In most languages, sounds can be re-arranged into any number of combinations. Not so in Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language.Brian Goodman via Shutterstock Languages, like human bodies, come in a variety of shapes—but only to a point. Just as people don’t sprout multiple heads…
A special class of vivid, textural words defies linguistic theory: could ‘ideophones’ unlock the secrets of humans’ first utterances?
In fascinating study involving synesthesia, people make good guesses at meanings of foreign words
Machine learning can translate between two known languages, but could it ever decipher those that remain a mystery to us?
PDF | Despite 800 million illiterate people worldwide little research has aimed at understanding how they use and appropriate mobile phones. We... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
Every so often a news article will make the rounds of the internet – or, for that matter, a paper will be published in an academic journal – presenting a new ‘decipherment’ …
Mark Forsyth tasted internet fame this week when a passage from a book he wrote went viral. He explains more language secrets that native speakers know without knowing.
URLs like 4008-517-517.com mean a lot more than they appear.
A visual language is just like any other form of communication. Elements from color to style to type of photos or illustrations establish what a brand or company is. A visual language includes both the written and spoken elements of a website or brand, as well as every design…
“It was a matter of really reading between the lines of the script.”
Rax King’s ode to cringeworthy culture – Lindsay Zoladz
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The origins, meaning, and authors behind 50 popular phrases and sayings.
NuqneH! Saluton! A linguistic anthropologist (and creator of the Kryptonian language, among others) studies the people who invent new tongues.
We have been bombarded with negativity recently; but the English language is a treasure trove of joyous vocabulary, says Susie Dent, a lexicographer and etymologist
Anyone for a "glob"?
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You don’t get where you want to be without practice. Here’s how and what to practice.
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Once we acquire language, we can live without it.
The quest to decode hieroglyphic writing.
The distinctive Americanism is making its way across the world and becoming an unlikely favourite catch-all term.
In 2018, the team at Facebook had a puzzle on their hands. Cambodian users accounted for nearly 50% of all global traffic for Messenger's voice function, but no one at the company knew why, according to documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen. From a report: One…
Although I’ve successfully learned the language of mathematics, it has always frustrated me that I couldn’t master those more unpredictable languages like French or Russian that I’d tried to learn …
Although it was the language of sacred texts and ritual, modern Hebrew wasn't spoken in conversation till the late nineteenth century.
An ambitious project is attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with artificial intelligence, then talk back to them.
What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?
Using hand gestures might feel like an intuitive way to communicate across language barriers, but their meaning can change, and there are few universal signs that everyone agrees on.
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An ASL interpreter shares some travel-friendly tips and techniques that she’s learned from the Deaf community, the real masters of cross-cultural communication.
NICHOLAS SWIFT Can we really hear the ancients speak?
There I was, a clumsy, decaf-drinking 25-year-old British man in a swanky Buenos Aires radio station, being ridiculed by Viggo Mortensen. But even as he laid into me — his jokes later leading to my…
According to Amanda Montell’s new book, “Cultish,” the jargon and technical language of fanaticism is surprisingly common.
It likely explains why the French have the reputation of being so demonstrative about love – because if you can't really say it, you have to show it.
Knowing some Latin has its advantages
Jack may have been climbing that beanstalk for more than 5,000 years
European ideas of African illiteracy are persistent, prejudiced and, as the story of Libyc script shows, entirely wrong
Etymological Wordnet/lexicon/dictionary resource
The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.
Introduces the elephant ethogram: A Library of African Elephant Behavior
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Elephants possess an incredibly rich repertoire of communication techniques, including hundreds of calls and gestures that convey specific meanings and can change depending on the context. Different elephant…
For decades, Taiwan’s minority Hakka people were banned from teaching their native language. Now an unlikely coalition of aging academics and millennial radio DJs are doing all they can to keep it alive.
A deep dive into xenolinguistics, pragmatics, the cooperative principle, and Noam Chomsky!
natural language processing, nlp, machine learning, computer science
Trading Pit History - hand signals of open outcry pit trading
People tend to think of digital media as entertainment, so they devote less mental effort than when they’re reading a printed book.
The verb decide has deadly interesting origins. Though it came through Middle English deciden , Old French decider , and Latin decidere , you can tell that there's the prefix de- , kind...
The way your name or a word rolls off the tongue can have some surprising effects on the judgements we make.