Group items tagged

This article discusses the history of acronyms and how they evolved from initialism. It also talks about the difference between the two, which is that initialism is an abbreviation pronounced as the actual letters (i.e. AFK and BRB), while acronyms are abbreviations pronounceable by its letters (i.e. SCUBA and NASA). Over time, the word "acronym" was used to describe all abbreviations formed by the initial letters of each word, leading to the extinction of initialism.

The writer discusses the benefits that one can gain from learning a foreign language in terms of money, and how even though the money gained is initially small, over time as those small earnings compound, the money gained from being bilingual can add up to about $100,000, depending on the language. He also discusses the benefits of investing more in foreign language so that countries can get more return and cut down on losses associated with not having enough language diversity within their native populations.

The University of Hawaii plays a lead role in a major statewide initiative called the Hawaii Language Roadmap, which aims to create a robust, multilingual workforce in Hawaii. This video gives an overview of the project. On June 16, 2015, thanks to the efforts of several stakeholders, including the Hawaii Language Roadmap, Hawaii's Board of Education unanimously voted to approve a Seal of Biliteracy for Hawaii's public school students. The policy adopted by the BOE reads as follows: The Board of Education hereby establishes a Seal of Biliteracy to be awarded upon graduation to students who demonstrate high proficiency in either of the State's two official languages and at least one additional language, including American Sign Language; provided that a student who demonstrates a high proficiency in both of the State's two official languages shall be awarded a Seal of Biliteracy. The purposes of the Seal of Biliteracy are to recognize the importance of: (1) enabling students to be college, career, and community ready in today's global society; (2) establishing an educational culture that recognizes and values the wealth of linguistic and cultural diversity students bring to the classroom; (3) supporting opportunities for study of and increasing proficiency in 'Ōlelo Hawai'i, an official language of the State of Hawai'i; and (4) encouraging partnerships with institutions of higher education and community organizations to increase access to language instruction in a variety of languages. The Department of Education shall implement the Seal of Biliteracy, including developments of criteria that students must satisfy to receive the Seal. Rationale: The Board of Education recognizes that there is personal, cultural, social, academic, and vocational/occupational value in encouraging students to maintain, or develop, proficiency in more than one language.

My favorite: "mamihlapinatapei," meaning "the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start." Note (via Language Log) that by "untranslatable," the author really means that there's no one English word which corresponds exactly with the foreign word. Clearly, the words are translatable, just as English phrases.

Suppose you are preparing for a potentially contentious meeting with someone with whom you've worked closely for years. She could be a fellow manager you want to convince to support an initiative but whose position in the matter differs from yours: how do you convince that person? While coercion and logic are not effective, "relationship-raising" is. According to a 2002 psychology study by Oriña, Wood, and Simpson, before making a request for change, mention your existing relationship with the other person and any mutually-shared goals/objectives, before delivering your appeal. " Or, in the most streamlined version of the relationship-raising approach, incorporate the pronouns "we," "our," and "us" into the request. The outcome? The relationship partners exposed to this technique shifted significantly in the requested direction. Similarly, in a British longitudinal study of effective professional negotiators, researchers found that the most successful bargainers spent 400% more time looking for areas of mutuality (e.g., shared interests) than did their mediocre counterparts.

"No matter whether you're a new hire or a veteran professional, at some point you're going to have to initiate a 'difficult conversation' with a boss, co-worker or colleague. This conversation could be between you and one person, or it could be between you and an entire group of people."

"Whether it be uptalk (pronouncing statements as if they were questions? Like this?), creating slang words like "bitchin' " and "ridic," or the incessant use of "like" as a conversation filler, vocal trends associated with young women are often seen as markers of immaturity or even stupidity. ... But linguists - many of whom once promoted theories consistent with that attitude - now say such thinking is outmoded. Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang ... the idea that vocal fads initiated by young women eventually make their way into the general vernacular is well established."

Skepticism of online "news" serves as a decent filter much of the time, but our innate biases allow it to be bypassed, researchers have found - especially when presented with the right kind of algorithmically selected "meme." At a time when political misinformation is in ready supply, and in demand, "Facebook, Google, and Twitter function as a distribution mechanism, a platform for circulating false information and helping find receptive audiences," said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College (and occasional contributor to The Times's Upshot column). Why? Here are the key reasons: 1. Individual bias/first impressions: subtle individual biases are at least as important as rankings and choice when it comes to spreading bogus news or Russian hoaxes. Merely understanding what a news report or commentary is saying requires a temporary suspension of disbelief. Mentally, the reader must temporarily accept the stated "facts" as possibly true. A cognitive connection is made automatically: Clinton-sex offender, Trump-Nazi, Muslim men-welfare. And refuting those false claims requires a person to first mentally articulate them, reinforcing a subconscious connection that lingers far longer than people presume.Over time, for many people, it is that false initial connection that stays the strongest, not the retractions or corrections. 2. Repetition: Merely seeing a news headline multiple times in a news feed, even if the news is false, makes it seem more credible. 3. People tend to value the information and judgments offered by good friends over all other sources. It's a psychological tendency with significant consequences now that nearly two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news from social media.

Pretty much anyone can become fluent in pretty much any language at pretty much any age. It's not even true that young children learn languages faster than older children or adults: if you expose different age groups to the same amount of instruction in a foreign language, the older ones invariably do better, both initially and in the long run. Learners of any age can achieve a brilliant, even native like, command of the vocabulary of another language, including such challenging structures as idioms or proverbs.

This article explains why teenagers are, in fact, not affecting the evolution of language as drastically as we initially thought.

Indigenous researchers are up against a ticking clock: Of the 4,000 Indigenous languages worldwide, one dies every two weeks with its last speaker. "Within the next five to 10 years, we'll lose most of the Native American languages in the U.S.," Michael Running Wolf, founder of Indigenous in AI, an international community of Native, Aboriginal and First Nations engineers, said. Running Wolf has dedicated his career to preventing this loss. He leads First Languages AI Reality, an initiative of the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, where researchers are building speech recognition models for over 200 endangered Indigenous languages in North America.