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Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren't the only ones who can groove to a beat - some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species with the capacity for vocal mimicry, that is, copying sound, seem capable of beat induction, the ability to discern the beat in music. Beat induction also enables such actions as clapping, making music together and dancing to a rhythm. The data suggests that some of the brain mechanisms needed for human dance may have originally evolved to allow us to imitate sound.

Article talks about an adult Okinawan-language class in Hawaii. Okinawan, also known as Uchinaaguchi, is an endangered language--it fell into disuse due to Japanese colonization--hence few native speakers of the language remain. I've posted the text of the article below, as you've got to be a Star-Advertiser subscriber to see the full page: POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Aug 27, 2013 StarAdvertiser.com Learning Okinawan helps preserve culture and identity, an instructor says By Steven Mark In a classroom for preschoolers, a group of adults is trying to revive a language that is foreign to their ear but not to their heart. The language is Okinawan, or "Uchinaaguchi," as it is pronounced in the language itself. The class at Jikoen Hongwanji Mission in Kalihi, as informal as it is, might just be the beginning of a cultural revival thousands of miles to the east of the source. At least that is the hope of Eric Wada, one of the course instructors. "For us, it's the importance of connecting (language) to identity," said Wada, who studied performing arts in Okinawa and is now the artistic director of an Okinawan performing arts group, Ukwanshin Kabudan. "Without the language, you really don't have identity as a people." Okinawa is the name given to a prefecture of Japan, but it was originally the name of the main island of an archipelago known as the Ryukyu Islands that lies about midway between Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea. For centuries, the Ryukyu kingdom maintained a degree of independence from other East Asian nations. As a result, distinctive cultural practices evolved, from graceful and meditative dance to the martial art called karate and the poetic language that sounds like a blend of Japanese and Korean. The islands were officially annexed by Japan in 1879. The 20th century saw the World War II battle of Okinawa, which claimed more than a quarter of the island's population, the subsequent placement of U.S. military bases and the return of the islands to

This article elaborates on how dance is a type of language that connects all cultures, and all species around the world. Dancers are thought of as storytellers, and their stories are their bodies and movement.

For centuries, Central America's Afro-Indigenous Garifuna people have kept the culture's oral history alive through their ancestors' native language. But decades of modernization, haphazard native-language training in Garifuna schools, intermarriage between cultures, and the ridicule of young people who speak the language, collectively led to Garifuna being listed on the UNESCO Atlas of Endangered Languages in 2001. Today, linguists estimate that about 100,000 speakers remain. The threat of language extinction isn't new. Some linguists estimate a language dies every two weeks, as some languages become dominant tools for social and economic exchange, while others are pushed to the margins. But there are ways to save at-risk languages, as well. The key is that the language needs to be thought of less as preserved, "but indeed part of their present and their future," says Liliana Sánchez, a linguist and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. That's exactly what the Garinagu (Garifuna people) are doing. For the past two decades, Garifuna artists have used a cultural cornerstone-spirited dance music-to inspire young Garinagu to learn and share their native language. Now, with a new Garifuna Tourism Trail project in Belize, travelers can experience and support the cultural renaissance, too. Elements of the Garifuna culture-including music, dance, and language-were listed as a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001. Around that same time, Garifuna musicians and cultural activists hatched a plan: Create irresistible melodies, sung entirely in Garifuna, to rally young Garinagu to embrace the culture and learn the language. Will music save the Garifuna language? Time will tell. Garifuna remains on UNESCO's endangered-language list, last updated in 2010. And, as the Hawaiians learned from revitalizing their own language post colonization, this kind of revival is a long, multi-generational road.

Linguist John McWhorter links Donald Trump's use of casual speech as one of the reasons for his popular appeal. Even Trump's penchant for Twitter is understandable: the 140-character limit creates a way of writing that, like texting, diverges as little as possible from talking. America's relationship to language has become more informal by the decade since the 1960s, just as it has to dress, sexual matters, culinary habits, dance and much else. Given this historical context, we have to realize that Trump's talking style isn't as exotically barbaric as it looks on the page - the oddness is that it winds up on the page at all. And second, we have to understand that his fans' not minding how he talks is symptomatic of how all of us relate to formality nowadays. Language has just come along with it.

More details about HOW the bee calculates the information to share with other bees regarding distance and angle from the sun.

Singing along to our favorite songs may actually be a skill we acquire even before we're born. According to a recent study published in the journal Ultrasound, unborn babies can "sing and dance" in the womb as early as 16 weeks.

Kitty displays a slippery slope fallacy when she talks about them smoking, then assumes that Donna is dancing around topless then states that the basement is like Amsterdam. Red also makes a hasty generalization that the boys learned to smoke because they listen to the Beatles. His assumption is that all rock band members and their followers are hippies and pot heads.

Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki - the irresistible urge to "shuck off your clothes as you dance"? Perhaps a little kilig - the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien - which encapsulates the revitalising effects of taking a walk in the wind? Tim Lomas' Positive Lexicography Project aims to capture the many flavours of good feelings (some of which are distinctly bittersweet) found across the world, in the hope that we might start to incorporate them all into our daily lives. We have already borrowed many emotion words from other languages, after all - think "frisson", from French, or "schadenfreude", from German - but there are many more that have not yet wormed their way into our vocabulary. Lomas has found hundreds of these "untranslatable" experiences so far - and he's only just begun. Learning these words, he hopes, will offer us all a richer and more nuanced understanding of ourselves. "They offer a very different way of seeing the world."

The oldest forms of communication even before languages included body language, drawings, dancing, acting, and grunting. High or low pitched grunts indicated social communication or warning signs. The ancient Egyptians were some of the first people to use symbols as a means of recording their lives or for goods and trading and eventually the symbols changed to the alphabets we use today.

Hawaiian culture and traditions are being preserved in many different ways, most of which are showcased at the Merrie Monarch Festival every year. Hula is one of the main traditions practiced, but hula can only exist if the Hawaiian language does, as the dance is a performance of oli and mele. Before westernization, the Hawaiian people did not write down anything, but rather passed down stories through oral traditions such as oli and mele. ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, an official state language, is required to be taught in public schools now.

Across societies, music can be found in tandem with infant care, healing, dance, and love (among many others, like mourning, warfare, processions, and ritual), as found in 315 societies and 118 songs from 86 cultures, coming from 30 geographic regions.

This year, the 2024 Merrie Monarch Hula Festival is paying tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Hawaiian language revitalization movement. All the hula [dances] and songs [mele] selected for Wednesday's Hōʻike Night performances were either choreographed or composed for the Hawaiian language revitalization movement over its 40-year history. Mele provides a conduit for language proliferation and perpetuation.