Category - Issue 169: April 2020

Although the world’s attention is on the new disease COVID-19, old dangers have not disappeared. A big meeting in February discussed the problem of road accidents, reports ANNABELLE LIANG.

The coronavirus is worrying. It has resulted in more than 58,000 deaths to date. But, other dangers like road accidents continue to exist.

Around 1.35 million people die as a result of these accidents every year. Meanwhile, 20 to 50 million people are left seriously injured. This is why officials meet regularly to talk about this problem. In February, the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety was held in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.

A total of 140 countries were represented at the conference. Attendees agreed to reduce road-related deaths by at least 50 percent by 2030. They are also working towards having no road-related deaths or serious injuries by 2050. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organisation, called the lives lost every year an “outrage”.

“It is an unacceptable price to pay for mobility. Most road traffic deaths and injuries can be prevented using tried and tested strategies,” he said, in a speech during the conference.

Big challenge

Road safety is a big challenge for many countries, including Nepal. There are almost 2.4 million vehicles on Nepal’s roads. Most of them are motorcycles. In the past year, close to 2,800 people were killed on the roads. Road-related accidents don’t even make the news unless it involves a celebrity.

Basanta Kumar Nembang, Nepal’s Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport, is very concerned about the accidents. Many improvements must be made, he told the Nepali Times.

“There has been a big expansion of new roads, but unfortunately highway infrastructure and road discipline enforcement have not kept pace. We need to work on implementation day-by-day,” Mr Nembang said.

Puspa Raj Pant, a researcher at the University of West of England, said there are not enough pedestrian crossings, cycle lanes or traffic signals in Nepal. He thinks there needs to be more lights and crash barriers on winding roads.

“We have vaccines to fight killer diseases, but no medicines to reduce road fatalities,” Mr Pant said. “Education, improved infrastructure and safer vehicles hold the key to improving road safety.”

New ideas

There was a focus on children and young adults at February’s conference. After all, road accidents are the leading cause of death for those from the ages of 5 to 29.

A report, produced by the FIA Foundation and the Child Health Initiative, had some ideas for officials. It is titled “These Are Our Streets”. Saul Billingsley, executive director of the FIA Foundation, said that, traditionally, children were expected to be responsible for their own road safety. They were told to behave near roads, and asked not to run out in front of cars.

The report suggests changing the design of roads because children use it. There should be speed bumps and “school streets” that are closed to vehicles at certain times of the day. It is recommending that roads used by children should have speed limits of 30 kilometres per hour or less. 

An app, Star Ratings for Schools (SR4S), was also launched with the report. It is developed by the International Road Assessment Programme, and will soon be tried out by more than 1,000 schools around the world. The app measures the risk of travelling from a child’s home to school. This is based on road features and traffic conditions. The journey will then be given a rating of one to five stars. The app users will also receive recommendations and educational materials.

Making changes

Countries have taken steps to make their roads safer. Sweden has installed a safety fence known as the “Swedish 2+1 with wire rope median”. The special fence separates vehicles that are travelling in opposing directions. It is also being used by other countries, such as Spain, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia.

Officials believe it will reduce the risk of death or serious injuries by at least 50 per cent. It also helps vehicles overtake safely on higher speed roads. “Since its first development in 2006, the innovation has been seen to achieve a remarkable reduction in severe crashes,” said Lina Konstantinopoulou, Secretary General of the European Road Assessment Programme.

VOCAB BUILDER

mobility (say “mo-bi-li-tee”; noun) = the ability to move.

strategies (say “stre-te-jees”; noun) = plans of action.

enforcement (say “en-fors-ment”; noun) = the process of making people obey a law.

The postponement of this year’s Olympic Games leaves athletes and organisers with a lot of work to do, writes OMAR CHAUDHURI.

The Tokyo Olympic Games is the most high-profile event that has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Even though the Games were still four months away, the host country and organisers decided in March that it was unlikely that they could run the event safely. They have agreed that the Games will begin on 23 July 2021, with the Paralympics starting a month later.

