Group items tagged

By Sara Guirgis and Kristina Olson Parents are often asking what they can do to prepare their children for the increasingly globally-connected world. Often that answer has involved encouraging children to learn a second language or, for immigrant families, ensuring they pass on their native language to their children.

Kristina Olson, a professor of psychology, analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of being bilingual. There are many benefits such as, enhanced cognitive skills and mental disease immunity. However, there are some minor setbacks, such as weakened vocabulary and verbal skills in both languages. She links several studies done by professionals to back up her information.

Language is common to all humans; we seem to be "hard-wired" for it. Many social scientists and philosophers say it's this ability to use language symbolically that makes us "human." Though it may be a universal human attribute, language is hardly simple. For decades, linguists' main task was to track and record languages. But, like so many areas of science, the field of linguistics has evolved dramatically over the past 50 years or so. Today's science of linguistics explores: -the sounds of speech and how different sounds function in a language -the psychological processes involved in the use of language -how children acquire language capabilities -social and cultural factors in language use, variation and change -the acoustics of speech and the physiological and psychological aspects involved in producing and understanding it -the biological basis of language in the brain This special report, compiled by the National Science Foundation, touches on nearly all of these areas by answering questions such as: How does language develop and change? Can the language apparatus be "seen" in the brain? Does it matter if a language disappears? What exactly is a dialect? How can sign language help us to understand languages in general? Answers to these and other questions have implications for neuroscience, psychology, sociology, biology and more.

Dr. Nick Perham, a lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, conducted a 2010 study, "Can preference for background music mediate the irrelevant sound effect?", that shows how music can interfere with short-term memory performance. Perham had subjects conduct a certain task, in this case recalling a series of numbers, while listening to different kinds of background music. If sound exhibits acoustical variations, or what Perham calls an "acute changing-state," performance is impaired. Steady-state sounds with little acoustical variation don't impair performance nearly as much. Perham asked his subjects how they thought they performed when exposed to different tastes in music. Each reported performing much worse when listening to disliked music, although the study's results showed no difference. However, Perham found no distinction in performance, regardless of whether the music was liked or disliked: both were "worse than the quiet control condition. Both impaired performance on serial-recall tasks." The interviewer queried how curious how prevalent serial-recall is in everyday life, and if one could get by without developing this skill. Unlikely, Perham says, as one would have tremendous difficulty recalling phone numbers, doing mental arithmetic, and even learning languages. "Requiring the learning of ordered information has also been found to underpin language learning. If you consider language, learning syntax of language, learning the rules that govern how we put a sentence together, all of these require order information . . . " Perham says.

In my humble opinion? In my honest opinion? Alexis Madrigal, the author, suggests how the dueling dual definitions came to be: "I'd say that IMHO, which developed as a way to reduce miscommunication through the indication of a lighthearted, ironic tone, became itself a form of miscommunication, as those unfamiliar with the original meaning backed into one, inserting honesty where humility once stood. IMHO, there is no debate. But it's the internet, so of course there is a debate."

Interesting interview with Steven Weinberger, linguistics professor at George Mason University, about how and when we develop accents, and how they affect our identity.

The American accent began to develop quickly after America won the Revolutionary war against the British. Until that time, both parties spoke with a rhotic British accent similar to the modern day American Accent.

Choosing a voice has implications for design, branding or interacting with machines. A voice can change or harden how we see each other. Research suggests that users prefer a younger, female voice for their digital personal assistant. We don't just need that computerized voice to meet our expectations, said Justine Cassell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. We need computers to relate to us and put us at ease when performing a task. "We have to know that the other is enough like us that it will run our program correctly," she said. That need seems to start young. Ms. Cassell has designed an avatar of indeterminate race and gender for 5-year-olds. "The girls think it's a girl, and the boys think it's a boy," she said. "Children of color think it's of color, Caucasians think it's Caucasian." Another system Cassell built spoke in what she termed "vernacular" to African-American children, achieving better results in teaching scientific concepts than when the computer spoke in standard English. When tutoring the children in a class presentation, however, "we wanted it to practice with them in 'proper English.' Standard American English is still the code of power, so we needed to develop an agent that would train them in code switching," she said. And, of course, there are regional issues to consider when creating a robotic voice. Many companies, such as Apple, have tweaked robotic voices for localized accents and jokes.

