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Despite claims that emoji are a universal lingua franca, emojis are neither "universal", nor a true "language". Instead, they are "at most a linguistic tool that is being used to complement our language". In other words, emojis do not and cannot by themselves constitute a meaningful code of communication between two parties. Rather, they are used as a way of enhancing texts and social media messages like a kind of additional punctuation. They help express nuance, tone and emotion in the written word. Emojis offer a chance for the average email writer, SMSer or social media poster to imply an emotional context to their messages, to express empathy. With emojis, they can do this as simply and naturally as using a facial expression or gesture when talking to somebody face-to-face. Yet relying too heavily on emojis to bridge that gap can cause problems of its own. We may all have access to more or less the same emojis through our smartphone keyboards, but what we mean when we use those emojis actually varies greatly, depending on culture, language, and generation.

This site is very insightful as to the differences in language development in the brain between those that learn a second language in childhood and those that learn the language as adults. It explains briefly the idea of a critical period and discusses the interesting aspects that come along with learning a second language later in life. It mentions Broca's and Wernicke's area.

This study shows that language doesn't only consist of words, but can also consist of sounds. People have different styles of language and understand people in different ways from different countries around the world.

With five distinct kinds of clicks, multiple tones and strident vowels - vocalized with a quick choking sound - the Taa language, spoken by a few thousand people in Botswana and Namibia, is believed by most linguists to have the largest sound inventory of any tongue in the world.

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.

How do babies develop differently, and how does it relate to the brain? How do genetics, environment, etc. play a role?

"But languages do differ significantly in what they force speakers to express, something Lera Boroditsky talks about often in support of the "linguistic relativity" hypothesis. ... What really can't be translated properly is "go" into Russian, or "loved" into Spanish, not because the English words are too specific but because they're too vague. Those languages force you to say much more ... The traditional idea of "can't be translated" has the facts exactly backwards."

Dr. Geary explains how metaphors are used to veil the true meaning of what one is trying to say in hopes to either deceive a group or to promote good feelings among a population. Consider his examples of Bush's "Axis of Evil" and Obama's desire to extend a warm hand to countries across the globe. This book sounds much like Steven Pinker's lecture for the RSA Animate video, "Language as a Window into Human Nature", and both the video and book aren't too different; both simply look at the same topic in different ways (innuendo vs. metaphor - though these hardly seem different if one were to really think about it). Link to Pinker's RSA Animate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU

"I described my "Perjury" problem - I was interested in the subject and engrossed in the book for days, but now remember nothing about it - and asked her if reading it had ultimately had any effect on me. "I totally believe that you are a different person for having read that book," Wolf replied. "I say that as a neuroscientist and an old literature major." She went on to describe how reading creates pathways in the brain, strengthening different mental processes. Then she talked about content. "There is a difference," she said, "between immediate recall of facts and an ability to recall a gestalt of knowledge. We can't retrieve the specifics, but to adapt a phrase of William James's, there is a wraith of memory. The information you get from a book is stored in networks. We have an extraordinary capacity for storage, and much more is there than you realize. It is in some way working on you even though you aren't thinking about it.""

Love it! People keep mentioning "Proust and the Squid" to me, and it's high time I read it.

A college paper researching women leadership and gender difference in communication.

I've always wondered if listening to foreign music helped when learning a new language. This article explains the difference of being bimusical and bilingual, both of which yield benefits.

With the advances of technology, it is presumed that humans will soon be using ear pieces and microphones to help translate or speak in a different language. However, it is argued that computers and technology will be unsuccessful at doing so. Computers and technology aims for perfection and therefore won't be able to communicate or translate the imperfect human language. In the article, the human language is compared to coding on a computer. The two are actually very different in that language is constantly changing and imperfect, however coding is pre-set and there is a general understanding for it.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 'The Tower of Babel' (1563). Wikimedia Commons Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the nuisance of communicating in a different language?

Here's how to be more emotionally intelligent: 1. Emotions are concepts: They're not hardwired or universal. They're learned. 2. Emotional intelligence starts with emotional granularity: If your doctor came back with a diagnosis of "you're sick", you'd sue the quack for malpractice. Doctors need to be able to distinguish between "chancre" and "cancer." And you need to know the difference between "sad" and "lonely." 3. Emotional intelligence is in the dictionary: You can't feel Fremdschämen if you don't know what it is. So learn new emotion words so you can feel new emotions and increase your emotional granularity, that is, the ability to distinguish the emotions you feel and recognize them as distinct and different. 4. Create new emotions: We could all use a little more "passion-o-rama" in our lives. Name those unnamed feelings you have and share them with others to make them real. In sum, finding specific words to describe the particularities of what you're feeling can lead to greater mental health. The article also discusses the differences that cultures/languages have in re: feelings and emotions we might've previously assumed were universal.

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.

This article is about how even though humans across the globe share and recognize the same emotions, the way they describe these emotions through is different across languages. Additionally, not only do different languages have different ways of describing emotions, but a word for an emotion in one language may be associated with a certain set of emotions, whereas that same word in another language may be associated with other emotions.

Around the world more than half (around 60 to 75 percent) speak at least two languages. Most countries have more than one official national language. For example south Africa has 11. So being monolingual like most native english speakers are, we are becoming the minority.

Multilingualism serves an extremely practical purpose. Languages change and develop through social pressures. Over time, different groups of early humans would have found themselves speaking different languages. Then, in order to communicate with other groups - for trade, travel and so on - it would have been necessary for some members of a family or band to speak other tongues. We can get some sense of how prevalent multilingualism may have been from the few hunter-gatherer peoples who survive today. "If you look at modern hunter-gatherers, they are almost all multilingual," says Thomas Bak, a cognitive neurologist who studies the science of languages at the University of Edinburgh. "The rule is that one mustn't marry anyone in the same tribe or clan to have a child - it's taboo. So every single child's mum and dad speak a different language." The article also provides a useful summary of the benefits of speaking at least one other language: bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a range of cognitive and social tasks from verbal and nonverbal tests to how well they can read other people. Greater empathy is thought to be because bilinguals are better at blocking out their own feelings and beliefs in order to concentrate on the other person's. Bilingualism can also delay the onset of dementia and increase cognitive recovery after a stroke. And in addition to social and cultural benefits, bil

Learning English as a second language is far from uncommon around the world. Looking more specifically, what is it like learning English as a Chinese first language individual. This paper covers three main topics: 1. The differences between the Chinese and English languages 2. The differences between Chinese and American culture 3. The differences between Chinese and American educational practices When teaching English as a second language, it is important to know the what fits the students particular needs in learning and how your teaching will be most effective. This paper allows teachers to understand more about their Chinese students and their general linguistic and cultural background.

This article talked about how language has an influence on how we perceive time. Researchers first found this to be true in bilinguals, as they are capable of code-switching. After, researchers were able to identify that each language perceives time in different durations. Also, bilingual speakers, when switching between languages, use the specific time duration measure of that language.

Some languages, like Swedish and English, describe time as length. Other languages, like Spanish and Greek, describe time as size. These differences in language lead to differences in how people perceive time. Spanish-Swedish bilinguals' perception of time changes depending on the language they are thinking in.

This article describes and analyzes a study conducted on bilingual babies. It found that bilingual babies are able to distinguish different languages, and they don't just think there are two words for everything. The researchers would give commands in both languages and take note of eye-movement and pupil dilation. This provided insight on how the babies processed different languages. The researchers also expanded their experiment to adults, and found that adults process different languages the same way that the infants did. The article concludes that there are substantial benefits to growing up bilingual.