Moving the Olympics from one year to another is not like moving any other event. If you were organising a party, and needed to postpone it until next year, you might email all the guests telling them the new date. One or two people might not be able to attend, but it would not be a complicated task. The Olympics, however, has over 11,000 guests — and that’s just the athletes. There are also the coaches, fans, sponsors, and volunteers. They were due to compete in and attend events at 33 venues in Tokyo and around Japan. Organisers had been planning the event for seven years, and never expected the start date to move. They now have just fifteen months to make sure everything and everyone is ready.

Athletes in a fix

The people most obviously affected by the postponement are the athletes. In early March, many were getting frustrated that they didn’t know if the Games were taking place or not. Nearly half of the athlete places in the Games had not even been filled yet, but athletes were not sure when qualification races would take place. Therefore, they did not know how and when to prepare.

Moving the Olympics to 2021 does not completely fix this problem. Do athletes who were already qualified have to qualify again? It is hard to say what would be fair. What’s more, athletes prepare themselves so that they “peak” during an Olympics. It is not possible for an athlete to perform at their best consistently for four years. Pushing oneself to the limit in every training session or race might lead to injury or getting mentally “burnt out”.

“You give your heart and soul to something for four years, then for it not to go ahead is just horrible,” said double taekwondo gold medallist Jade Jones after news of the postponement. “I’m a very positive person but the idea, right now, of having to devote myself to another year’s slog is a very difficult one.”

Athletes in some sports might find it tougher than others. Analysis by the FiveThirtyEight website showed that around 80 per cent of gymnasts only ever compete in one Olympics, compared to nearly 50 per cent of table tennis players who compete in two or more. Gymnasts only have a small window where they can compete at their best, so even a year’s postponement can mean they reduce their chance of winning a gold medal.

Additional costs

It is not just the athletes who will have to adjust. It had been reported that the original cost of organising the Games is over US$12 billion. The Japanese government will now have to spend even more money over the next year. They will have to pay staff and hire venues, without getting any extra money from ticket sales or from television companies.

It was also expected that people from all over the world would come and spend money in Japan during the Olympics. This would help Japanese people and businesses. Sports fans might not travel to Japan now because they may already have other plans for 2021, or they may want to stay at home while there are still concerns about coronavirus. Hotels that would have been full this summer might not get the same number of guests next year, for example.

You might think that the Olympics would change its name from “Tokyo 2020” to “Tokyo 2021”. However, this will not be the case. There are lots of things that have already been made that have the name “Tokyo 2020” on it, including posters, products you can buy, and medals. In fact, the medals have been made from recycled electronics, including over 6 million mobile phones. It would be a huge waste to throw them away.

Right decision

While Japan is busy organising the postponement of the Olympics, there are other sports and countries that will need to make their own adjustments too. Some sports — in particular, swimming and athletics — have major championships in 2021. They will need to move or cancel these events. They will face some of the same challenges that Japan is facing by needing to wait a year. The timing of sports events is decided many years in advance, giving people time to prepare. Now they have less than 12 months to make sure athletes can perform and fans attend. Despite these challenges, everyone agrees that postponing the Olympic Games was the right decision. With fans gathering in stadiums, and athletes living closely in the Olympic Village, it would have been impossible to guarantee everyone’s safety. Let’s hope the Games can take place in 2021 and provide us and athletes with some positive memories of “Tokyo 2020”.

LOOK FOR WINDOWS

In this story, the writer says that gymnasts have only a small window of opportunity to excel. Some of them are devastated by the postponement of Tokyo 2020. You too may be very disappointed about events in your life being cancelled or postponed because of COVID-19. Pick one example. Then, look ahead. Will there be another opportunity later for you to take part in it?

This event is cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19

My next window of opportunity to take part in such an event

When one window in your life closes, don’t lose hope. Look for another one!

