Languages Ltd
Qualified referee from Zaragoza, Spain, Rafa Cenis learns English in Spanish with PokoPeko. Already a speaker of French after having attended school there, he’s looking to continue his language journey by exploring both French and English alongside Spanish in the bespoke manner and with the in-depth knowledge only PokoPeko can provide.
Why not start your own journey with us today?
Every so often we’ll pop an imaginary coin of a spurious currency in our metaphorical jukebox and bring you a song with a story (and a translation, of course). A personal favourite of mine, mixing my two favorite passions beyond the obvious.
By Simon Laing 21/01/2021
Track 1: Jorge Ben Jor – O Camisa 10 da Gavea (1976/Philips)
I grew up with what I would certainly call a certain image of what the football song entailed. It’s a perception moulded as much by current hindsight as a lived experience, especially given that I grew up in what you might call a ‘heyday’ for the tired FA Cup Song / World Cup mediocrity march. There was The Anfield Rap, a quirky, kitsch but fun nod to the emergence of Hip Hop in the British consciousness of the time and, of course, World in Motion by New Order; a genuinely catchy, legitimate pop song with credible performances by the England players; John Barnes, in particular, showing in both videos that his mercurial skills extended well beyond the pitch.
These, however, are anomalies sandwiched between decades of scaled-down football chants over Methodist-hymn melodies and an assmebled choir of footballers with facial expressions ranging from bewildered to surly to nonplussed (maybe the odd smile for the camera) and a palpable unwillingness to show vocal range.
Then there’s Brazil. The English, with some justififcation, can without doubt be very proud of their contribution to both football and music (and football songs). Brazil, if not arguably a bigger producer in terms of diversity and quantity of music, cannot be denied its universally acknowledged status as a point of reference for football conoisseurs, if not the overused and lapsed moniker of ‘the spiritual home of football’.
Here we’re treated to not only a fantastic composition showcasing the best of the Afro-Brazil sound sweeping the country and catching the attention of music lovers around the world at the time, but a eulogy to a game, to its fans and to the wonder created by one man: O Camisa 10 da Gávea (The number 10 from Gávea ), Zico.
Jorge Ben Jor, a long-established pioneer and star of several musical movements for over a decade and committed fan of Flamengo, delivers this homage to the club’s unquestionably biggest star in a way that at times walks the line of cringey with its adulation, but simultaneously expresses the genuine joy brought to the tens of thousands in the Maracanã and millions beyond. Not to mention the almost tropical-orchestral composition that flows with the acutely described kineticism and emotions of singer and fan alike; one and the same.
The opening lines, with a serpentine bassline, cuica and whistles : ‘É falta na entrada da área/Adivinha quem vai bater? (There’s a free kick on the edge of the box/Guess who’s going to take it)‘ set the tone perfectly. As if we didn’t know who was going to take it? The number (shirt) 10 from Gávea, the bohemian, artistic district of Rio and location of the club’s original stadium or O Galinho do Quintinho (The Little Rooster from Quintino), the actual district from which our protagonist hails; Arthur Antunes Coimbra or Zico, to conclude his litany of tags.
‘Como flash eletrizante (like a lightning bolt)’, ‘Dribles desconcertantes (bewildering dribbles)’ just some of the descriptions lacing the pacy African-Brazilian percussion and irresistible hooks as the Portuguese speaker can crack a sardonic smile at the florid descriptions of this apparently godlike being, the football fan, a misty-eyed look back at one of the game’s finest players, but the clincher is anyone can enjoy this near four minutes of one of Brazil’s national treasures confessing his adulation for another. Football, music and Brazil; it’s how I started my journey.
Translation below. from Portuguese to English by PokoPeko/Simon Laing.
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By Simon Laing with various contributions 21/01/21
As groups, be they defined by border, religion, interest or politics, few things define our identity more comprehensively than language. From slang to prescriptive grammar, our lexis, accent and syntax indicate who we are and where we come from with greater clarity than perhaps anything else. Our language speaks beyond its words to our heritage, our education – more abstractly, to our aspirations, values and fears, even. Each individual’s linguistic contribution finds itself refracted through the kaleidoscope of idiolects and perceived linguistic boundaries within and around which we function; it’s difficult to not to try to fit in.
One of the eternal paradoxes amongst linguists, and perhaps more broadly, is that of the balance between conservation and progress. Between 1950 and 2010, over 200 languages became extinct and between 50-90% of those currently spoken are deemed destined to disappear in the coming decades. The cultural loss is undebatable but is the passing into history of such languages an inevitability of the seemingly perpetual forward motion of the world? Are we doing enough to curate the legacy of these living historical artefacts or is doing so to stem the inevitable advance of change?
The ephemeral nature of popular culture combined with the increasingly connective technology of communication alongside the transitory nature of geopolitics and economies; the importance of staying relevant and consistent in an ever-changing world is a challenge faced by many.
