Group items tagged

Courtesy the New York Times Magazine: thoughtful essays on what language reveals about our moment by rotating columnists Virginia Heffernan, Colson Whitehead, Amanda Hess, Michael Pollan, and others. Some sample titles: "The Underground Art of the Insult", "How `Flawless' Became a Feminist Declaration", "How Rock Star Became a Business Buzzword," "When You `Literally Can't Even' Understand Your Teenager."

This article, about the use of cultural references, made me think about the ways that language can be used to include or exclude people, also about the social dynamics that inform communication.

Beyond the clear benefits on the brain, bilingualism also offers a host of cultural benefits.

There comes a uniquely emotional moment for American Hispanics who register for a freshman year of college: Is it a good idea to sign up for the formal study of Spanish?

Dozens of countries, representing a wide range of languages, vie for the Eurovision song contest every year, but English has been by far the most dominant tongue, with 26 victories. So this year, Spain, which has not won since 1969, decided: If you can't beat them, join them. Spain's Eurovision entry will be sung entirely in English. This has sparked debate between people who embrace English as the language that will relate to more people and those who want Spain's entry to represent Spanish language and culture.

Language in humans has evolved culturally rather than genetically, according to a new study. By modeling the ways in which genes for language might have evolved alongside language itself, the study showed that genetic adaptation to language would be highly unlikely, as cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. Thus, the biological machinery upon which human language is built appears to predate the emergence of language. Professor Nick Chater, University College London Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, says: "...although we have appear to have a genetic predisposition towards language, human language has evolved far more quickly than our genes could keep up with, suggesting that language is shaped and driven by culture rather than biology. The linguistic environment is continually changing; indeed, linguistic change is vastly more rapid than genetic change. "

There are two versions of the writer Lauren Collins. There is the English-speaking Lauren, who, presumably, is the Lauren primarily responsible for writing her (wonderful) new memoir, When in French. And then there is the French-speaking Lauren, the one tasked with navigating a marriage and a life in a second language.

It's cool to think that speaking a language can change your perception of the world. I never thought about it before, but from studying Chinese, I feel like I have two sides to myself: an american point of view and an asian point of view. Language shapes who you are.

The Beijing dialect is disappearing, with a decreasing number of people speaking it, said Wan Jianzhong, a scholar at Beijing Normal University and municipal CPPCC member. "With an increasing number of migrants, the city is becoming less Beijing-like. Original residents are relocated and fewer people speak the dialect and live the old lifestyle," he said. Wan believes that to bring back Beijingers' memories and sentimental attachments to their old life and culture, the dialect should be promoted. The number of migrants reached 7.04 million by 2010, 35.9 percent of the city's population, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics. "Beijingers are being non-localized by migrants. They talk to people who speak different dialects and forget to use their own," said Wan. While Putonghua should be advocated among the greater public, local dialects should not be sacrificed, he noted.

Could understanding other cultures' concepts of joy and well-being help us reshape our own? The Positive Lexicography Project aims to catalogue foreign terms for happiness that have no direct English translation. The brainchild of Tim Lomas, a lecturer in applied positive psychology at the University of East London, the first edition included two hundred and sixteen expressions from forty-nine languages, published in January. Lomas used online dictionaries and academic papers to define each word and place it into one of three overarching categories, doing his best to capture its cultural nuances. The glossary can be found here: http://www.drtimlomas.com/#!alphabetical-lexicography/b5ojm

Nineb Lamassu, a researcher at England's Cambridge University, travels among the Assyrian diaspora, recording the traditional epic poetry of the Assyrian ethnic minority and capturing at least the memory of an ancient people whose presence in their homeland is gradually fading.

"Did Neanderthals sing? Is there a 'music gene'? Two scientists debate whether our capacity to make and enjoy songs comes from biological evolution or from the advent of civilization. Music is everywhere, but it remains an evolutionary enigma."

"Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey. ... His analysis systematically rules out not only common languages from within the Assyrian Empire, but also other languages of the time -- including Egyptian, Elamite, Urartian or West Semitic. Even at its most generous, his assessment suggests that only 15 of the legible names belong to a language previously known to historians. ... More convincing is the theory that the language in question may have been spoken by a people from somewhere else in the Assyrian Empire who were forcibly moved by the administration." More coverage: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/ancient-language-discovered-on-clay-tablets-found-amid-ruins-of-2800-year-old-middle-eastern-palace-7728894.html Link to the study: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/664450?uid=3738032&uid=2132&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=56160246193

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express? Take "Humpty Dumpty sat on a..."

"Did occupy occupy your attention? Were you talking about tiger moms or tiger blood? Or were you paralyzed by the condition known as FOMO (fear of missing out)?"

"Researchers identified subtle variations caused by differences in the shape of individual whales' heads. It's the first time that sperm whale vocalizations have been linked to specific individuals. ... While the whales tended to possess the same basic repertoire of "codas" - the technical name for each distinctive series of clicks - one female had a completely different set. ... The question of whether it's appropriate to think of sperm whales as having names is a controversial one. Some scientists think that many cetaceans should be considered persons ..." See also "Sperm Whales Really Do Learn From Each Other" (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/sperm-whales/) - "Yes, sperm whale culture really is culture."

Bicultural people may unconsciously change their personality when they switch languages, according to a US study on bilingual Hispanic women. It found that women who were actively involved in both English and Spanish speaking cultures interpreted the same events differently, depending on which language they speaking during that particular event.

rather funny take on American metaphors from a Hungarian linguist

See also the graphs at the bottom of the page. "Perhaps the biggest collection of words ever assembled has just gone online: 500 billion of them, from 5 million books published over the past four centuries... The words make up a searchable database that researchers at Harvard say is a new and powerful tool to study cultural change... You can, for instance, type in a word or a short phrase, and the database produces a graph - a curve that traces how often an author used those words every year since 1800."

"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."