Group items tagged

While noted psychologist Gottman's 3 Skills and 1 Rule were originally intended for couples, they apply equally to any close relationship and could create better, more effective communication. In a nutshell, here they are: Here are Dr. Gottman's three skills and one rule for crucial conversation: The rule: Understanding must precede advice. The goal of an intimate conversation is only to understand, not to problem-solve. Premature problem solving tends to shut people down. Problem solving and advice should only begin when both people feel totally understood. Skill #1: Putting Your Feelings into Words The first skill is being able to put one's feelings into words. This skill was called "focusing" by master clinician Eugene Gendlin. Gendlin said that when we are able to find the right images, phrases, metaphors, and words to fit our feelings, there is a kind of "resolution" one feels on one's body, an easing of tension. Focusing makes our conversations about feelings much deeper and more intimate, because the words reveal who we are. Skill #2: Asking Open-Ended Questions The second skill of intimate conversations is helping one's conversational partner explore his or her feelings by asking open-ended questions. This is done by either asking targeted questions, like, "What is your disaster scenario here?" or making specific statements that explore feelings like, "Tell me the story of that! Skill #3: Expressing Empathy The third skill is empathy, or validation. Empathy isn't easy. In an intimate conversation, the first two skills help us sense and explore another person's thoughts, feelings, and needs. Empathy is shown by communication that these thoughts, feelings, and needs make sense to you. That you understand why the other person's experience. That does not mean that you necessarily agree with this person. You might, for example, have an entirely different memory or interpretation of events. Empathy means communicating that, given

This article examines the relationship between borrowed language and bilingual speakers' grasp of their known languages. It highlights the implicit understanding of grammar rules that bilingual speakers naturally develop for their languages and debunks the misconception that loan words damage a speaker's understanding of another language. The article described a study on bilingual speakers in Ottawa-Hull who combined language (code-switching or "mish-mashing") while still following the correct grammatical structures. (i.e. "If a verb was borrowed from English, it was conjugated in strict accordance with the rules for conjugating French verbs..") It also reminded readers that pronunciation is not intrinsically tied to language proficiency.

Some of the most binding rules in English are things that native speakers know but don't know they know, even though they use them every day. Adjectives, writes Mark Forsyth, author of _The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase_, "absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac." Mixing up the above phrase does, as Forsyth writes, feel inexplicably wrong (a rectangular silver French old little lovely whittling green knife…), though nobody can say why. It's almost like secret knowledge we all share. Learn the language in a non-English-speaking country, however, and such "secrets" are taught in meticulous detail.

The Beijing dialect of Mandarin Chinese is a victim of language standardization in schools and offices, urban redevelopment and migration. To the untutored ear, the Beijing dialect can sound like someone talking with a mouthful of marbles, inspiring numerous parodies and viral videos. The dialect is a testament to the city's tumultuous history of invasion and foreign rule. The Mongol Empire ruled China in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Manchus, an ethnic group from northeast Asia, ruled from the mid-17th century into the 20th. As a result, the Beijing dialect contains words derived from both Mongolian and Manchurian. The intervening Ming dynasty, which maintained its first capital in Nanjing for several decades before moving to Beijing, introduced southern speech elements.

Anne Curzan, an English professor and linguist at the University of Michigan, examines texting from a descriptionist perspective. Curzan notes that that effective electronically-mediated communication (EMC) users have a shared system of rules and a detailed set of conventions that moves real-time conversation into written form.

A new study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that children as young as two understand basic grammar rules when they first learn to speak and are not simply imitating adults. The study also applied the same statistical analysis on data from one of the most famous animal language-acquisition experiments -- Project Nim -- and showed that Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was taught sign language over the course of many years, never grasped rules like those in a two-year-old's grammar. "When you compare what children should say if they follow grammar against what children do say, you find it to almost indistinguishable," Professor of Linguistics Charles Yang said. "If you simulate the expected diversity when a child is only repeating what adults say, it produces a diversity much lower than what children actually say." As a comparison, Yang applied the same predictive models to the set of Nim Chimpsky's signed phrases, the only data set of spontaneous animal language usage publicly available. He found further evidence for what many scientists, including Nim's own trainers, have contended about Nim: that the sequences of signs Nim put together did not follow from rules like those in human language. Nim's signs show significantly lower diversity than what is expected under a systematic grammar and were similar to the level expected with memorization. This suggests that true language learning is -- so far -- a uniquely human trait, and that it is present very early in development.