PokoPeko presents Languages ², a collection of engaging articles chronicling the realities of growing up, living and working in minority language communities. Accounts from people around the world with first-hand experience of life within such cultures. We’ll be hearing from friends of PokoPeko from countries as diverse as Paraguay, Wales, Japan and Switzerland, with their personal stories of life in language communities that in some cases flourish against the odds and in others face battles becoming increasingly difficult to fight. let alone win.
If you come from a minority language community, we’d be very grateful to hear your story: at: info@pokopeko.com
Or on Social Media
A forthcoming series of articles from people recounting their language-learning experiences
By Simon Laing/PokoPeko 20/01/2021
One of our repeated mantras is ‘start your language journey with PokoPeko’ because that’s exactly what it is; often one fraught with more difficulties than the standard flight many of us used to enjoy before the onset of the twenties (Lisbon 2019, I miss you more than you’ll ever know).
Every month we’ll publish the personal account of a PokoPeko associate’s linguistic trajectory; their inspirations, their challenges and their achievements. Each article will be accompanied with translations where necessary and media to help you get more of an idea for these fascinating individuals, each with a different path to the same goal.
If you feel you have a language journey you’d like to share with PokoPeko, let us know at: info@pokopeko.com
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Every two weeks we’ll be introducing you to our amazing PokoPeko students and learning a little about them and their language journey with PokoPeko. Today we have Luke from England. Over the last two years, Luke has been studying French, Spanish and Italian.
Name: Luke
Country: England
Fluent Languages: English
With PokoPeko: Complete Spanish, French & Italian
Comments: ‘I was recommended PokoPeko to supplement my A Level French in my final year at college. Despite the exams being cancelled due to Covid, I felt the format worked for me and decided to continue with my French and also start a new language, Spanish. It has always been my ambition to travel the world and to get to know other cultures, so what better way than to learn other languages. I’d always excelled at French at school, been a follower of La Liga in Spain and visited Barcelona several times so it seemed the natural choice.
Within weeks my Spanish was quickly catching up with the French I’d studied for years at school and college. I’m quite a proficient learner anyway but the way PokoPeko adapted to my learning style and built on the previous work we’d done in French made it not only easy to understand, but meant that I was able to understand my own English grammar better, too. The emphasis on not just grammar but personalised content means that you learn language in a way that is not only technically correct but relevant to you and your world.
I’m now on my third language with PokoPeko. My Spanish and French continue to improve and I am now in the early stages of learning Italian. I’d recommend PokoPeko to anyone looking to learn a language to or from any level. The in-depth cultural and linguistic insight alongside the personalised, fun and informal lessons mean you progress quickly in a natural way. Thanks, PokoPeko.’
Luke, England
Why don’t you get in touch today to start your language journey with PokoPeko? You can email us at: info@pokopeko.com
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In this interesting article from Claudio Marazzini La Repubblica (Italy), we hear about the opening of the Museum of the Italian Language in Florence and how the linguistic patchwork of dialects, accents and words throughout the country and across centuries have contributed to its rich literary and cultural history.
Here is its translation into English:
Excitement for the news had come around again, even if the decision to locate the museum of the Italian Language in Florence had already been announced by President Conte and by Minister Franceschini. We knew that the city’s local administration had instantly shown its concrete interest in something new that posed a challenge, given that this was a somewhat different museum to what we’ve become accustomed. Some cynics may lay claim to the real museum of the language being the street, where the language lives and changes every day. However, a museum should offer something more than the street can, that is, an experience that is focussed, comprehensive and diverse, allowing the infinite wealth of the written and spoken language; ancient and modern, cultured and vernacular, to be absorbed simultaneously. For example, how many are aware that the Italian territory is amongst the richest in the world in terms of linguistic variety? In fact, within the peninsula we have a literary language of outstanding quality, derived from the Medieval Florentine dialect, and which became prevalent throughout the nation, firstly in academia, then amongst the entire population: it is the language over which the Accademici della Crusca (members of the Italian Language Assembly) have fought since 1583. But we also have a profoundly rich collection of local accents, dialects, slangs, minority languages, some full of historical charm that transport us to a distant past in a kind of real-time archaeology of the language: think of the Greek islands of Calabria and Puglia, whose legacy is long-debated as being that of Magna Graecia or Byzantium.