HOWARD MANNS and KATE BURRIDGE explain why human beings do not speak just one language.

Humans have long been puzzled by the existence of different languages. A long time ago, people took guesses or made up stories to explain this.

You might know the tale of the Tower of Babel (have a look at a famous painting of it, below). In this story from the Bible, humans originally spoke a single language. But God got angry when these humans tried to build a tower to heaven. This wasn’t in God’s plan. So, he made humans speak different languages and scattered them across the Earth.

In another story, believed by the Indigenous Absaroka people in the United States, an old coyote created humans. At first, these humans spoke a single language (like in the Babel story), but a younger coyote argued to the old coyote that humans had a talent for warfare. The young coyote convinced the older one to make humans speak different languages. That way, humans could misunderstand one another — this would lead to war and humans could show off their talent!

And, in yet another story, in Jawoyn country in the Northern Territory people believe the crocodile Nabilil planted language into the landscape, giving names to land features as he travelled.

There are many, many more stories like these throughout the world!

More recently, we linguists have tried to answer this question. Truthfully, we’ll probably never know the origin of language, but we do have a good idea of how different languages appear and change. And, interestingly, there’s a little bit of truth in those earlier stories of castles, coyotes, and crocodiles.

The tower factor: three magic ingredients

In the Tower of Babel story, God makes humans travel throughout the world. In fact, we know from archaeological digs that humans have been on the move for thousands of years — as long as we’ve been human!

What you need then to create different languages are three magic ingredients: time, distance, and the processes of language change. So, when speakers of a single language separate and travel to different places, the single language can become two or more languages over time.

Take the example of Latin. When Latin speakers split up and spread themselves around Europe, their Latin turned into languages like French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. So Latin isn’t really dead — it evolved into these modern languages. English was born in the same way. In the fifth century, powerful Germanic tribes (those Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) left their European homelands and invaded Britain. The dialects of Germanic they spoke gave rise to Old English — it would sound as foreign to you as modern German does now (for example, urne gedæghwamlican hlaf is Old English for “our daily bread”).

The coyote factor: language and identity

The Absaroka coyote story points to how people with different languages might misunderstand or disagree with one another. Language is often connected to our identity. Along with travelling to different places, identity is another thing that can lead to language change or different languages.

For instance, in one village in Papua New Guinea (a country just north of Australia), everyone spoke the same language, Selepet, as people in nearby villages. However, those living in this village decided to change their word for “no”. This way, their version in Selepet would be different (bunge) from the typical Selepet word for no (bia), and would represent the proud identity of the village.

Think closer to home and the rivalry between places like Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth, or between the bush and the city. The coyote factor is a major incentive for people everywhere to start highlighting their identity through their language.

So, will Australian English eventually break up into separate languages in the way Latin did? Probably not. The thing is, we aren’t isolated as people were in earlier times. We chat regularly, face to face, on the phone, via computers, and in many other ways.

The crocodile factor: new words for new places and experiences

The story of Nabilil the crocodile points to how language evolves in close relationship with its environment, and how those who travel assign new labels to the land, animals, and experiences they encounter.

We see this with the arrival of English to Australia. English was more than 800 years old by the time it came to be used in Australia. However, English-speaking settlers did not have words to describe Australia. They borrowed words from Indigenous Australian languages (kangaroo, wombat) or developed new meanings for old words (magpie, possum; both of these were originally used for different animals in Europe and the US!).

Like people, languages are always on the move, and this is why we have so many of them — more than 300 within Australia alone. One way to avoid the curse of little coyote is to learn some of them!

— HOWARD MANNS is a Lecturer and KATE BURRIDGE a Professor at Monash University. This story first appeared at https://theconversation.com.

VOCAB BUILDER

linguists (say “ling-gwists”; noun) = people who study language and its structure, or people who know many different languages.

evolved (say “ee-volv’d”; verb) = developed gradually.

incentive (say “in-sen-tiv”; noun) = something that motivates people to do something.