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China has sharply scaled back, and restricted, the teaching of languages spoken by ethnic minorities in its vast western regions in recent years, promoting instruction in Chinese instead as part of a broad push to encourage the assimilation of Tibetans, Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into the dominant ethnic Han culture. The Education Ministry says a goal is to "make sure that minority students master and use the basic common language." And some parents have welcomed the new emphasis on teaching Chinese because they believe it will better prepare their children to compete for jobs in the Chinese economy and for places at Chinese universities. But the new measures have also stirred anxiety and fueled resentment, with residents arguing that they threaten the survival of ethnic identities and traditions already under pressure by migration, economic change and the repressive policies of a government fearful of ethnic separatism.

Gawker is running a competition, tournament style, to see which accent will be crowned "America's Ugliest." In the running are 16 cities in the US, and readers get to vote. Accent discrimination still thrives... Josef Fruehwald, the linguist author of this article, states, "Linguists call this general pattern "standard language ideology." It's the idea that somewhere out there, there's a perfect, unadulterated version of English, and what your everyday person speaks is a poor copy. I call it the kilogram model of language, because there is literally a physical object in France by which the unit kilogram is defined, and there are in fact multiple and worryingly imperfect copies of it around the world. But what linguists have discovered is that language is definitely not like the kilogram. The only place where English really exists is in the minds of its everyday speakers. To the extent that varies geographically and socially, so does English. There are no imperfect copies."

Throughout the world, languages are going extinct at a rapid rate. Many people have been investigating to see if the internet is to blame for language extinction, or if it is simply a reflection of what is happening in real-world. Some linguists even believe that small languages are given an advantage on the internet because it is a place for languages to be expressed.

This article talks about how difficult it really is to learn a second language. It further explains the different stages our brain goes through and how our brain's plasticity goes down as we age. The article also talks about psychologists who disagree on when the "critical period" of learning a second language takes place.

Today's economic environment demands that our children become the very best they can be. A lot of demands are placed upon us as parents, and whether we like it or not, we need to help our children navigate their way in today's fast-paced world and build their skills for the future.

Studies suggest a link between negative cognition (a.k.a. negative thinking) and increased propensity for guilt, chronic anxiety clinical depression. (Apparently, women are more prone to negative cognition than men.) Psychology professor Emeritus Tom Stevens of California State University describes some common negative thinking pitfalls and offers advice as to what you can do instead. Research has supported the efficacy of cognitive therapy (called cognitive restructuring) that replaces these styles with more positive thinking. 1. Negative bias. Negative bias is a tendency to look at the more negative side of some event, person, object, or situation. It gives a negative interpretation or a negative point of view for looking at a situation. Instead think: I will assume the best instead of assume the worst. Positive self-fulfilling prophesies tend to create positive outcomes; negative self-fulfilling prophesies tend to create negative outcomes. Negative explanations of my own or other peoples' underlying motives cause me to intensify my anger or other negative feelings. Assuming the world is a hostile place creates fear, anxiety, and anger. 2. Negative selective abstraction. Selective abstraction means taking negative features of a situation out of context and exaggerating their significance. Usually it also means negating positive features. Example: A student who gets four "A"s and one "C," then focuses on the "C's." Instead think: I will list at least one positive feature for each negative feature. I will limit my focus on negative features to constructive thoughts about how I can either accept or change the negative features. 3. Overgeneralization. When we overgeneralize, we assume far-reaching conclusions from limited data. A student made a "D" on one test. She overgeneralizes, she doesn't just think "Well, I messed up on that one test. Instead, "I may not pass the course, not ever finish college." "I must be stupid and a failure." "My whole life is ruin

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.

What does recent research say about the potential benefits of bilingual education? Here are the main 6 findings: 1. Attention: "[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another," says Sorace. Do these same advantages accrue to a child who begins learning a second language in kindergarten instead of as a baby? We don't yet know. Patterns of language learning and language use are complex. But Gigi Luk at Harvard cites at least one brain-imaging study on adolescents that shows similar changes in brain structure when compared with those who are bilingual from birth, even when they didn't begin practicing a second language in earnest before late childhood. 2. Empathy: bilingual children as young as age 3, because they must follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting, have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind - both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills. 3. Reading (English): students enrolled in dual-language programs outperformed their peers in English-reading skills by a full school year's worth of learning by the end of middle school. 4. School performance and engagement: compared with students in English-only classrooms or in one-way immersion, dual-language students have somewhat higher test scores and also seem to be happier in school. Attendance is better, behavioral problems fewer, parent involvement higher. 5. Diversity and integration: Because dual-language schools are composed of native English speakers deliberately placed together with recent immigrants, they tend to be more ethnically and socioeconomically balanced. And there is some evidence that this helps kids of all backgrounds gain comfort with diversity and different cultures. 6. Protection against cognitive decline and dementia: actively using two languages seems to have a protective effect against age-related demen

