Category: Language

JSALT: A Day in the Life

Six weeks is a very short period for a ~25 person team to come together, reconcile goals and expectations, and produce results. Consequently, we are constantly on our toes, changing directions of research and taking risks as needed. Every day is different, and our week-to-week schedule is irregular, too. Despite this, I’ve fallen into somewhat of a routine here at JSALT.

The Speaker Diarization in Adverse Scenarios team

Daily Schedule

In general, my days look a little something like this…

8am: I wake up, have some breakfast and listen to music at my apartment.
I check whatever process I have running in the morning because it’s likely to have failed the night before.
Around 8:45 I take the ‘scenic route’ from my apartment to the ETS building for work. In reality, it takes about four minutes to walk from door to door. I take about 15 minutes, sometimes making circles around buildings just to spend some more time in the warm sunshine and fresh air before I’m holed up in the lab all day.

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JSALT: Summer School and Getting Oriented

Every year, Johns Hopkins University holds the Frederick Jelinek Memorial Summer Workshop (about page here). This human language technologies (HLT) workshop has taken place almost every year since the mid-90s. This year, 2019, is the sixth year that it’s held in honor of  Frederick Jelinek.  It’s abbreviated JSALT – which, I have to say, doesn’t make much sense to me. Jelinek Summer Annual (workshop) on Language Technologies is the best I can come up with to reconcile the full name and the abbreviation.

This year, it is held in Montreal. I couldn’t imagine a better place to spend the summer. It’s usually at a university in the U.S., but this year it’s held at École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS). One of the organizers did his Ph.D. at ETS and took advantage of his contacts there to make JSALT happen in Montreal. Last December, the Hopkins organizers accepted proposals from professors all over the world who had an idea for a research direction during the workshop. The five following projects were selected:

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Portuguese Opinions

*Please note that, by “Portuguese”, I am referring to the Portuguese from my experience… The Portuguese from Porto Alegre and from the perspective of a learner. There is probably quite a bit that I’m missing out on and don’t understand*

It seems like a lot of things are expressed in the same way in Portuguese and Spanish, so the experience hasn’t been quite as eye opening as the Spain immersion experience. However, as time goes on, I have been catching some more interesting expressions that are quite different from Spanish.

“Meu” and “cara” are similar to “dude,” but are much less stigmatized. “Cara” is literally “face,” and “meu” is “my.” It is very common to throw in a “cara” at the beginning of a phrase, or a “meu” at the end. Although the average person uses them regularly, conversations at Rockhead are saturated with them. Talk around the office is informal, and is characterized by what some may call “bro talk” in English.

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Language Links, Not Barriers (pt 2)

IMMERSION

The language immersion process hasn’t been such a slap in the face as it was the first time around. After spending a year in French (/Spanish) immersion, not a lot has come unexpected in learning Portuguese. I go through the same types of realizations and epiphanies, and use the same learning strategies as in Spain. I’ve experienced the same range of emotions – it seems long at times and is frustrating in many ways, but is rewarding and eye-opening in the end.

In order to fully embrace words and phrases that I hear, I am constantly muttering to myself – I must seem truly crazy to people in public. I talk to myself in English too, though, so that doesn’t bother me. For me, repetition is the best way to practice pronunciation and improve the fluidity of phrases.

Nathalie and Allie have given me extremely weird looks because of this habit. I usually don’t realize that my utterances are even close to audible… evidently they are. This is something that didn’t happen in Spain, and I’m not quite sure why. I think it was because my host family didn’t think much of it when I was repeating their phrases, but in a more public environment it can be quite strange.

I’ve learned to appreciate the importance of fillers in making conversation natural. They are so fundamental to native speakers that they often go unnoticed. The word “like” in English is probably the most well-known example – most speakers say it often enough that they can’t remove it from their speech even when consciously making an effort to do so. Understanding these utterances in conversation is one of the most significant developments in second language fluency – not only for comprehension, but also for speech.

However, they are particularly difficult to grasp because they don’t usually carry any semantic meaning – rather they serve to connect and frame the meaning in a conversation. Compare this idea to a box built from popsicle sticks and glue – the glue holding everything together and maintaining structure, but going largely unnoticed.

In Portuguese, the realization that “tipo” (pronounced like “cheapoo” in English) is used similarly to “like” in English. It doesn’t convey any specific meaning, but is essential when pausing to think or compare ideas.

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Language Links, Not Barriers (pt 1)

Language is the window to expression.

Where does language fall, for you, among other forms of expression: music, dance, painting, clothing, sculpture, gestures, song?

Do we reflect our language(s), or do our language(s) reflect us – both on a personal and societal level?

To understand multiple languages is to understand multiple perspectives on life. When considering any two languages, many words and phrases do not have translations because every language uniquely expresses ideas, and even seemingly synonymous words don’t carry identical connotations. Every language equips its speakers to communicate and relate and convey emotions differently. Describing nuanced examples of this is difficult, sometimes impossible, because English words and constructions simply won’t explain them.

Arthur Koestler was quoted saying, “Real creativity beings where language ends.” I don’t quite agree with that; I find that a lot of creativity lies in language. It plays a role in the shaping of our overall take on the world, but it doesn’t hold our creativity and imagination back. I do think, though, that it limits interpersonal communication to some degree.

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