Foreign Letters Research Articles

How Brand Names Affect Consumer Perceptions: An Experimental Study on the Sound Symbolism of Foreign Brand Names

In this study, two experiments utilizing sound symbolism were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of how the sounds and letter curvatures of a brand name evoke image associations among global consumers. The study applied the sound symbolism context and empirically tested the meanings that US and Vietnamese consumers associate with brand names using the Roman alphabet and the Korean writing system, Hangul. The results indicated that the criteria for recalling the word–shape association differed when a brand name was presented to American and Vietnamese consumers in Roman alphabetical form versus when it was presented in an unfamiliar foreign alphabet. When Roman alphabetical forms familiar to both American and Vietnamese consumers were presented, there was a tendency for letter curvatures and the associated shapes to match. When consumers were presented with letters and sounds in a foreign language, they tended to select a shape that corresponded to the sound characteristics of the given names. The influence of foreign letter shapes varied based on consumers’ native language and whether they had learned a foreign language. Only Vietnamese consumers who had learned Korean tended to match the shapes to Hangul letter curvatures, even for subtle differences in curvature.

Enforcement of a Foreign Judgment within the Framework of the Execution of a Letter Rogatory

The article presents the coverage of doctrinal approaches and law enforcement practice of Russian courts in the issue of execution of a foreign judgment using the mechanism of execution of a foreign letters rogatory. On the basis of analysis of legal and doctrinal sources the question of normative regulation of execution of foreign judgment with the use of mechanism of execution of foreign letters rogatory is raised. The mentioned possibility is stipulated as an exception in the Hague Convention on the Civil Process of March 1, 1954 on the issue of recovery of court expenses in the territory of a foreign state, as well as in some legal assistance treaties. However, the trend of law enforcement practice of domestic courts deviates from the provisions of international treaties. In the course of the research, it has been established that there is a substitution of legal mechanisms. This assumption is due to the complexities of translating legal terms that may be given additional content beyond that provided for in international treaties.

DEVELOPMENT OF MASTER STUDENTS’ FORMAL LETTER WRITING SKILLS BY MEANS OF ONLINE TOOLS DURING ACADEMIC FOREIGN LANGUAGE COURSE

The article deals with the peculiarities of using Internet tools for the development of formal letter-writing skills of Master students during Academic foreign language course. It is widely accepted that formal communication cannot exist without online applications, as they provide an opportunity to quickly exchange information, documents and data in real time from any location. The purpose of the article is to analyse and describe the main online platforms that can be used to improve foreign language skills in general and master the skills of formal correspondence in particular. It is emphasized that online applications of various types can become an effective means of practical and realistic mastery of foreign letter writing. The authors provide examples of online applications (WriteExpress, Letter Generator, LettersWriter, Grammarly, LanguageTool, Ginger), paying special attention to their features, advantages and disadvantages. The article highlights educational goals for which such online tools can be used, namely: initial acquaintance with modern formal letter templates and formats, creating Master students’ statements, editing a document, correcting spelling, punctuation, and stylistic mistakes. Online platforms are stated to save time, improve the quality and efficiency of formal letters, their structure and format, advise on the formal style linguistic peculiarities and tone, help to avoid mistakes and write more confidently. While studying Academic foreign language course Master students are expected to acquire not only knowledge about the standards and norms of formal correspondence but also critically analyse the product they receive after using online applications. Master students are expected to take into account the specific needs and expectations of the addressee, make the letter more personalised and targeted, focus on specific information, offer new ideas, look for alternative solutions, etc. It is concluded that the time for using IT technologies in the classroom should be clearly defined and limited, as they serve only as support tools designed to help transfer knowledge, comprehend the content of learning and improve the results of course studying.
 Keywords: Master students; formal letters; Academic foreign language course; development of formal communication skills; online tools; IT technologies; letter writing skills; foreign correspondence.

