totale, the  latest package to be released by the language learning Leviathan. The Totale is aimed at serious language learners and is considered by the company to be a complete, revolutionary language learning system. But is it really?

The Totale comprises the regular Rosetta Stone  software package that many language learners will already be familiar with, but also includes live sessions– where you can talk online to a native speaking tutor or other students– and access to Rosetta World, an online community where you can play games and make friends with native speakers.

I haven’t managed to get my hands on a copy of Rosetta Stone Totale yet as it costs a tidy $999, but you can get an excellent review from the reliable Wall Street Journal to get a better idea of how it works.

As soon as I get hold of a copy I will do a proper review, but I have to say I am a little sceptical from the start. Rosetta Stone is an excellent language learning package, and the added online interactivity does seem at first glance to take it ahead of the competition. However, I am still not yet convinced: $999 is an immense amount of money, and although Rosetta Stone makes a persuasive argument that this is by far cheaper than hiring a personal tutor, it is certainly not the cheapest method out there. I also don’t think it is particularly ground breaking.

There is a free online resource called LiveMocha which has been around for some time, and does virtually everything that Rosetta Stone Totale is claiming to do, but for the immensely more attractive price of zero cents. Even the software exercises are similar. I have a feeling it is the likes of LiveMocha that has prompted Rosetta Stone to release this new Totale offering in the hope that their recognisable brand name will sell a package that is already available (if not globally known) for free on the internet, and catapult them to the front of the pack.

With Live Mocha, you join a community to help you learn a language–native speakers help you by correcting assignments, or just chatting with you to help you practice what you have learned. You in turn help them to learn your language. You meet new people, learn new languages, and maybe even make new friends–all for free. This has got to be better than forking out $999.

As I said before I cannot comment on Rosetta Stone Totale properly yet as I haven’t used it, but if you are thinking of buying it, I would urge you to try LiveMocha first and see if you can do what you want to do there, and save your cash for something else.

You can read a brief review of LiveMocha on the Lingualogue Free language courses page.

I showed my obvious ignorance of the early days of the internet today as a few friends and I were discussing different methods to escape the tedium of a long afternoon of cancelled classes. After a few runs through the usual football (soccer) trivia games, one guy came up with the ‘Google Whack challenge’.

I have to admit I had never

A valid Google Whack - just not mine

heard of this, or if I had, I had relegated it to the same place as the memories of what I wore for work in 1998. Apparently, Google Whacking was a craze in 2002 onwards and even had (and still has) its own website. I guess I must have missed it. The basic idea for Google Whacking is amazingly simple and yet disturbingly frustrating:  Think of two words and input them in the Google search engine (without quotes) and see how many results are returned. If only it were that simple. The aim is to have your two words return a single result. One piddly little webpage found out of the billions  available, for a search query comprising two words.

I am sure this would have been much easier in 2002 when it all began, after all Google has grown almost exponentially in size and visibility since then. I am convinced, however, that it is still possible. Don’t ask me why. I have no basis for this theory other than the English language is enormous, and combining two words gives  almost limitless permutations from which we should not find relevant websites. The trick is finding the right combination. The mix of words that nobody in their right mind would ever combine on a website (even a dodgy one). It is made slightly more difficult these days, however, with the ubiquity of dictionary and reference sites, as well as the plethora of worthless dollar-driven, or ego-centric wastes of cyberspace of which we are all less than fondly acquainted. You will be surprised (or possibly not) at the crap that is returned. Who in their right mind would ever purposefully visit this drivel, let alone make it?

The challenge is still going though, seven years after it was created. Sure there is no craze now and most people probably think that a Google Whack is a type of internet porn, but the system is still running and the rules are still in place. Who cares if it is more difficult now, we like a challenge right? Be warned though, this could take up literally hours of your free time, days even, and can become highly addictive and a point of pride between friends– especially if you are cursed with a similarly competitive spirit.

If you do happen to find yourself with a few hours to spare and consider yourself a bit of a wordsmith (and have not been a computer geek since 2002) then give it a whirl. Find two words, bang them into Google and see if you can get one result. If you do, let me know and I will write a post with the results. In fact if you do, let Google Whack know and gain a place in history.

Just one more thing before you shoot off and start testing your knowledge of the little known annals of the English language by hammering random words into your search box: THERE ARE RULES (see below) and if you want recognition you must adhere to them.

So many people on the web claim to have found a google whack and yet have obviously not read the rules. Good luck…and happy Google Whacking.

RULES (from the website)

1. Googlefactors must exist in this dictionary. It’s so easy to confirm: Google does the work! In the blue bar atop your Google results, accepted terms are linked to dictionary.com, and so appear ‘underlined.’ No line, no link = Googlejack! (As in, You’ve got jack! Make sure both of your terms are underlined, otherwise it is easy.

2. Google also is the arbiter of a whack’s uniqueness. Look to the right end of the blue bar atop your Google results. If you see “Results 1 – 1 of (any number),’ you found exactly one hit = Googlewhack!