How is a language born? What are its essential elements? Linguists are gaining new insights into these age-old conundrums from a language created in a small village in Israel's Negev Desert. The Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL), which serves as an alternative language of a community of about 3,500 deaf and hearing people, has developed a distinct grammatical structure early in its evolution, researchers report, and the structure favors a particular word order: verbs after objects. The study - the first linguistic analysis of a language arising naturally with no outside influence - was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 4, 2005.

Deaf children are able to develop a language-like gesture system by making up hand signs and using homemade systems to increase their communication as they grow, just as children with conventional spoken language.

This article explains that learning language actually starts in the womb, not after birth. With new technology, researchers from the University of Kansas were able to track in-utero babies' responses to American and Japanese. As the mothers had only spoken English during their pregnancies, Japanese was a completely new language to the fetuses. The fetuses reacted very differently to the Japanese than they did to the American, which suggests that fetuses are able to start learning language before they are even brought into the world.

Language is something that is acquired by social interaction as well as the nature factor instilled within us since birth. A study done shows that a group of deaf Nicaraguan people have been able to develop a language of their own. This language of theirs in constantly changing and being added to. The study looks into whether this chance stems from the newer generation or the elders. They found that newer generations are responsible for the constant change and addition to their special language. (Open PDF to see full study)

According to Hirsh-Pasek, a professor at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, more and more studies are confirming the importance of conversation. "Language is the single best predictor of school achievement," she told me, "and the key to strong language skills are those back-and-forth fluent conversations between young children and adults." However, parents' digital device distraction is undermining valuable, face-face, verbal and non-verbal interactions that're crucial to language and emotional development.

Researchers from King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, in collaboration with Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona, mapped the neural pathways involved in word learning among humans. They found that the arcuate fasciculus, a collection of nerve fibres connecting auditory regions at the temporal lobe with the motor area located at the frontal lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain, allows the 'sound' of a word to be connected to the regions responsible for its articulation. Differences in the development of these auditory-motor connections may explain differences in people's ability to learn words. Researchers used diffusion tensor imaging to image the structure of the brain before a word learning task and functional MRI, to detect the regions in the brain that were most active during the task. They found a strong relationship between the ability to remember words and the structure of arcuate fasciculus, which connects two brain areas: the territory of Wernicke, related to auditory language decoding, and Broca's area, which coordinates the movements associated with speech and the language processing. In participants able to learn words more successfully their arcuate fasciculus was more myelinated i.e. the nervous tissue facilitated faster conduction of the electrical signal. In addition the activity between the two regions was more co-ordinated in these participants. Dr Catani concludes, "Now we understand that this is how we learn new words, our concern is that children will have less vocabulary as much of their interaction is via screen, text and email rather than using their external prosthetic memory. This research reinforces the need for us to maintain the oral tradition of talking to our children."

An International Year is an important cooperation mechanism dedicated to raising awareness of a particular topic or theme of global interest or concern, and mobilizing different players for coordinated action around the world. In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, based on a recommendation by the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. At the time, the Forum said that 40 per cent of the estimated 6,700 languages spoken around the world were in danger of disappearing. The fact that most of these are indigenous languages puts the cultures and knowledge systems to which they belong at risk. In addition, indigenous peoples are often isolated both politically and socially in the countries they live in, by the geographical location of their communities, their separate histories, cultures, languages and traditions. And yet, they are not only leaders in protecting the environment, but their languages represent complex systems of knowledge and communication and should be recognized as a strategic national resource for development, peace building and reconciliation. They also foster and promote unique local cultures, customs and values which have endured for thousands of years. Indigenous languages add to the rich tapestry of global cultural diversity. Without them, the world would be a poorer place.