A supplementary study on the Chinese writings in Pidgin English Lyrics

Chinese Pidgin Language has existed in the southern coastal areas of China since the 16th century and is a lingua franca of European languages, Mandarin and Chinese dialects, influenced by the class of users and the particular using occasion. Chinese people mainly rely on Chinese transcriptions to express and record this idiosyncratic dialect without regard for original foreign letters and spelling rules. This method, however, reserves the dialectal phonetic feature and writing system of sight words in an early period. Limited by the material recorded, relevant concerns about Chinese Pidgin Language have been at a standstill. Referring to the regional variations, studies on Yang King Pang English needs to be worthy of attention. By referring to the corresponding agreements of Chinese Pidgin Language extracted from earlier studies as well as the historical evidence, the present article makes a thorough correction of and supplement to all questioned Chinese transcriptions embedded in these Pidgin English Lyrics not well-known by the academic. The achievement, integrated with the existing transcriptions of these lyrics, would provide one complete glossary of Yang King Pang English in that period.

The Developmental Change of Print‐Tuned N170 in Highly Transparent Writing Systems1

AbstractRapid and implicit letter‐to‐sound conversion is a remarkable ability that develops during school years, which is reflected in the left lateralization of the print‐tuned N170 event‐related potential. Previous studies have shown that elementary school children learning alphabetic scripts elicit bilateral N170, which reflects their underdeveloped phonological conversion processing. However, children learning Japanese hiragana, which has better letter–sound correspondence compared with alphabetic scripts, may acquire the automatic phonological conversion in the early stages of learning to read. To test this notion, we investigated the developmental change of the print‐tuned N170 by comparing 4th–6th grade elementary school children with college students. Participants were required to detect infrequent blue stimuli among a series of black‐colored hiragana words, nonwords, and foreign letter strings. College students showed typical left‐lateralized N170. In contrast, children elicited bilateral N170 for print stimuli, indicating that the implicit phonological conversion was still not established. The finding suggests that the automatization of letter‐to‐sound conversion requires a relatively long learning period even in orthographically transparent scripts.

Social networking sites and it’s refictions on the values of Saudi society

This study dealt with the role played by social networking sites and their implications for the values of Saudi society. This study sought to determine the most used social networking sites by the Saudi society, to reveal their impact on the religious, moral and social values of the Saudi society, and to identify the challenges that result from the use of social networking sites on the values of Saudi society.
 This study aims to determine the most used social networking sites by the Saudi society, and to reveal its impact on the religious, moral and social values of the Saudi society, and to identify the challenges that result from the use of social networking sites on the values of Saudi society.
 This study belongs to the matrix of descriptive studies. The researchers used the survey method by using the questionnaire tool. The study concluded that the What's App platform, followed by Twitter, is one of the most used social networking sites by the Saudi community the Saudis discussed social issues through the societal value index, and the sample members confirmed that social networking sites helped spread the Arabic language outside the borders through the language value index.
 This study recommended the need to use the time to benefit, especially since the use of social networking sites for more than three hours during the day is very much. Preserving the value of the Arabic language by avoiding writing with numbers or foreign letters or using the local and colloquial language.

Rapid changes in brain activity during learning of grapheme-phoneme associations in adults

Learning to associate written letters with speech sounds is crucial for the initial phase of acquiring reading skills. However, little is known about the cortical reorganization for supporting letter-speech sound learning, particularly the brain dynamics during the learning of grapheme-phoneme associations. In the present study, we trained 30 Finnish participants (mean age: 24.33 years, SD: 3.50 years) to associate novel foreign letters with familiar Finnish speech sounds on two consecutive days (first day ​~ ​50 ​min; second day ​~ ​25 ​min), while neural activity was measured using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Two sets of audiovisual stimuli were used for the training in which the grapheme-phoneme association in one set (Learnable) could be learned based on the different learning cues provided, but not in the other set (Control). The learning progress was tracked at a trial-by-trial basis and used to segment different learning stages for the MEG source analysis. The learning-related changes were examined by comparing the brain responses to Learnable and Control uni/multi-sensory stimuli, as well as the brain responses to learning cues at different learning stages over the two days. We found dynamic changes in brain responses related to multi-sensory processing when grapheme-phoneme associations were learned. Further, changes were observed in the brain responses to the novel letters during the learning process. We also found that some of these learning effects were observed only after memory consolidation the following day. Overall, the learning process modulated the activity in a large network of brain regions, including the superior temporal cortex and the dorsal (parietal) pathway. Most interestingly, middle- and inferior-temporal regions were engaged during multi-sensory memory encoding after the cross-modal relationship was extracted from the learning cues. Our findings highlight the brain dynamics and plasticity related to the learning of letter-speech sound associations and provide a more refined model of grapheme-phoneme learning in reading acquisition.

