Mango Languages

World Wife Carrying Championship!

Alright girls, so we might not have carried you home after the wedding like they do in the movies, but here’s your second chance!

Every year, there is an event held in Sonkajarvi, Finland, in which men race to the end of a 253.5 meter official track while carrying a woman (she doesn’t have to be your wife) through two dry obstacles, and one 3m deep water obstacle.  You can carry your “wife” any way you please: piggyback, fireman (over your shoulder), or Estonian-style (the wife hangs upside down with her legs around the husband’s shoulders and her hands around his waist).

The sport got its origin only about 15 years ago, though it is said to be based on a joke reminiscent of the past, in which men courted women by running to their village, picking them up, and carrying them away.

Today, the sport is practiced worldwide, with a notable competition right here in Marquette, Michigan!  There is a North American Championship held in Maine, after which the winning couple goes to Finland to compete in the world championship.

This year’s champion won a plasma T.V. and his weight in beer.  Who’s signing up with me??

"Do you speak-a my language?"

I love that line in the Men at Work song “Land Down Under.”   Probably dates me a bit though!

Did you know that 85% of Mangoes in our Headquarters speak a foreign language and several of them do not speak English at home? All of our 150 developers and editors are 100% bi-lingual.   Language is more than just what we do for a living, it is an important part of who we are as individuals.   Many of us have lived abroad, were raised by multilingual families, and/or studied foreign languages formally in secondary school and college.

Many of the staff members are tri-lingual and some can even speak four or five languages.  I am always impressed by all the foreign languages I hear around the office.  For example, at lunch today about 10 of us were discussing slang Russian/Ukrainian terms.   We often times discuss cultural norms and language nuances.

I am always learning something new about the world around me, and for that I am very grateful.

Do you know of any other companies that are so linguistically diverse?

Did you know? Things you didn't know about Mango the Fruit

We love our name Mango Languages and most of us in the office love Mangoes. Here are a few reasons why!

What else do you know about Mangoes?

And We Thought We Never Slept!

“The Midnight Sun” might sound like an oxymoron to you, but to the people north of the Arctic Circle (and all 6 or so below the Antarctic Circle), this is a way of life.

I’m sure we all know that the earth rotates around the sun on a tilt, so naturally it follows that at our poles – areas like Norway, Canada, Alaska, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Finland, and parts of Iceland- there are literally months and months of continuous sunlight, or on the converse,  months of no sunlight at all!  The closer you travel towards the poles, the longer these periods last.  We like to joke here at Mango that we never sleep.  Maybe we should have moved farther north.

It may seem a bit extreme to try and live here, but take Norway for example.  This country’s citizens exhibit one of the highest standards of living in the world. People here have adapted to this odd rhythm of sunlight by doing things like regulating working hours, making the work day much more lenient in the summer to encourage time for leisure and outdoor activities.

So, would you be fine with seeing the sun for 24 hours a day?  Have you ever visited or lived in one of these places? Please share!

Spain Wins World Cup

I was sitting on the edge of my seat for most of the 2nd half of the game yesterday.   I was watching the game with some international friends whose allegiances were divided…some for the Netherlands and some for Spain. I was completely for Spain. I wore red; I had my nails painted Red and Gold with the words Spain on them; and even took a Spanish fan (you know the kind you hold in your hand) with me to the bar to watch the game all in hopes of win.

You see, this game was personal for me.  Having lived in Spain for a summer back in 1992 and visiting several times over the past few years, Spain has a piece of my heart.   My host family was amazing and I made several great friendships while living there.   It was because of my wonderful experiences there that I work in the world of language now.

I know that my family and friends in Spain are celebrating this first time World Cup win.  And they need it.   Their economy has been rocked just as badly, if not worse, than ours.  Sometimes those small wins are what get us through the tough times.

So to all my Spanish family and friends…Viva Espana!

No, I wanted CHOCOLATE flavored chocolate!

This day in history was the first time chocolate was introduced to Europe in 1550.  At the time, it was much different than what we have come to love in recent years.

The ancient Mayans, near present day southern Mexico and northern Central America, were actually the first society to have grown cacao, around 250-900 AD.  People took the tree from the rain forest and harvested it, roasting and grinding the seeds into a paste, which they mixed with water, chili peppers, cornmeal, and other ingredients to make a frothy and spicy chocolate drink.  No, they didn’t call it “hot chocolate.”

The Aztecs, around 1400, also took to this spicy drink, but made it available almost exclusively to only high members of society like rulers and soldiers.  In both societies, however, chocolate was involved in religious and royal ceremonies.

In 1521, Europe had its first taste of chocolate through Spain, who discovered it via the Aztec culture.  They then began shipping the cacao seeds back home.  The drink remained a high-status beverage, as the cacao seeds were a very expensive import.  The Spanish sweetened the drink with cinnamon and sugar, and after that, this new sweetened chocolate drink swept across Europe and became extremely popular. It wasn’t until the 1800s, however, that chocolate was made available and affordable to the general public by mass production.

Yum!  So don’t you think it’s interesting that two different cultures had such a different takes on the same drink?  The Aztecs and Mayans produced a much different drink than what the Europeans created!

Gotta Have My Java!

