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If you've got a bit of phlegm in the throat, the Klingon alphabet is just the thing for clearing that out.

Think you haven't got the aptitude to learn a foreign language? New research led by Northwestern University neuroscientists suggests that the problem, quite literally, could be in your head.

In the good old days, dating was defined by a series of face-to-face encounters. People met, they spent time in each other's company, they got to know each other's friends and family, and they evaluated the quality of their connection and compatibility in person...

This article documents the subculture of conlangers. Conlang", short for "constructed language," is a language that has been constructed. There are a lot of them, of various sorts. International auxiliary languages like Volapük, Esperanto, or Interlingua are one specific type of conlang. Invented to facilitate international communication during the great techno-utopian-modernist thought-boom of the last two centuries, they never got terribly popular. Conlangs do not necessarily have to be useful. As David Peterson explains in his new book _The Art of Language Invention_, conlanging is an art as well as a science, something you might do for your own pleasure, as well as for the entertainment of others.

Facebook shut down an Artificial Intelligence experiment shortly after developers discovered that the machines were talking in a language the machines made up that humans couldn't understand. The developers first programmed the chatbots so they could talk in English to each other when trading items back and forth. When the chatbots got into a long negotiation, they started talking to each other in their own language. Even though these chatbots were not highly intelligent, it is concerning that they went off on their own so quickly. In 2014, scientist Stephen Hawking warned that Artificial Intelligence could be the end of the human race. Hopefully the Matrix is science fiction, not science prediction.

Words change meaning all the time - and over time. Language historian Anne Curzan underscores the natural process of language evolution, presenting 20 words that illustrate the creative morphing of language. Take, for example the word "clue". Curzan notes that "centuries ago, a clue (or clew) was a ball of yarn. Think about threading your way through a maze and you'll see how we got from yarn to key bits of evidence that help us solve things."

"Psychology researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham wanted to know whether the voice that reads in our heads matches the voice that we read aloud in. In other words, does your internal monologue have an accent? ... you can't just ask people how they pronounce words in their heads. ... In order to get around that problem, the Nottingham researchers had subjects read limericks while carefully monitoring their eye movements. ... The subjects read the limericks silently to themselves. But when they got to rhymes that didn't make sense with their spoken accent, there was a distinct disruption in eye movement. ... what we know about he author of the piece can influence how we read it. ... 'For example, it has been demonstrated that knowledge of the presumed author's speaking speed can influence how quickly people read aloud a passage of text.'" Full study: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0025782

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.

I see that you are currently looking at this comment to see what the hell is wrong with me. But that was my goal: I got your attention. This article explains how headlines are so important in getting a reader's attention. It explains how the media uses rich vocabulary to draw you in so that you read their article. (Disclaimer: not a supporter of Trump)

Recognition of subtle emotional cues may be developmental, according to neurological research. At the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., Deborah Yurgelun-Todd and a group of researchers have studied how adolescents perceive emotion as compared to adults. The scientists looked at the brains of 18 children between the ages of 10 and 18 and compared them to 16 adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Both groups were shown pictures of adult faces and asked to identify the emotion on the faces. Using fMRI, the researchers could trace what part of the brain responded as subjects were asked to identify the expression depicted in the picture. The results surprised the researchers. The adults correctly identified the expression as fear. Yet the teens answered "shocked, surprised, angry." Moreover, teens and adults used different parts of their brains to process what they were feeling. The teens mostly used the amygdala, a small almond shaped region that guides instinctual or "gut" reactions, while the adults relied on the frontal cortex, which governs reason and planning. As the teens got older, however, the center of activity shifted more toward the frontal cortex and away from the cruder response of the amygdala. Yurgelun-Todd, director of neuropsychology and cognitive neuroimaging at McLean Hospital believes the study goes partway to understanding why the teenage years seem so emotionally turbulent. The teens seemed not only to be misreading the feelings on the adult's face, but they reacted strongly from an area deep inside the brain. The frontal cortex helped the adults distinguish fear from shock or surprise. Often called the executive or CEO of the brain, the frontal cortex gives adults the ability to distinguish a subtlety of expression: "Was this really fear or was it surprise or shock?" For the teens, this area wasn't fully operating.

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.

Your mind is like a big city that has millions of roads. Once you set your start point at one of the roads your mind will take you down the road automatically. If you got exposed to certain positive words for few seconds you are very likely to think positively for the next few minutes. It's interesting when I read that if you use words such as strong, strength, power, while talking to other people, you will empower people to become stronger even if you were talking about the best way to cook food.

Article talks re: the changing nature of a period. Its original function, to indicate the end of a thought, has become obsolete in texting, because of the ability to "send". Now the period can be used to indicate seriousness or a sense of finality. But caution is needed, said linguist Gretchen McCulloch, noting that problems can start to arise when you combine a period with a positive sentiment, such as "Sure" or "Sounds good." "Now you've got positive words and serious punctuation and the clash between them is what creates that sense of passive-aggression," said McCulloch. Binghamton University psychology professor Celia Klin says a period can inadvertently set a tone, because while text messaging may function like speech, it lacks many of the expressive features of face-to-face verbal communication, like "facial expressions, tone of voice, our ability to elongate words, to say some things louder, to pause." Our language has evolved, and "what we have done with our incredible linguistic genius is found ways to insert that kind of emotional, interpersonal information into texting using what we have," said Klin. "And what we have is things like periods, emoticons, other kinds of punctuation. So people have repurposed the period to mean something else."

This article discusses how Google Translate functions. Google Translate is a relatively accurate and easy-to-use translator. At first, the system required millions of human-generated translations of texts to identify patterns, in order to provide a pretty accurate translation. Also during this early period, the translator would use English as an intermediary language-languages were translated to English and then from English to the target language. The translator was decent at translating short excerpts, but as the texts got longer, there is a decline in the quality of the translations. In 2016, Google announced they were shifting to a neural network machine learning process, which is supposed to attempt look at the full context of the texts to eliminate discrepancies in translations. This way instead of an intermediary language, the system can just translate from one language to another.

Companies have had to change the way that they advertise during this pandemic because many people are scared and don't have a disposable income. Many companies focus on advertising the safety measures put in place by them. This makes people feel safe about buying the products. However, many people are still not ready to buy items right now. This has resulted in a switch of marketing that makes people feel like they are buying to help others. For example, some companies tout the fact that they are hiring workers. This is following a trend in recent decades in which buying can signify someone's morals or ideals. For example, many companies used to focus on how eco-friendly their products are. Now, companies focus on how they are helping workers keep their jobs. However, many local businesses do not have the resources to advertise and are floundering. This advertising strategy has also received some blowback as many find the messages shallow. For example, while big companies give people jobs, these workers receive little to no benefits and barely any sick leave. This phenomenon is called "disastertising" in which companies try to make themselves as knights saving the American public.

In this NPR interview, Trinidadian-American Lyiscott reflects on a moment where she'd been termed "articulate," a loaded term that got Lysicott reflecting on the ways certain varieties of language are privileged over others, and also the way "articulate" also suggests a perceived mismatch between the appearance/race of the person and their use of langugage, also how people judge others' intellect and capacity, based on how they speak.

In this article, they talk about why public speaking is hard and feared by so many. The main takeaway I got from it is that public speaking is much easier when you aim to "communicate" the topic rather tell people about it. You need to understand what you're talking about and that will give you the confidence to be great at public speaking.

This paper talks about Chinese loanwords in selected Southeast Asian languages (Khmer, Thai, Hmong, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Indonesian) and compares how different Chinese words got into different SEA languages depending on how the Chinese integrated with the local population.