Графічний параметр української рими

This study deals with the classification of Ukrainian rhymes based on visual and phonic signs. Ukrainian orthography is based on the phonemic principle, taking into account morphological, traditional and differential. It is well adapted to reproduce the consonance of words in a letter, so predominantly the reader does not experience the feeling of splitting the image of the rhyme. Despite the clarity of the concepts ‘visual’ and ‘phonic’, the terms ‘visual rhyme’ and ‘phonic rhyme’ defined in the scientific literature differently. Our purpose was to study the means of visual representation of rhyming words and analyze the degree of coincidence of the visual images of the rhyme components. Mainly the aesthetic intention is an impulse of employing graphic techniques that estrange visual images of components from each other or bind them on the basis of orthographic deviation. The authors of modern poetry actively apply foreign letter inclusions, rows of dots, figures and other non-alphabetic signs. Analysed material gave grounds for the rhymes distribution to phonic, formally phonic, phonic-and-visual, visual-and-phonic, formally visual. In phonic rhymes, the relative parts of the rhyming words are not identical in the letter. Formally phonic group includes rhymes with non-literal or foreign-literal components. Phonic-and-visual rhymes takes into account the cases of traditional notation of some letters. The vowels of these rhymes are identical. Visual-and-phonic rhymes expect complete correspondence between the vowels and the letters of the correlative parts of the rhyming words. Formally visual rhymes cover cases of visual identity of correlated parts of the rhyming words and dissimilarity of vowels. A refined rhyme classification will help to originate a modernized general systematics of Ukrainian rhymes.

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Interactive scenario analysis of banking credit risks in intuitive fuzzy space

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to bring attention to documentary credits and the efforts to reduce debt obligations in credit history is recognized as an important source of uncommitted bank earnings. Credit risk has a significant impact on the stability of the banking system. This paper identifies the types of credit risk in the banking supply chain. Design/methodology/approach The authors model the types of credit risk using the intuitive fuzzy failure modes and effects analysis (IFMEA) and intuitive fuzzy cognitive mapping. The population of the study that is needed for the interviews and expert panels comprises senior managers and experts of a leading bank in Iran. The respondents are experienced in credit and banking risk and were selected through judgment sampling and snowballing. Findings The findings suggest that reducing the risks of the foreign letters of credit contracts can mitigate the risk in the agricultural sector, the specific risks of rent-to-own contracts, the risk of the long-term facilities and the specific risk of the domestic letter of credit contracts. Originality/value This research investigates Iran Tejart Bank’s credit risk, formulates a model of the types of credit risk present and analyzes them using the intuitive fuzzy failure modes and effects analysis and intuitive fuzzy cognitive map. Through this credit risk model, one can then facilitate risk management for better financial stability. Also, the model can be used to evaluate the risk indicators.

Bank linkages and international trade

We uncover a new channel through which international finance is related to trade: the formation of international bank linkages increases exports. Bank linkages are measured for each pair of countries in each year as a number of bank pairs in these two countries that are connected through cross-border syndicated lending. Using a gravity approach to model trade for 66 countries over 24 years with a full set of fixed effects (source-year, target-year, source-target), we find that new connections between banks in a given country-pair lead to an increase in trade flows between these countries in the following year and to trade diversions from countries competing for similar imports. We conjecture that the mechanism for this effect is the role bank linkages play in reducing export risk and present evidence supporting this conjecture. In particular, using industry-level trade data and controlling for country-pair-year and industry fixed effects, we find that new bank linkages have larger impacts on trade in industries which tend to be subject to more export risk. For U.S. banks, we can show that bank linkages are positively associated with foreign letter of credit exposures.