How many remember that there exists an island of Catalan in Alghero? Or that the Albanesi (lit. Albanian) islands derive from the last resistance in the face of the oncoming Ottoman army and whose communities, when reunited in Italy after the death of the Albanian hero Scanderberg, even maintained their Orthodox practices in addition to the language, rendering them somewhat different to the current Albanians and perhaps representing an earlier, pre-Islamification era for them. So, from region to region, from Piemonte to Sicily, from Valle d’Aosta to Trenino Alto Adige, the linguistic variety represents and recounts the story of the Italian people, their struggle to find unison, and the integration of new peoples. The museum will therefore represent the linguistic diversity of the peninsula; the voices of the people who live there will be able to be heard through video, sound recordings, and multimedia platforms. The very same museum will also display the oldest documented evidence of the Italian language, the milestones of the literary language, the documented maxims that brought about Dante’s La Commedia, the poetic works of Petrarch’s collections, the lexicons of La Crusca, and the letters documenting the works of writers such as Tommaseo, Manzoni or Gadda.
Alongside the language of the Italians and the documents of the literary, musical and culinary tradition (one is to think only of the wealth of pasta and bread nomenclature), I would also like the museum to highlight the latest developments in the language; perhaps the neologisms of the month, which can already be found on La Crusca’s website. This is not to say that these words last, but that they are sign of the language’s health, of its perpetual metamorphosis, evidence of which we have even seen during la Covid-19. I have chosen to feminise it, but many will remember the recent heated debates over the linguistic gender of Covid-19. This brings to mind what space should be apportioned to discussions on the standard, and I would like the visitor tell the story of their own, to leave the footprints of their own journey in the museum; be it that of a native citizen’s mother tongue, be it a new immigrant to Italy who wants to learn more about the country that has now also become their own, in closing, be it also a visitor from overseas, because this site should become an attractive lure for those who have studied our language, and who will be able to simultaneously visit the city of Dante, see the artistic masterpieces, the Uffizi, and will enter the museum of the language and languages of Italy with their eyes full of those artistic memories, in order to know and understand our country, its nature and its history better.
I shall finish with a proposal. The decision for the location of the museum has fallen favourably on Florence, a necessary one given that the headquarters of l’Accademia della Crusca is also there; imagine how great it would be to have a shuttle transport the visitor from the museum to Castello, in the Medicean Villa, to arrive at the Sala della pale (Hall of Shovels), which always exudes a certain allure. Could you suggest a better place to end a visit to the museum of the Italian language?
*The author, Claudio Marazzini, is the president of the Accademia della Crusca.
Translation by Simon Laing.
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Here we have a great article from El País (Spain) on the importance of learning new languages and the inevitable sharing of cultural wealth it brings
https://elpais.com/educacion/2020-07-29/hacia-una-europa-plurilingue.html
Here is its translation into English:
Towards a multilingual Europe
The educational reform currently underway could open the door to learning new languages and cultures.
I remember the teachers from school, and latterly my college, speaking to me about the importance of learning languages. But in the end, the one certain thing was that all that baggage, when reduced to its essence; it was just a way of promoting English. It’s a totally practical language, converted years ago into a lingua franca, but with the passage of time, the Eupropean institutions have come to realise that a single foreign language in a globalised world is not enough. The European Council already stipulated in December 2017 the necessity for member states to engage in incentivising the learning of at least two foreign languages in its conclusions regarding ‘Multilinguism and the development of linguistic skills‘ . Moreover, that those subjects ought to be taught in schools from an early age.
However, in Spain, always quick to pay lip service to Europe, things don’t seem to be going down the same route. We’ve seen in Andalucia how French classes have been replaced in favour of other subjects, especially Religious Education or, like in Madrid, where the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, promoted a third lesson of Physical Education, taking away the second foreign language. For now, the measure hasn’t been implemented, but in order to roll it out, one might suppose that the teachers would have to teach this subject in a single hour over the course of a week. Excuse me, if you will, but I wouldn’t be able to manage it.
What purpose does a second language serve? Currently in the Spanish education system, one can choose from French, German, Portuguese and English. If you observe, those four languages correspond to the four major countries of the European Union with which Spain maintains an important cultural, economic, political and social interchange.
In the case of the French language, we encounter the only language, along with English, that is spoken on five continents, official language of European institutions and bodies like the International Olympic Committee, fifth most spoken language in the world and second in international relations. It has over 300 million speakers, but according to some estimates and thanks to the momentum of the African nations, French could become the most spoken language in the world by 2050 with 700 million.
In Spain, the second language is abandoned. Only 46% of secondary students take it up, according to the European office of statistics, Eurostat, while in countries such as Finland – the system admired by all and sundry – or in Italy, it is obligatory.
We currently find ourselves in the process of a new education law, another attempt at transforming the educational system into a shining example. As such, and from examining the data, it becomes paramount for Lomloe (the new Spanish educational reform law) to highlight the necessary obligatory nature of a second foreign language; for the good of our students, for the sake of getting a better job, in order to secure a sense of belonging to Europe, to be acquainted with different cultures, different concerns, different views of life. It was Charlemagne that once said, “To speak another language is to possess another soul“. And all the better if it is through a second foreign language.
Article by Gregorio Marlasca, French teacher at Ojeda Boedo de Herrera de Pisuerga public institute.
Translation by Simon Laing
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