Page 11 - ELG1707 Jul Issue 449

NEWS
NEWS
THE MOIST HATED WORDS Teacher’s pet
IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

It may be the country voted by
By Claudia Civinini Britons as the as ‘the worst place to
Is there a reason why people hate drive abroad’. But in the southern
the word ‘moist’? Research says Italian city of Bari, officials have made one
there is – and it has to do with its small step to make this dubious accolade less
semantics more than its sound. deserved. Soon, English and Russian-speaking
With social media periodically
bringing up the topic, we decided drivers will be able to argue the toss with
to dig for the evidence. Italian traffic wardens and police officers in
Cognitive psychologist Paul their native tongues. This is all thanks to the
Thibodeau and his team carried city council’s decision to allocate €6,000 to
out investigations into word teach the city’s police English and Russian.
aversion in 2014 and 2016. A large Located in the southern region of Puglia
percentage of their participants ‘moist’ as more disagreeable when (the ‘heel’), the city has seen an increase in
reported that the sound of the it followed sexual words than
word ‘moist’ was particularly when it followed culinary words. the number of tourists, especially from Russia,
annoying. The research found that about the local press reports. For this reason, the
However, the research 20 per cent of respondents self- municipal police and traffic wardens will be
found that most moist-averse reported an aversion to the word. sent to lessons in ‘advanced’ English and
participants didn’t rate ‘foist’ Facebook groups dedicated to ‘basic’ Russian.
or ‘hoist’ as more unpleasant berating the word are cropping up, ‘We need to acquire the necessary
than those participants with no amassing a sizeable following. The skills to welcome tourists and easily hold
aversion to the word ‘moist’. This page ‘I HATE the word MOIST’
means that the reason for their counts over 20,000 followers. conversations with foreigners’, said the
distaste must lie elsewhere. A short-lived survey by Oxford council. English-speaking traffic wardens will
And the researchers found it in Dictionary in 2016 showed that come as a relief for tourists, who are usually
the meaning of the word – and its ‘moist’ was second only to ‘Brexit’ (and rightfully) terrified of driving in Italy.
contextual associations. as the most hated word in the
When participants were asked United Kingdom – but the survey
to rate 29 words in a pseudo- was shut down after only one day
random order, they tended to rate due to ‘serious misuse’. Naughty corner

BILINGUALS BETTER AT As a divisive figure, we know that

RECOGNISING VOICES wayward popstar Justin Bieber is an
easy target for the Naughty Corner. However,
we can’t help ourselves.
By Claudia Civinini voices, even in an unfamiliar The one-time teen chanteur got himself
Bilingualism is known to give language. into hot water after apparently messing up
children many advantages, but a The children completed
new one has been added to the two tasks in which they heard when he tried to sing a Spanish language hit
list. different voices and then had to song. Bieber collaborated with Latino stars
A new piece of research has decide which voice spoke a series Luis Fonso and Daddy Yankee on a remix of
revealed that bilingual children of words. Tasks were completed in the hit Despacito, propelling it to mainstream
are better than their monolingual English (spoken with a German chart success.
counterparts at recognising accent) and in German, which But when he tried to sing it on his own,
voices. was unfamiliar to all participants. he massacred the Spanish lyrics. On a night
Bilingualism seems to give Bilingual participants were
children an advantage in the better at discriminating voices in out in New York he was
social aspect of speech perception, both English and German, and filmed bumbling through
which doesn’t focus on linguistic were also faster at learning to the song, replacing the THEMEPLUS
content but instead processes identify voices in English. Spanish words with ‘blah
information about who is talking. While more research is needed blah’ and ‘I don’t know
In an experiment involving to understand the underlying the words so I say Dorito/
22 monolingual English speakers reason for these differences, Dr I ate a burrito/I just want
and 19 bilinguals, US researcher Levi said the study ‘provides yet a burrito.’ Whatever
Susannah Levi found that another example of the benefits
bilingual children were better at of speaking and understanding happened to respect for
recognising and discriminating multiple languages’ foreign languages, Justin?

editorial@elgazette.com 11

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