Letter Frequency Analysis of Languages Using Latin Alphabet

The evaluation of the peculiarities of alphabets, particularly the frequency of letters is essential when designing keyboards, analysing texts, designing alphabet-based games, and doing some text mining. Thus, it is important to determine what might be useful for designers of text input tools, and of other technologies related to sets of letters. Knowledge of common features among different languages gives an opportunity to take advantage of the experience of other languages. Nowadays an increasing amount of texts is published on the Internet. In order to adequately compare the frequencies of letters in different languages used in the online space, Wikipedia texts have been selected as a source material for investigation. This paper presents the Method of the Adjacent Letter Frequency Differences in the frequency line, which helps to evaluate frequency breakpoints. This is a uniform evaluation criterion for 25 main languages using Latin script in order to highlight the similarities and differences among them. Research focuses on the letter frequency analysis in the area of rarely used native letters and frequently used foreign letters in a particular language. The frequency of the letters is one of the factors that determines the location of the keys for the language specific letters on the keyboard.

Iluminated by foreign letters - Strategies for site-specific cyclopropene modification of large functional RNAs via in vitro transcription.

The synthesis of sequence-specifically modified long RNA molecules, which cannot entirely be prepared via solid phase synthesis methods is experimentally challenging. We are using a new approach based on an expanded genetic alphabet preparing site-specifically modified RNA molecules via standard in vitro transcription. In this report, the site-specific labeling of functional RNAs, in particular ribozymes and a long non-coding RNA with cyclopropene moieties, is presented. We provide detailed instructions for RNA labeling via in vitro transcription and include required analytical methods to verify production and identity of the transcript. We further present post-transcriptional inverse electron demand Diels-Alder cycloaddition reactions on the cyclopropene-modified sequences and discuss applications of the genetic alphabet expansion transcription for in vitro preparation of labeled functional RNAs with complex foldings. In detail, the glmS and CPEB3 ribozymes were site-specifically decorated with methyl cyclopropene moieties using the unnatural TPT3CP triphosphate and were proven to be still functional. In addition, the structurally complex A region of the Xist lncRNA (401nt) was site-specifically modified with methyl cyclopropene and detected by fluorescence after cycloaddition reaction with a tetrazine-BODIPY conjugate.

Types of Borrowings in Tagalog/Filipino

Modern Tagalog, or Filipino as the National Language, is widely famous for its high ability to adopt lexical units from various languages in contact. Through the ages it has assimilated a vast amount of borrowings, primarily from Malay, Sanskrit, Chinese, Arab and later, Spanish and English. Many linguists have contributed so far to the investigation of the borrowings in Tagalog, such as Philippine scholars G. Chan Yap, J. Francisco, A. Gonzalez, R.M. Goulet, C. Lopez, E.A. Manuel, F. Otanes, J. Panganiban, as well as Western linguists K.A. Adelaar, F. Blake, M. Haspelmath, H. Kelz, H. Kern, J.-P. Potet, P. Steinkruger, P. Schachter, T. Stolz, R. Thompson, J. Wolff, D. Zorc, K. Zuraw, and Russian Philippinists V. Makarenko, L. Shkarban, Yu. Studenichnik, and so on. However, there have been lacunas in the overall research: the focus of many works has been set on the phonetic assimilation of the Spanish and English loans, with scarce data on the morphology and semantics, especially of the Asian lexemes. The phenomenon of the borrowings interfering with the recipient system is understudied. A uniform classification of the various borrowed elements is also needed. (I attempted to fill some of the gaps in Baklanova 2004; 2006; 2009). This paper presents a typological classification of borrowings in Tagalog, while the phenomenon of the borrowings interfering with the recipient system will also be considered. Some remarks will be made on the Filipino State Orthography (Ortograpiyang Pambansa 2013) regarding the introduction of foreign letters to the alphabet, and the problem of false cognates in modern Tagalog/Filipino.

