Group items tagged

SwiftKey, a keyboard app, did an analysis of one billion emoji from aggregate SwiftKey Cloud data. The interactive map shows which emoji are most frequently used by which state. The full report can be loaded from https://blog.swiftkey.com/the-united-states-of-emoji-which-state-does-your-emoji-use-most-resemble/.

According to Ethnologue, of the 115 Indigenous languages spoken in the U.S. today, two are healthy, 34 are in danger, and 79 will go extinct within a generation without serious intervention. In other words, 99% of the Native American languages spoken today are in danger. Despite the Cherokee Nation's efforts, the Cherokee language (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ) is on that list. There are 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States, and most are battling language extinction. Since 2008, thanks in part to the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, the Administration for Native Americans (ANA), through a competitive grant process, has allocated approximately $12 million annually to tribes working to preserve their languages. In 2018, only 47 language projects received funding - just 29% of all requests, leaving more than two-thirds of applicants without funding, according to ANA. The Bureau of Indian Education, the Department of Education's Department of Indian Education and the National Science Foundation allocated an estimated additional $5.4 million in language funding in 2018, bringing the grand total of federal dollars for Indigenous language revitalization last year to approximately $17.4 million. Compared to how much the United States spent on exterminating Native languages, that sum is a pittance. At the height of the Indian boarding school era, between 1877 and 1918, the United States allocated $2.81 billion (adjusted for inflation) to support the nation's boarding school infrastructure - an educational system designed to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture and destroy Native languages. Since 2005, however, the federal government has only appropriated approximately $180 million for Indigenous language revitalization. In other words, for every dollar the U.S. government spent on eradicating Native languages in previous centuries, it spent less than 7 cents on revitalizing them in this one.

Ben Blatt, _Slate_ journalist, shares and reports on some maps of the United States that incorporate data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey regarding the languages spoken in American homes. One map shows what language, after English, is most commonly spoken in each of the 50 states (Spanish, for the most part), and another, the second most-spoken language. I personally question the veracity of the data for Hawai'i, which lists Tagalog as the second-most spoken language behind English. Surely it's Hawai'i Creole English (HCE), but perhaps it's because survey respondents don't know HCE= its own language. Also, Ilocano seems to be more commonly spoken than Tagalog in the 808, but maybe because Tagalog= the language of school instruction in the Philippines, it's universally spoken by everyone who speaks some Filipino variant. Some caveats on the construction of these maps. A language like Chinese is not counted as a single language, but is split into different dialects: Cantonese, Mandarin, Shanghaiese and treated as different languages. If those languages had been grouped together, the marking of many states would change. In addition, Hawaiian is listed as a Pacific Island language, so following ACS classifications, it was not included in the Native American languages map.

Despite anti-immigrant sentiment and movements advocating "English Only," the United States is emerging as a vast laboratory showcasing the remarkable endurance of Spanish, no matter the political climate. Drawing on a critical mass of native speakers, the United States now has by some counts more than 50 million hispanohablantes, a greater number of Spanish speakers than Spain. The ways in which families use languages at the dinner table also show how Spanish is evolving. While first generation immigrants may speak exclusively Spanish, subsequent generations often speak a mix of English and Spanish: Spanglish.

English is, unsurprisingly, the most commonly spoken language across the US, and Spanish is second most common in 46 states and the District of Columbia. This infographic shows the most common language in every U.S. state, other than English and Spanish.

An interesting article of how Americans have tinkered with English and how they believe their way is the proper one.

"The goal of the Lexicalist project is to develop a dictionary that depicts, in real time, the changing demographics of English in the United States, a dictionary that supplements the fundamental meaning of a word or phrase with the current cultural backdrop that's informing its use today."

This website highlights a 5-part documentary series which explores the most controversial and misunderstood language variety in the United States: African American Language (AAL). With the perspectives of everyday people and the guidance of historians, linguists, and educators, the series showcases the history of the language, the symbolic role it plays in the lives of African Americans, and the tremendous impact on the language and culture of the United States. Contains video clips, educational resources.

A recent study suggests that our use of positive language has been on the decline for the past 200 years. The study measured the language positivity bias by analyzing the ratio of positive words to negative words. Language mirrors our psychological state, so this finding may suggest that happiness is also declining among the population.

Although recent election coverage may suggest otherwise, research shows that people are more likely to use positive words than negative words on the whole in their communications. Behavioral scientists have extensively documented this phenomenon, known as language positivity bias, in a number of different languages.

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in the United States. It touches the lives of millions of people. People with dyslexia don't naturally process the written word. They don't easily break it into smaller units that can be turned into sounds and stitched together. This makes reading a laborious - even exhausting - process. Writing, too.

