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Like the Islands themselves, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language) is a living, breathing part of the native culture. This reflection of the two, the symbiotic relationship between land and language, is displayed in details such as how many words and terms exist in Hawaiian for rain alone: more than 200.

Study Sheds Light on Whether the Sun, Wind, Rain Sway Our Emotions

"In recent decades, the study of language acquisition and instruction has increasingly focused on "chunking": how children learn language not so much on a word-by-word basis but in larger "lexical chunks" or meaningful strings of words that are committed to memory ... A native speaker picks up thousands of chunks like "heavy rain" or "make yourself at home" in childhood, and psycholinguistic research suggests that these phrases are stored and processed in the brain as individual units."

Good find, Ryan! I also took the video link and embedded it into our moodle page.

Even in America, there are different ways people speak English from different parts of the US. This article talks about some of the linguistic differences of people speaking in the US. There was a survey conducted by Harvard linguist Bert Vaux in 2003 to understand some of the differences in the way people talk. Generally, people in Atlanta call a sweetened carbonated beverage "coke" whereas in the Midwest, it's called pop, and it's called soda everywhere else. In New York, people say waiting "on line" rather than saying "in line." And the term "anymore" means different things in different parts of the country. Some people use it to mean "nowadays" and some use it to mean "already." In some parts of the country, there is a term for when it rains while still being sunny. People in the Northeast call it a "sunshower," but Southerners call it "the devil is beating his wife" and most of the rest of the country has no name for this at all. Finally, the northern half of the country is more likely to pronounce the second "a" in pajamas like "jam" whereas the southern half of the country is more likely to pronounce the second "a" in pajamas as "jam." This information is supposed to be useful in helping to figure out where the lines are between different American dialects and can also help to predict where someone is from.

The correlation of foreign accents with "bad" characters could have concerning implications for the way kids are being taught to engage with diversity in the United States. The most wicked foreign accent of all was British English, according to the study. From Scar to Aladdin's Jafar, the study found that British is the foreign accent most commonly used for villains. German and Slavic accents are also common for villain voices. Henchmen or assistants to villains often spoke in dialects associated with low socioeconomic status, including working-class Eastern European dialects or regional American dialects such as "Italian-American gangster" (like when Claude in Captain Planet says 'tuh-raining' instead of 'training.') None of the villains in the sample studied seemed to speak Standard American English; when they did speak with an American accent, it was always in regional dialects associated with low socioeconomic status.

As you can tell from the title, this article looks into why English people say sorry so often. Harvard researchers have found that perhaps the reason why English people say sorry so much is because by saying "sorry" to someone, it is the best way to get them onto your side and persuade them to do what you want. The article mentioned a study where they had an actor ask to borrow someones phone on a rainy day. When he asked the favor directly, he was only successful 9% of the time. However, when he said "Sorry about the rain" before asking the favor, he was successful 47% of the time.

This article talks about the benefits of meditation and how your body reacts. I find it interesting how much of an effect on the body meditation can do. Taking breaks throughout the day to reflect in peace allows the body (sympathetic nervous system) to calm down in order to achieve homeostasis. After trying some meditation techniques I find myself living a more relaxed life.