Although this url may seem absurd to be talking about 7 rules of texting, it is sadly very true. It's crazy how words/texting can change one's mood in an instant depending on punctuation and length of a certain text. Just like in the movie Catfish, I realized that many people get tricked into online relationships because of certain texting strategies that lure people in. Short, sweet, and to the point messages can easily hook someone's attention.

In 2016, linguist Mark Forsyth tasted internet fame this week when a passage from a book he wrote went viral, talking about adjective word order in English. In this BBC article, Forsyth explains more language secrets that L1 English speakers know without knowing.

An app called Duolingo is the top app to learn a new language. The site includes learning vocab and grammar and doing exercises that are tailored to what the person learns quickly and what the person need to repeatedly review. Teaching language has changed from early "grammar translation" (learning grammar rules and translating sentences) to "audiolingualism" (learn rules and patterns by repeating sentences over and over) after World War II to other methods in the 60s and 70s that turned into a general "communicative approach" which focuses on the function of language as communication not the rules and structure. The app is mostly "audiolingual" because it drills users to repeat words and phrases over and over, but it also helps users learn a lot of words, reminds them to practice, and keeps them practicing with virtual rewards so can be effective.

This article is about how experts believe they have found the 'first compelling evidence' for conformity to linguistic laws in non-primate species. A new study from the University of Torino has found the animals obey some of the same rules of linguistics as humans. The animals follow two main laws - that more frequently used words are briefer (Zipf's law of brevity), and longer words are composed of extra but briefer syllables (the Menzerath-Altmann law). Scientists say this is the first instance of these laws observed outside primates, suggesting an ecological pressure of brevity and efficiency in animal vocalisations.

This article explains the discovery of non-primate animals using similar linguistic rules of human speech. The Zipf and Menzerath-Altmann laws were mentioned, as these are key points of human communication. These patterns were observed in 590 different ecstatic calls of 28 different African Penguins

English is now the language we all use to communicate science. But while it may feel inevitable, the domination of English is very recent and may be down to geopolitics and other accidents, argues Michael Gordin's book, _Scientific Babel_.

"A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey."

Notes about Chaucer's writing, including his "golden rule" (polyvocality), and favorite trick ("conjuring new words to make lines rhyme or scan").

Comprehensive post, with statistics about usage of "different from/than/to." "Calling different than or different to "wrong" is misguided. It's an old grammar myth that has trickled down to the present day. Why perpetuate a stigmatizing non-rule? Let people speak whatever way comes naturally to them, so long as they make themselves clear, and consistent with context.  Dialectal differences should be savoured, not savaged."

"The results are bad news for universalists: "most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies," according to the authors. [...] If universal features can't account for what we observe, what can? Common descent. "Cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states." It's important to emphasize that this study looked at a specific language feature (word order)."

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.

Not only that, they have distiguished a language system for why certain sounds indicate what rule.

Scientists use language and logic to translate monkey sounds into English and develop linguistic rules for primate dialects. There is a mystery on Tiwai Island. A large wildlife sanctuary in Sierra Leone, the island is home to pygmy hippopotamuses, hundreds of bird species and several species of primates, including Campbell's monkeys.

Tibetan Entrepreneur detained for one and a half months according to his family. He writes and posts things to his Sina Weibo account and many of his posts express how he feels about the gradual extinction of Tibetan culture, he wants to enhance bilingual education. Chinese-ruled Tibetan regions have Mandarin taught as the main language and teach Tibetan like a foreign language.

In a study involving synesthesia, people make good guesses at meanings of foreign words.