Letter Frequency Analysis of Lithuanian and Other Languages Using the Latin Alphabet

It is important to evaluate specificities of alphabets, particularly the letter frequencies while designing keyboards, analyzing texts, designing games based on alphabets, and doing some text mining. In order to adequately compare lettter frequences of Lithuanian language to other languages in the Internet space, Wikipedia source was selected which content is common to different languages. The method of letter frequency jumps is used. The main attention is paid to the analysis of letter frequencies at the boundary between native letters and foreign letters used in Lithuanian and other languages.

Privateering as a language of international politics: English and French privateering against the Dutch Republic, 1655–1665

In the period 1655–1665, between the First and Second Anglo-Dutch Wars, French and English privateers with Swedish and Portuguese commissions preyed on the shipping of the Dutch Republic. In this article, it is proposed that this activity was employed by the English and French governments as a language of international politics. In their toleration and, on occasion, defence of the use of foreign letters of marque by their subjects against a nominally neutral state, Mazarin, Cromwell, Louis XIV and Charles II deliberately and flagrantly violated the conventions of international law or religion. Their purpose was to make clear to the States General and Grand Pensionary John de Witt their discontent with Dutch policy, diplomacy or trading practices. Temporary or permanent bans on the practice served to communicate a message of benevolence and friendship, or were aimed at creating détente. These signals, however, were generally misunderstood by the receiving party. Employing as their frame of reference for interpreting these messages their own republican traditions, their decentralised governmental structure and Grotius's writings on international maritime law, the Dutch authorities perceived English and French attitudes towards privateering with foreign commissions as symptomatic of monarchical arbitrariness and/or mercantilist jealousy. It was the absence of international consensus regarding the legal boundaries of privateering that encouraged its use as a language of international politics; at the same time, however, it also contributed to fundamental misunderstandings between the parties.

Patriotic Enthusiasm at the Beginning of the First World War

In the present paper from the constructionist perspective is examined one of the most controversial issues of the modern western historiography of the First World War - the issue of patriotic enthusiasm of 1914, its scopes and nature. On the basis of a wide range of primary sources, including Russian and foreign archives, memoirs and letters of contemporaries the author carries out a comparative analysis of the response to the beginning of the war of urban and rural population of Great Britain, France and Russia. Against the backdrop of numerous patriotic demonstrations in large cities, the rural population's response looked much more constrained and passive. At the same time the latter attests rather to the peculiarities of rural culture than to the absence of patriotic upsurge. The author points out that besides apparent distinctions there was a lot of similarities in the urban and rural population's reaction to the beginning of the war. This refers to an immensely successful mobilization of continental armies, a rush of volunteers to the British army, and a drop of the labor movement in all European countries. The author comes to the conclusion that the patriotic upsurge in Europe in 1914 was not founded on a momentary outburst of chauvinism, but reflected a broad popular consensus on the war.

Pseudo-translation as a Subset of the Literary System: a Case Study

Abstract
 Persian literature is replete with pseudo-translations to the extent that if one tried to compile a complete bibliography, it would turn into an unwieldy book. Most Persian pseudo-translations belong to Iranian political literature (Okhovat, 2006). As could be guessed, identifying pseudo-translations is not a simple task as their authors want readers to believe in the ‘translationness’ of these works for various reasons. One of the most famous Iranian pieces of pseudo-translations, whose original writer has recently claimed its authorship, is the famous (in Iran) Letter of Charlie Chaplin to his daughter Geraldine. The present article examines diverse aspects of this text, including its political, historical, cultural, and literary milieu of production, and provides a critical discourse analysis of this text and highlights the original author’s ideological stance as it is embedded in this purported foreign letter. The article concludes by surmising the reasons why this famous work was published as a translation, and how it is, that the original writer has claimed authorship after more than 30 years.

