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Google is working on a font, Noto, that aims to include "all the world's languages" - every written language on Earth. Right now, Noto includes a wide breadth of language scripts from all around the world - specifically, 100 scripts with 100,000 characters. That includes over 600 written languages, says Jungshik Shin, an engineer on Google's text and font team. The first fonts were released in 2012. But this month, Google (in partnership with Adobe) has released a new set of Chinese-Japanese-Korean fonts - the latest in their effort to make the Internet more inclusive. But as with any product intended to be universal, the implementation gets complicated - and not everyone for whom the product is intended is happy.

I'm surprised by how much texting and "fingered speech" has evolved throughout the years. "lol" doesn't literally mean "laugh out loud" anymore. In a way, it just evokes more empathy of a certain topic. Just like in the Japanese language, "ね"at the end of a sentence adds emphasis on the subject.

The unknowable sounds Ancient enough to remember World War II movies? Then recall that GIs in the Pacific theater chose passwords overrun with R's -- words like "rabble-rouser" or "rubbernecker." The reason was simple: Japanese people have a 'ell of a time with R, which they often pronounce as "ell."

a n d The Terror of L and R Keiichiro Sugimoto from Japan This story written by Keiichiro Sugimoto was translated from Japanese into English by students in Timothy Mossman's Interpreting and Translating 200 Class, at Canadian International College, North Vancouver, Canada. It was edited by Timothy Mossman.

A really interesting study combining linguistics and behavioral economics. "To judge a risk more clearly, it may help to consider it in a foreign language: A series of experiments on more than 300 people from the U.S. and Korea found that thinking in a second language reduced deep-seated, misleading biases that unduly influence how risks and benefits are perceived."

In various languages there are different ways to express the love for another. However, the article presented goes into the emotional weight that different languages carry. For example, in the Japanese culture, "I love you" is not often said, rather it is implied through actions. Where as in the Western culture, "I love you" is often said and may not necessarily carry as much emotional weight since it is something that is said often.

The English Proficiency Index ranks Swedes as the #1 non-native speakers of English. This Japanese study examines some factors that may've contributed to Swedesʻ successful language learning, including 1. Foreign language learning is compulsory and comprehensive in Sweden, and there are set minimum hours for instruction. Beginning in 1995, the Swedish educational system introduces English in Gr. 1, a second language in Gr. 6, and a third (yes, you read that right!) language in Gr. 8, 2) the perception that English= high status language (overall, in the EU, English is the most taught language and the most desirable for business and academic purposes), 3) Communicative Language Learning approach to teaching English: the foreign language class is taught in the target language 4)Higher expectations for teaching credentials; even elementary school teachers must have graduate school credits, 5) Linguistic similarities between L1= Swedish and target L2= English, as both share Proto-Norse as their linguistic ancestor, 6) High frequency of English terms absorbed into Swedish as a result of globalization, particularly pop culture, 7) Adoption of CLIL (Content and Language-Integrated Learning): in other words, English is the language of instruction for non-language disciplines.

Words like potlatch, saltchuck, kanaka, skookum, sticks, muckamuck, tyee and cultus hail from a near-forgotten language, Chinook Wawa, once spoken by more than 100,000 people, from Alaska to the California border, for almost 200 years. Known as Chinook Jargon or Chinook Wawa ('wawa' meaning talk), this was a trade, or pidgin, language that combined simplified words from the First Nations languages of Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Chinook and others, as well as from French and English. It was used so extensively that it was the language of courts and newspapers in the Pacific Northwest from about 1800 to 1905. Chinook Wawa was developed to ease trade in a place where there was no common language. On the Pacific Coast at the time, there were dozens of First Nations languages, including Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Kwakwaka'wakw, Salishan and Chinook. After European contact, which included Captain Cook's arrival in 1778, English, French, Spanish, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese were gradually added to the mix. While pidgin languages usually draw most of their vocabulary from the prestige language, or colonising culture, unusually, in the case of Chinook Wawa, two thirds of the language is Chinook and Nuu-chah-nulth with the rest being made up mostly of English and French.

There are as many as 800 languages spoken in New York City, and nowhere in the world has more than Queens, according to the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA). You can see many of the languages in the article's map, which is featured in " Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas " by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. The five miles from Astoria to Forest Hills have a dense progression of languages: Greek, Filipino, Urdu, Indonesian, Russian, Japanese, Lithuanian, and others, including more obscure ones like Chavacano, Waray-Waray, Minangkabau, and Bukharian.

a spate of recent studies challenge this idea. They suggest that we seem instinctively to link certain sounds with particular sensory perceptions. Some words really do evoke Humpty's "handsome" rotundity. Others might bring to mind a spiky appearance, a bitter taste, or a sense of swift movement. And when you know where to look, these patterns crop up surprisingly often, allowing a monoglot English speaker to understand more Swahili or Japanese than you might imagine (see "Which sounds bigger?" at the bottom of this article). These cross-sensory connections may even open a window onto the first words ever uttered by our ancestors, giving us a glimpse of the earliest language and how it emerged.

Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a Japanese primatologist, has spent 30 years studying our closest primate relative, the chimpanzee, to better understand the human mind. Here are some key takeaways: -Captive chimps can learn sign language or other communication techniques. They also can string together the symbols or gestures for words in simple "Me Tarzan, You Jane" combinations. -The animals use pant-hoots, grunts and screams to communicate. -In decades of ape language experiments, the chimpanzees have never demonstrated a human's innate ability to learn massive vocabularies, embed one thought within another or follow a set of untaught rules called grammar. So yes, chimpanzees can learn words. But so can dogs, parrots, dolphins and even sea lions. Words do not language make. Chimpanzees may well routinely master more words and phrases than other species, but a 3-year-old human has far more complex and sophisticated communication skills than a chimpanzee. "I do not say chimpanzees have language," Matsuzawa stresses. "They have language-like skills." -Monkeys can learn to use tools and do utilize tools, but there doesn't seem to be signs of them "teaching" each other these skills: it's more of a watch, then do situation.

Charting linguistic change was once a painstakingly slow task, but a new analysis of nearly one billion Tweets - presented on 17 April 2018 at the Evolang International Conference on Language Evolution in Torun, Poland - now offers us an unprecedented glimpse of this process in action. According to this new research, most of the more recent coinages will have originated in one of five distinct hotspots that are driving American English through continual change. More than 20% of Americans were using Twitter at the time of the study - and each Tweet is timestamped and geocoded, offering precise information on the time and place that particular terms entered conversations. The researcher behind the study, Jack Grieve at the University of Birmingham, UK, analysed more than 980 million Tweets in total - consisting of 8.9 billion words - posted between October 2013 and November 2014, and spanning 3,075 of the 3,108 US counties. From this huge dataset, Grieve first identified any terms that were rare at the beginning of the study (occurring less than once per billion words in the last quarter of 2013) but which had then steadily risen in popularity over the course of the following year. He then filtered the subsequent list for proper nouns (such as Timehop) and those appearing in commercial adverts, and he also removed any words that were already in Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Acronyms, however, were included. The result was a list of 54 terms, which covered everything from sex and relationships (such as "baeless" - a synonym for single), people's appearance ("gainz" to describe the increased muscle mass from bulking up at the gym), and technology ("celfie" - an alternative spelling of selfie). Others reflected the infiltration of Japanese culture (such as "senpai", which means teacher or master). They also described general feelings, like "litt" (or "litty" - which means impressive or good - or affirmations such as "yaaaas

A coded lexicon mostly spoken by gay men, Swardspeak draws from English and Tagalog, as well as Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Japanese. It's what might be referred to as an "anti-language," the lingua franca of an "anti-society"-in this case, the Philippines' gay subculture.

Beginning with Gangnam Style, followed by the success of K-pop groups such as BTS, interest in Korean popular culture has skyrocketed in the past decade. One way this has manifested is through a steep rise in individuals learning the Korean language. According to a study conducted by the Modern Language Association, U.S. college student enrollment in Korean language classes has risen 78% from 2009 to 2016, reaching 15,000, while total enrollment in language classes has plateaued in recent years. The only other widely learned language with significant growth in the span was American Sign Language, which increased enrollments by 37%. Despite this trend, East Asian Studies departments have struggled to accommodate the increasing demand for Korean classes. This is because Korean language classes have been historically limited and under-resourced due to the fact that language programs in East Asian Studies have traditionally focused on Mandarin and Japanese. Experts say that K-pop is the main reason for this trend, coupled with the success of several Korean TV shows and films such as Parasite and Squid Game. The current growing trend of interest in the Korean language and culture has also been an opportunity for South Korea to engage Americans in a variety of other sectors relating to the country including business, politics, economics, and history.

This article writes about the variation in speech rate. Some languages tend to have more syllables per a second. For example, French, Japanese, and Spanish speakers tend to have speak more syllables per a second (almost 8/s) than German, Vietnamese, or Mandarin speakers (roughly 5/s). Although stereotypes exist relating to speech rate, there is no connection between intelligence and speech rate. One significant and consistent variable in speech rate is age. Children speak slowly, then speed up until their 40s, then slow down again in their 50s and 60s.