3. Google shows you an excerpt of the page you whacked. Look at that text. If it’s merely a list of words, No Whack For You!

Prevents using lists of medical terms, ailments or phobias.

Just in case you made it this far down, we still have not managed to get just one single result. My friend got 3 (can’t remember the words off hand) but it is damned hard.

Happy Whacking (so to speak)

An interesting study published in Psychological Science recently builds on the old sentiment that simply seeing someone smile makes you want to smile too. Strangely enough, it has been proven that seeing somebody smile (or even frown) automatically activates the  muscles in our face that produce that same expression–whether you want them to or not.

Two psychologists from the university of Amsterdam and the university of Utrecht, did separate experiments to test if words associated with these expressions would produce a similar response. The study showed, oddly enough, that a group of test students who read happy emotion verbs (e.g. “to smile”, “to laugh”) had a significant increase in the activity of their zygomatic major (the muscle responsible for smiling) and those that were given sad emotion verbs (e.g. “to cry”) had a similar increase in the activity of their corrugator supercilii (the muscle responsible for frowning). The results showed that reading happy action verbs  always tweaked the smile muscle and not the frown, and vice versa. It is interesting to note though that when students were given emotion adjectives (e.g. “funny”, or “angry”) they exhibited much lower automatic responses to the corresponding muscle. It seems that it is the words associated with the expression itself that produces the response.

A slightly more sinister result was gained in the second experiment. This time students were asked to watch cartoons with the emotion verbs subliminally shown at the beginning of each one. Half of the students who watched the cartoons were prevented from smiling by holding a pen between their lips, while the other half were not. The results interestingly showed that the volunteers found on the whole that cartoons with subliminal smiling-related words were much funnier than those with the frown-related words. Except that is for the students who had their muscles movement stopped by the pen: They did not find the same relationship between the subliminal emotion verb and how funny the cartoons were.

These strange results seem to imply that verbs can not only affect our emotions but directly affect the muscles that express these emotions, which in turn affect our emotions. It seems then that language is not just a bunch of  symbols with meanings but also holds a direct physical and psychological tie to our emotions.

It is no wonder that language is such a beautiful thing.

A quick snippet of news that I came across proclaiming that Language Weaver has made a deal with WorldLingo and will be integrating their language translation software with WorldLingo’s line of language products.

Could make for some interesting software. I will keep my eyes and ears open to see how this pans out and see how well this new partnership performs where it counts: In the translation.

Article

An interesting, yet strange article in the Telegraph yesterday claiming that scientists in Spain and Britain have found that the body language of dolphins follows similar patterns to that of  human verbal communication. To me the link seems a tad tenuous, but I guess that could be due to the reporting. Their theory is very simply that the most commonly used words in human languages tend to be the shortest–like “the” and “but”. This is called the law of brevity and applies to all human languages.  The story claims that although dolphins have a reasonably complicated language of clicks and whistles, their most common vocabulary is expressed with body language when swimming in a group,  such as tail slaps, leaps, and twirls (and we thought they did that to amuse us).

If I am reading it right, the ‘proof’ comes from the fact that the 30 or so patterns of behaviour exhibited by the dolphins had a much higher probability to be exhibited in small clusters, or individually, rather than in groups or complex clusters. This, obviously (according to the scientists) must have a correlation with the most common human  language usage and be on a par with the simplest of our conjunctions and indefinite articles.

I for one cannot see from the article alone why the body language of dolphins cannot be linked to the body language of other animals. All animals  have body language of some description and most of it is in short bursts in response to a stimulus, and not in complex arrangements. After all, it is a pretty instinctive response (I am yet to see “learn body language now” appear in our schools, and yet we all do it) and is often hard to control.  After all, do we not smile when we are happy or scowl when angry? Do we not blush when embarrassed? Do we not raise our hands when we want to get served at the bar?

I am not saying that dolphins are not smart, I certainly know they are. I also know they communicate via a language that seems on a par with humans for its complexity. I am just unsure of why dolphins perceived body language of slapping, jumping, and diving would be linked to humans most common words and not our own wealth of universally understood body language.

After all, how much of a pain in the ass would it be to have to slap your leg every time you wanted to say the word “the”, or jump in the air every time the word “but” cropped up. I am sure you would be pretty tired with a damn sore leg within no time.

But sometimes – even with our own ‘sophisticated ‘ human languages -  actions speak louder than words, and I am sure a smile is just as common as the word “the” in most people’s vocabulary.

But then again, I  guess if a dolphin’s most used phrase is “how about getting down and dirty in the next rock crevice?” then it would be worth the odd slap of the tail, and a spot of dorsal pain.

The Telegraph article

It is good to hear that the British government is finally taking language learning seriously. They have set a target for language lessons to be available for all 7 to 14 year olds by 2010 and for languages  to be compulsory the following year.

This is a positive step in the right direction in helping the British public become bilingual, although they took a step backwards in 2004 when they removed the compulsory learning of languages for GCSE in secondary school after 14. They really need to decide  how importantly they hold learning a language and stick to it. At least they realise the importance of learning a language early.

Read the full article at the BBC