LINGUIST List 11.1734

Sat Aug 12 2000

Qs: "Fluency"/L2 Learning, The "" Sign

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. H�l�neKnoerr, The concept of 'fluency' in Second language learning
2. karchung, it again

Dear fellow linguists,

I am conducting a classroom- based research in French as a second language
in order to establish whether or not students enrolled in a pronunciation
course benefit from a voice training module (as is done in Theater courses).
We would especially like to look at how fluency (or ease of speech ) is
affected by this training. Would you know of any research dealing with
fluency and how it is measured in second language learning? I will gladly
post answers to the entire list.

Best regards,

H�l�ne Knoerr
*****************************************************************
H�l�ne Knoerr
Secr�taire de l'ACLA/ CAAL Secretary
Institut des langues secondes
Universit� d'Ottawa
600 King Edward
OTTAWA, Ontario K1H 7P7
hknoerruottawa.ca
(613) 562-5800/ 3475
(613) 562-5126 (fax)
http://www.aclacaal.org
*****************************************************************

	On June 30, 1996, the first summary of names for the  sign in
different languages was posted; it was followed by an addendum on
August 20. Four years later I am still getting inquiries about 
from people I've never met before - many of them journalists,
some doing research or writing books, some just 
curious - from every country imaginable. More articles than I can
keep track of have been published in newspapers and magazines
from Denmark to Japan. There are  homepages : 

	http://www.universalshape.com/				and
 http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~kit/lowly.html
	
	It's been great fun. Unlike with newspapers, which are said to
be tomorrow's garbage, things posted on the Net never seem to die
- they recycle themselves in cyberspace over and over till they
end up right back where they started!

	With the most recent spate of surprise letters (all pleasant!)
in my inbox, I've been thinking it would be nice to update the
survey. Some of the names for  may have changed, new names may
been been added and old dropped, and some may have been invented
in languages that didn't have such a word at the time of the last
survey. 

	So I am issuing a new inquiry. How do you say  in your
language? I won't repost the original summary and addendum, since
they are very long (you can look them up in the LINGUIST archives
if you're interested), but I will list the languages I already
have data for: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan,
Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi,
Finnish, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian,
Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin (origins
of ), Lithuanian, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Polish,
Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian,
Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, and Turkish.

	I'm especially hoping for data on: any aborigine language; any
minority language or dialect; any pidgin or creole; any language
of Africa, the former Soviet Union (e.g. Armenian, Azerbaijani,
Georgian, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen, Uzbek), Papua New
Guinea, and Oceania in general; plus Albanian, Arabic (new data
needed), Burmese, Cantonese (new data needed), Dari, Farsi,
Hawaiian, Hindi, Icelandic (new data needed), Malayalam, Punjabi,
Sindhi, Tamil (new data needed), Telegu, and any other languages
of India, Kampuchean, Lao, Latvian, Malay, (mainland) Mandarin
Chinese (new data needed from the *mainland*), Mongolian, Nepali,
Pashto, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian (new data needed), Saami,
Samoan, Tagalog or other Philippine languages, Thai (new data
needed), Tibetan, Turkish (new data needed), Uighur, Urdu, and
Vietnamese. More information on the origins of  is also welcome,
as are URLs of  homepages and articles on . Some of these may
be long shots, but I assume nothing when it concerns the
Internet!

	Even if your language is on the list for which there already is
data, but the word(s) commonly used for the  sign has/have in
any way changed (or maybe settled on one word from among several
that were current) since mid-1996, please write! I will post the
results to LINGUIST if there are enough responses.

	Please reply to: karchungccms.ntu.edu.tw

	Sample reply: The word for the  symbol in Taiwan Mandarin is
xiao3 lao3shu3, literally 'little mouse'; sometimes it's also
called lao3shu3 hao4 'mouse sign'.

	Looking forward to hearing from you!!!


						Karen Steffen Chung
						National Taiwan University
						karchungccms.ntu.edu.tw