This speech accent archive, headed by Steven Weinberger, a linguistics professor at George Mason University, is a project of the linguistics program in the Department of English, the College of Arts and Science's Technology Across the Curriculum program, and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers. This website allows users to compare the demographic and linguistic backgrounds of the speakers in order to determine which variables are key predictors of each accent. The speech accent archive demonstrates that accents are systematic rather than merely mistaken speech. Each individual sample page contains a sound control bar, a set of the answers to 7 demographic questions, a phonetic transcription of the sample,1 a set of the speaker's phonological generalizations, a link to a map showing the speaker's place of birth, and a link to the Ethnologue language database. The archive also contains a set of native language phonetic inventories so that you can perform some contrastive analyses.

There was nothing very interesting in Katherine P. Rankin's study of sarcasm - at least, nothing worth your important time. All she did was use an M.R.I. to find the place in the brain where the ability to detect sarcasm resides. But then, you probably already knew it was in the right parahippocampal gyrus.

This evolution of the Spanish-English hybrid known as "Spanglish" really hit home. Especially considering how migrant workers adapted to language differences here in the early 20th century in the form of Pidgin, similar events took place in the states bordering Mexico.

Jack Qu'emi is a writer and self-described "queer, non-binary femme," who among other terms identifies as Afro-Latinx. That's Latinx. Not Latino. Not Latina. The term (pronounced: la-teen-ex) is gaining traction in Spanish-speaking communities. But many are still asking, "What's the meaning of the 'x'?" Qu'emi explains: "The x [in Latinx], is a way of rejecting the gendering of words to begin with, especially since Spanish is such a gendered language." Like the use of they/them/their pronouns in English (in place of the gendered pronouns he/him/his and she/her/hers), "Latinx" is an attempt in Spanish to include non-binary people, those who are neither male nor female.

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.

Swearing expresses many different types of emotions. Kinda like when people use their car horns.

This article explores into depth the reason why and when we swear. One reason we swear is to insert a direct emotional component into the discussion to express frustration, anger or surprise. Swearing frees us of the feelings of anger or frustration we hold inside of us and provides an alternative from physical violence. The second use of swearing is in the form of jokes and humor, sex talk, story telling and social commentary. Our word choice is dependent on the people we are surrounded by, the relationship we have with that group of people and the setting of the situation. For example, people are less likely to use swear words in mixed company or in the work place. We are more likely to swear with people of the same gender or with our sexual partners. This article also describes the amount of swearing in our lives.

Why do people swear? Why does using a swear word make us feel better? How do we choose which word we use? Luckily for you, the Association of Psychological Science's Perspectives on Psychological Science just published an article that answers these important scientific questions in an article by Timothy Jay (2009).

This article talks about the use of emojis in place of words. It describes emoji for serious, tragic matters as offensive and crass. They say when discussing these serious-type matters, it is better to say nothing at all than use emoji's to an express a verbally indescribable emotion.

This article talked compared the learning of language between adults and children. There were various studies that took place in this article. They concluded that there was an age cutoff at 17 to learn a new language. They also talked about when the "critical period" is. Overall, they compared age with how well the person could pick up the language.

In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn't sit still. It can't. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse.

This article examines the evolution of the work like, and how new usages of the word are still arising.

In a group of internationally adopted children with cleft lip and/or palate, speech at age five is impaired compared to a corresponding group of children born in Sweden, a study shows. The adopted children also need more extensive surgery, which may be due to their surgical interventions taking place later in life.

the micro-nuances of their speech patterns, and how voters, and viewers, hear them - can also provide a fascinating window into how we perceive authority and who occupies it. Women and men tend to have different speech patterns, linguists will tell you. Women, especially young women, tend to have more versatile intonation. They place more emphasis on certain words; they are playful with language and have shorter and thinner vocal cords, which produce a higher pitch. That isn't absolute, nor is it necessarily a bad thing - unless, of course, you are a person with a higher pitch trying to present yourself with some kind of authority. A 2012 study published in PLoS ONE found that both men and women prefer male and female leaders who have lower-pitched voices, while a 2015 report in a journal called Political Psychology determined, in a sample of U.S. adults, that Americans prefer political candidates with lower voices as well. Lower voices do carry better, so that's not entirely without basis, said the linguist Deborah Tannen.