Group items tagged

Although many people are wary of how much people actually learn from television and screentime, many people are able to learn different languages through the use of TV and shows. The Nistel sisters were able to become proficient in Spanish and English from watching TV shows every day after school. They claim that they never paid attention in English class and did not mention about ever taking Spanish lessons.

"...a desire in Hollywood to infuse fantasy and science-fiction movies, television series and video games with a sense of believability is driving demand for constructed languages, complete with grammatical rules, a written alphabet (hieroglyphics are acceptable) and enough vocabulary for basic conversations. ... "The days of aliens spouting gibberish with no grammatical structure are over," said Paul R. Frommer ... who created Na'vi, the language spoken by the giant blue inhabitants of Pandora in "Avatar." ... fans rewatched Dothraki scenes to study the language in a workshop-like setting. ... There have been many attempts to create languages, often for specific political effect. In the 1870s, a Polish doctor invented Esperanto ... The motivation to learn an auxiliary language is not so different from why people pick up French or Italian, she said. "Learning a language, even a natural language, is more of an emotional decision than a practical one. It's about belonging to a group," she said. ... The watershed moment for invented languages was the creation of a Klingon language ... But as with any language, there is a certain snob appeal built in. Among Dothraki, Na'vi and Klingon speakers, a divide has grown between fans who master the language as a linguistic challenge, and those who pick up a few phrases because they love the mythology." Reaction on Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3628 - "there's an attitude among some linguists - and also plenty of non-linguists, as is evident from many of the comments on the NYT piece - that engaging in conlang activity is a waste of time, perhaps even detrimental to the real subject matter of linguistics."

This is a comprehensive review that talks about how television affects language learning and vocabulary building in young children. They cite lots of experiments and books related to this topic.

This is from a Japanese television show (sort of like America's Got Talent). Sorry, there's no subtitles...but basically, this guy can sing with his mouth closed, and still produce a deep, full, and open sound. And what's even more amazing is he isn't singing in his own voice...he's imitating voices of famous Japanese singers. I thought this video was interesting because we just read an article on how humans produce sounds. I bet you phoneticians would like to study how his vocal tract works...

Wordles of commonly used words in television commercials advertising boy and girl toys.

Do we have to wash your mouth out with soap, television? This video history of swearing on the tube, from New York Magazine's culture site Vulture.com, shows how cussing has increased through the years, and how premium cable has led the way. The video, released Wednesday, is part of Vulture's "Secret History of Television" series.

This article talks about how some World Cup games will be broadcast in pidgin for Nigerian and Ghana audiences. I find it fascinating that the world has become more friendly to pidgin and other "informal" languages. I wonder if Hawaii broadcasts and television shows will start to utilize more pidgin and Hawaii Creole English.

Dozens of countries, representing a wide range of languages, vie for the Eurovision song contest every year, but English has been by far the most dominant tongue, with 26 victories. So this year, Spain, which has not won since 1969, decided: If you can't beat them, join them. Spain's Eurovision entry will be sung entirely in English. This has sparked debate between people who embrace English as the language that will relate to more people and those who want Spain's entry to represent Spanish language and culture.

The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children's vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month disparity in the language-processing skills and vocabulary of toddlers from low-income families. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not. Dr Anne Fernald, of Stanford, found that words spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Plonking children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato. The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University studies how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with existing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three, there will be about 1,000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child's experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory of the child's life.And it is this gap, more than a year's pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child's chances for the rest of his life.

Analyzing the verbs that followed male and female pronouns in 100K stories, the following patterns were observed: 1. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he kidnaps" or "he beats". Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like "he saves"/"he rescues" are distinctly positive- but almost all are active rather than receptive. 2. There's an old stereotype (that's appeared in works like Game of Thrones and Sherlock Holmes) that "poison is a woman's weapon", and this is supported in our analysis. Female characters are more likely to "poison", "stab", or "kick"; male characters are more likely to "beat", "strangle", or simply "murder" or "kill". Men are moderately more likely to "steal", but much more likely to "rob". 3. Based on this text analysis, a fictional murderer is about 2.5X as likely to be male than female, but in America (and likely elsewhere) murderers are about 9X more likely to be male than female. This means female murderers may be overrepresented in fiction relative to reality. David Robinson, the data scientist who ran the text analysis, offers these questions for future research: 1.Is the shift stronger in some formats or genre than another? We could split the works into films, novels, and TV series, and ask whether these gender roles are equally strong in each. 2. Is the shift different between male- and female- created works? 3. Has the difference changed over time? Some examination indicates the vast majority of these plots come from stories written in the last century, and most of them from the last few decades (not surprising since many are movies or television episodes, and since Wikipedia users are more likely to describe contemporary work). 4. I'd also note that we could expand the analysis to include not only pronouns but first names (e.g. not only "she tells", but "M

I wanted to bookmark this article, because even though it's not that informative, it talks about how there is no better time than right now to learn a new language. It gives resources on how to learn a new language online!

Swearing is used in many parts of everyday speech, but still has some great mysteries. What are the grammatical categories of different swear words? Why do we swear? Why is society so affected by swear words? Why are swear words bleeped out on television?

Psycholinguist Steven Pinker examines the emotional impact of swearing and the evolution of words considered taboo, also reflects on several issues surrounding the issue of what language is offensive and about guidelines that might inform our personal and institutional judgments about when to discourage, tolerate, and even welcome profanity?