One could argue that Niʻihau Hawaiian is the closest we've got to early forms of the language spoken in the islands. However, the language may be dying out. One interviewee noted the more frequent use of English amongst younger Ni`hau residents and expressed worry that when young speakers use English, they'll start to think in English, possibly leading them to abandon the Hawaiian way of thinking, and perhaps the language. Niʻihau speakers don't use diacritical marks like ʻokina (glottal stop) and kahakō (macron), which have become invaluable aids for language learners. They do, however, use "t"s and "r"s in place of "k"s and "l"s (e.g. ke aloha= te aroha, Ni`ihau style) - something that isn't taught in universities and immersion schools. Hawaiian language scholar Keao NeSmith says there's a history there. He says missionaries were confused by the Hawaiian language when they arrived. They were determined to translate the Bible into Hawaiian, but they couldn't figure out when to swap the "t" for the "k" and the "l" for the "r". So they created a standardized alphabet that dropped the use of "t'"s and "r"s. NeSmith says Niʻihau speakers chose not to alter their spoken language. But the missionary system gained a stronghold in the rest of the islands through the 1800s. Many of the Hawaiian language documents developed during this period, including newspapers, would become a go-to repository for the revitalization of the ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi a century later as the number of native speakers began to decline.

This article talks about linguistic diversity in China and the many different dialects that exist in China. Before the coronavirus, China promoted Putonghua to eradicate poverty and improve the labor force. This is because, in China, not everyone speaks the standard variety of Chinese Mandarin and have to learn this standard version. However, the coronavirus has changed this fact and China started developing language resources to help those that don't speak standard Chinese Mandarin. Especially, because the outbreak was especially bad in Hubei, where residents speak Hubei Mandarin. Now, it's especially important for healthcare workers that don't live in Hubei but were sent down to help, to understand healthcare workers to be able to converse in Hubei Mandarin. It also touches on English being the global medium for scholarly articles, instead of any other language, such as Mandarin. Read this article to learn more about how the coronavirus is affecting the different dialects in China and how English is regarded in Chinese scholarly articles.

"Talk to your baby," Dr. Cutler said. "Your baby is picking up useful knowledge about language even though they're not actually learning words." Before, many believed babies did not learn sound until six months of life. However, studies now have shown that "newborns can recognize the voices they've been hearing for the last trimester in the womb, especially the sounds that come from their mothers, and prefer those voices to the voices of strangers." In addition, the language heard before birth and in the first months of life affect sound perception and sound production. These two discoveries have led to a better understanding of language learning and brain development in babies.

This article gives simple, key steps to learning a new language. Many people are learning a new language right now. Nearly 1.2 billion people in this world are in the process of developing a second language. The study shows that the most efficient way to learn a language is not in the amount of hours you put in, but how often you practice. Cramming in massive amounts of hours one day each week is not an efficient way of learning something new. You need to be immersed in the language as frequently possible. You also need to review what you have studied before. Learning it once and then forgetting is not helpful in the long run. Reviewing will help turn your learning into muscle memory. This article helps and motivates new language learners and helps them seek their end goal of speaking fluently.

Reinforcing good behavior while discouraging disobedience and anti-social behavior generally produces positive results in children. Positive reinforcement helps children feel good about their choices, which motivates them to increase the behaviors that bring rewards. Praise and positive reinforcement usually produces both short-term and long-term positive results. This article talks about how positive reinforcement and encouragement from a young age affects the development of the character of a child.

This article explains the new system created for air traffic controllers and pilots. AcListant is a system that will listen to air controllers' radio conversations to help make suggestions for commands that fit the situation. The system can filter through basic greetings like "Hello" and "Good Morning" and focus on commands instead. AcListant can help with better communication especially with pilots who speak very fast or with an accent.