English originated in England and is the dominant language in many countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. It is also the official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, island nations in the Carribean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and many countries in Africa, including South Africa. About a third of the world's population uses English and it is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries in the world. The parent language of English Proto-Indo-European was used about 5,000 years ago by nomads. The closest language to modern English is Frisian, used by the Dutch province of Friesland. During the course of many millennia, modern English has slowly gotten simpler and less inflected. In English, only nouns, pronouns (he, him, his), adjectives (big, bigger, biggest) and verbs are inflected. English is the only European language to use uninflected adjectives (tall man & tall woman versus Spanish el hombre alto & la mujer alta. For the verb "ride", English has 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden) versus German reiten that has 16 forms. The simplification and loss of inflection has made English more flexible functionally and more open in vocabulary. English has "borrowed" words from other languages (e.g. cannibal, cigar, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, tornado, vanilla, etc. From Greek, English "borrowed": alchemy, alcohol, algebra, arsenal, assassin, elixir, mosque, sugar, syrup, zero, cipher etc. From Hebrew is: amen, hallelujah, manna, messiah, seraph, leviathan, shibboleth, etc. There are many other words in the English dictionary that are taken from other languages. Many countries speak or use English, but not in the same way we use it. The article is very long and goes through phonology (sounds), morphology inflection (grammar forms of tense, case, voice, person, gender, etc), composition, syntax (sentence forms), vocabulary, orthography (spelling systems) of English. It also gives

The US has no national-level mandates for studying foreign language, and requirements are mostly set at the school-district and state level. According to a 2017 statistic, only 20% of American K-12 students are enrolled in a foreign language class. In contrast, most European countries have national-level mandates for formally studying languages in school. Across Europe, students typically begin studying their first foreign language as a required school subject between the ages of 6 and 9. Furthermore, studying a second foreign language for at least one year is compulsory in more than 20 European countries. Overall, a median of 92% of European students are learning a language in school. Check out the article to see the statistics--it really puts our monolingual nation to shame.

This article argues how there is a separate language of the law. This language consists of technical legal terms and it is different from ordinary language because ordinary language cannot compare to the amount of legal terms. This type of language allows for more precision by stating specifically the rules of something. This can prove that the Constitution was writing in the language of the law. This is because the Constitution consists of around 100 reasons why the United States shouldn't be a part of Britain.

An interesting scholarly sociolinguistic paper! Jane H. Hill, a University of Arizona linguist, examines the use of mock Spanish phrases In the southwestern United States. Hill wondered why English speakers of ``Anglo" ethnic affiliation make considerable use of Spanish in casual speech, in spite of the fact that the great majority of them are utterly monolingual in English under most definitions. However, these monolinguals both produce Spanish and consume it, especially in the form of Mock Spanish humor, and that use of Mock Spanish intensified during precisely the same period when opposition to the use of Spanish native speakers has grown, reaching its peak in the passage of ``Official English'' statutes in several states during the last decade. Hill argues that the use of Mock Spanish is, in fact, racist discourse.

Immigrant groups from every part of the world have routinely brought their languages to the United States, save one: African Americans. John Baugh explains how the African slave trade impacted this unique variety of American, and how the term "Ebonics" came into being.

Last week we learned that China had officially overtaken Japan to become the world's second-biggest economy. Earlier this year, China surpassed Germany as the world's largest exporter, and it recently overtook the United States as the world's largest car market.

People in Philadelphia speak with a distinctive Philly accent, and those who converse in sign language are no different. The area is known for having one of the most distinctive regional sign language accents, and two researchers based at the University of Pennsylvania are trying to figure out why. In sign language, an accent is apparent in how words are signed differently-it's a lexical difference, similar to how some Americans say "pop" while others say "soda," explains Meredith Tamminga, one of the professors conducting the research. Some possible reasons: the first sign language teacher in the United States and the person who founded the first Philadelphia school for the deaf, Laurent Clerc, was a Frenchman. Many Philadelphia deaf signers were educated at the school, and moreover, remained geographically stable, limiting their exposure to signers who used conventional ASL. While ASL has evolved to a distinctive American sign language over time, the Philadelphia version maintains more of its French roots.

"So way back in April, I first had the idea of editing together inspirational speeches. Since then, the Dow has dropped 3,000 points and one million jobs have been lost. The people of the United States are now a ragtag bunch of scruffy underdogs, down by three touchdowns at halftime, with a whole horde of orcs waiting for us right outside those locker room doors. Inspiration has become something we need." - whoever posted the video I think that this video and the caption are very powerful, but unlike my previous post these speeches are from the mainstream media, not political or progressive figures, yet they are still inspirational.

"In our still-budding digital world, where public and private spheres cross-pollinate in unpredictable ways, perhaps it's not surprising that soon-to-be parents now routinely turn to Google to vet baby names. A quick search can help ensure that a child is not saddled with the name of a serial killer, pornography star or sex offender. ... But maybe common names are more prudent. A recent study by the online security firm AVG found that 92 percent of children under 2 in the United States have some kind of online presence, whether a tagged photo, sonogram image or Facebook page."