Text Input on Mobile Devices from Cultural and Educational Aspects

Tablet computers and other mobile devices are widely used in education and other life activities. However, touch screen keyboards are not adapted to languages using alphabets with more letters than the English alphabet has. In this paper, we analyze the existing keyboards on such devices for various languages, influence of keyboard usability on the number of typing errors, and propose keyboard design guidelines for non-English languages. As an example, the layout for the Lithuanian language keyboard (32 native letters and 3 foreign letters) has been presented here. The described solution is not strictly related to the peculiarities of the Lithuanian language alphabet (apart from the number of letters), therefore it is suitable for other languages using a similar number of letters.

America's "Cumbersome Democracy" in Print: Histories of Reading and Writing in Early America

America's "Cumbersome Democracy" in Print:Histories of Reading and Writing in Early America Antonio T. Bly Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelly, eds., An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840. Vol. 2 of A History of the Book in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Pp. 697. $60.00. Konstantin Dierks , In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). Pp. 376. $55.00. Book history, as Robert Darnton reminds us in The Kiss of Lamourette, is a complex field of historical inquiry. Covering a wide array of subjects—bookbinding and papermaking, publishing and copyright, foreign letters and types, authors and readers—"it might even be called the social and cultural history of communication by print, if that were not such a mouthful" (107). A branch of the social sciences in which "books" are treated as artifacts, Darnton explains, the history of the book investigates not only "how ideas were transmitted through print" but also "how exposure to the printed word" has affected society "during the last five hundred years" (107). In both Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelly's An Extensive Republic and Konstantin Dierks's In My Power, the richness, depth, and complexity of this steadily expanding field are on full display. An Extensive Republic is the second of five volumes in the American Antiquarian Society's History of the Book in America series. Masterfully edited, this collection of essays written by key scholars in the field reveals compelling stories of early America as a nation of readers who feverishly consumed books, newspapers, leaflets, and broadsides. In covering the expansion of public schools in America (Moran, Vinovskis, Monaghans, Grodzins, Jackson, and Kelly); the development of copyright and the American author (McGill and Shields); and the reading practices of rural, urban, German immigrant, African American, and Native Americans (Nipps, Larkins, Pretzer, Roeber, Gundaker, O'Connell, and Gross), this useful book reveals portraits of America between 1790 and 1840 as a cumbersome democracy in which Americans from many different walks of life consumed print and used it in multiple ways. In this narrative, mostly about books and readers, printers and publishers in the United States assumed a central role in the development of the new Republic. Indeed, central to those fresh starts were books, books that were meant to define the new nation as free and democratic. Shortly after the dust began to settle from the American Revolution, books and newspapers offered many Americans opportunities to begin anew. And as Scott E. Casper explains in his essay, "Case Study: Harper & Brothers," there was little time to waste. In the wake of independence, America needed literary "works of a [distinctly] American character" (129). For that reason, James and John Harper started a publishing company and took on the daunting task of writing the new nation into existence. Adopting British models, and initially British authors, the Harper brothers began issuing a multivolume series celebrating America's unique charm. By publishing such books [End Page 151] as Thatcher's Indian Biography, Pauling's A Life of Washington, Byrant's Selections from the American Poets, the Harper brothers were perhaps some of the earliest bookmen to engage in this business of nation building (128-36). Although useful in its account of how these two printers-turned-publishers helped to create through books an exclusively American character, Casper's essay is far too abbreviated. For instance, he does not fully explicate the strategies the Harpers' firm used to reach the public at large. Nor does he make much of the hundreds of agents, from clergymen to students on vacation, whom the brothers employed. An otherwise interesting story, Casper's essay also does not further explicate the various book-binding and advertising schemes the brothers used to get the word out. As a result, what emerges is a narrative in which the Harper & Brothers' multivolume series are circulated among only a select group—those who could buy books— thus overlooking an equally telling story of how their "Library" series found its way into the hands of less well-to-do Americans. David Paul Nord's essay "Benevolent Books: Printing...