It’s a safe bet that most people reading this are no strangers to Java.  Let me rephrase that- most people reading this are most likely no stranger to a cup of Java.  How many people are familiar with the island of Java, however, is an entirely different question.

Java is actually the 5^th largest island in Indonesia, and the 13^th largest island in the world. Home to a population of 130 million, it beats the Japanese island Honshu for the most populous island in the world.  Most people speak Indonesian, either as a first or second language, alongside languages like Javanese (in development for release by Mango!), Sudanese, and Madurese.

Java is almost entirely volcanic, which has created abundantly rich soil. This, along with the ideal climate, has made Java a perfect place for its coffee industry to flourish and become synonymous with our morning cup of Joe.

So, do you think you could you make it all the way to Java without a cup of Java?

Language or Dialect: The War of Similarities

According to ethnologue.org, there are 6,909 languages in the world, from Mandarin Chinese, with 870 million speakers, to moribund languages with one or two aged speakers.  What counts as a language though?  Let’s see some examples:

Let’s say that “language” is the standard language of a country.  This would mean that Romani, the language of the gypsies, that has more or less 1.5 million speakers, is not a language.  Neither is Kurdish, with 16 to 35 million speakers.  Let’s also take a look at the Balkan languages: in the former Yugoslavia, Serbo-Croatian was one of the standard languages, as Serbian and Croatian differ from each other as much as American English differs from British English.  In the same area today we find Serbian and Croatian–two languages.  What happened?  We realize that once new countries were established, former dialects became standard languages.  Hence, “language” cannot mean “standard language,” since what qualifies as a dialect or as standard language depends on geographical and political changes and factors, and not just on the grammar or the vocabulary of the dialect.

Another example like the one of Yugoslavia is Danish and Norwegian.  Both languages are standard languages but they are almost identical regarding grammar and vocabulary.  And so a Dane and a Norwegian can talk to each other, each speaking their own language, and be mutually understood.  The reason is that Norway was under Danish occupation for centuries and at that time Norwegian was just a dialect of Danish.

The opposite situation is happening in China: there are many dialects in China and those with the most speakers are Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese.  However, these two dialects have deep differences in grammar and in vocabulary.  The differences are like those we have between Romance languages, like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, etc., which are called “languages.”  So again, grammatical and lexical differences do not constitute the characteristics that would differentiate a dialect from a language.  Talking about the Romance languages, it is obvious that there are many common elements in grammar and vocabulary, but based on these attributes, couldn’t one say that they are dialects of Latin?

There are many, many examples like these: think about the Arabic dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible, or Venetian, spoken in Venice, which is cognate with Italian but quite distinct from the standard language.  Or Sicilian…

We see then that there are languages that could be dialects of other languages and dialects that could be languages.  So, what is the difference between a dialect and a language after all?

The answer can be what the Yiddish linguist Max Weireich said, “Language is a dialect with an army and navy” or simply “… a dialect supported by influential people.”  When a community wants to become independent from another community, as it happened in Denmark and Norway, they make their dialect a language.  When they do not want to become independent and their dialect has some sort of similarity with the standard language, then they say that they speak a dialect of the standard.

Can you think of a good example of what is a language or dialect?  Please share by writing a comment.

Video: Time Around the World

This is a great video discussing how time is perceived differently by various cultures.  When we learn about foreign languages and cultures, one of the largest differences is the concept of time.  Watch this interesting video to learn more.

How do you perceive time? Why do you think you perceive time that way?

Sicilian and Italian… What's the difference?

Lately, a few of us around the office have been bugging the product development team (jokingly) to come out with a Sicilian course. This begs the question, isn’t Sicilian just a dialect of Italian? It turns out there is actually a good deal of debate over this subject.

Some linguists believe that Sicilian may have actually been the first Romance Language, arising from a vulgar form of Latin spoken by Roman military men and everyday people. It is placed in the Italiano meridionale-estremo group of languages along with the Greek influenced Calabrian dialects of southern Italy, and actually has at least eleven regional dialects of its own.

The Sicilian language has been shaped by many years of foreign influence, occupation, and conquest. Unlike Italian, which is almost entirely Latin based, Sicilian has elements of Greek, Arabic, French, Catalan, and Spanish. This can be seen in many Sicilian words, like “azzizzari” (to embellish, adorn) from the Arabic “aziz” (beautiful), or “foddi” (angry), which can be traced to the Norman French “fol.”

Grammatically, Sicilian is also very different from Italian. For example, all the pronouns for I, he, she, you, and them are different in Sicilian.  Also, take into account that Sicilian does not distinguish between plural endings for verbs, using the same conjugations for masculine and feminine nouns. In Italian, the plural form differs according to gender, and there is much more concern about agreement between nouns and adjoining adjectives.

A great deal of the actual Italian influence on Sicilian has been since 1860, when, during the Italian Unification, Sicily became a part of Italy. More and more, there is risk today that the Sicilian language will eventually die out due to the influx of the Italian language into Sicily, becoming the preferred tongue among the natives. Even Sicilian emigrants, like my own family, speak a brand of the language which is different from what actual native Sicilians speak, simply because the language has changed so much even in the last 50 years.

So what’s the verdict? Have you met anyone who speaks Sicilian? Do you think that it is a language or a dialect?