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From drone strikes to the songs of the ancient caravans, the folk poetry called landay reflects Afghan life. Landay are two-line, 22-syllable poems in the oral tradition. The form is thousands of years old, thought to come from the caravan trains that arrived in the region in approximately 2,500 BC. Contemporary Afghan women are composing landay as a form of rebellion. Reporter Eliza Griswold studied these contemporary poems and discovered a complex world of rage, empowerment, sorrow and sex.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A tone-deaf inquiry into an Asian-American's ethnic origin. Cringe-inducing praise for how articulate a black student is. An unwanted conversation about a Latino's ability to speak English without an accent.This is not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour - microaggressions - used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture.

After analyzing the music of some of hip hop's biggest artists, from Eminem to Public Enemy, linguists at the University of Manchester in England noticed something pretty impressive. As it turns out, Grammy Award-winning rappers seem to have an intuitive sense for rhyme, using subtle rhyming patterns called half-rhymes (like "hop and "rock") much more often than traditional rhymes (like "cat" and "mat").

Parents face a variety of choices when choosing how to rear their child, and for bilingual parents choosing a language can be a daunting but worthwhile task with myriad benefits. The traditional belief was that learning a second language would hinder the human brain, but more recently researchers believe that the bilingual ability will strengthen the brain and improve focus,

From "karate" to "karaoke", from "adzuki beans" to "Zen Buddhism", Japanese language has been exporting oriental traditions to the Western culture for decades. Some come and go as fads (bringing up a "Tamagotchi"); some take root ("bonsai") and spread. Breeding giant fish ("koi") or eating raw fish with rice ("sushi"), Japanese is ubiquitous nowadays.

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.

And the 2015 word of the year: the emoji for "tears of joy." Whereas traditional alphabet scripts struggle to keep pace with 21st century rapid communication, emoji, in contrast, "are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one which transcends linguistic borders...They can serve as insightful windows through which to view our cultural preoccupations."

Award-winning, Chinese contemporary artist, Xu Bing, has created _Book From the Ground_, a text that speakers of any language can "read." His interest in pictorial storytelling was heightened by a bubblegum wrapper he happened upon-a series of three images connected by two arrows that instructed the chewer to put the gum back into the wrapper after chewing and throw it in the trash. This became Xu's inspiration for _Book from the Ground_. Xu's book reflects cultural literacy and modern tools and technologies, rather than traditional literacy. The author predicts that the younger generation is likely to find his icon language easier to "read" because they've been exposed to these images for as long as they can remember on the Internet. "I think it can be seen two ways," says Robert Harrist, a professor of Chinese art history at Columbia University who has taught a semester-length course on Xu's work. "It's great that everybody can communicate now and stay in touch constantly through one medium or another, a kind of shared, plugged-in visual world." But at the same time, with the "flattening and evening out in communication so much is lost," especially when it comes to tense or nuance. "The real surprising thing here and the challenge and the thing I love about it is he makes you ask yourself: What is writing?" adds Harrist, who describes Xu as "the greatest living Chinese artist, simple as that.... Everything he does is profoundly thoughtful."

Schizophrenia is a devastating brain disorder, and current treatments may not do enough to address the personal suffering, family burden, and cost to society linked to the illness. But a landmark new study finds that a treatment combining talk therapy and low-dose medication is more effective than traditional medication-only treatment. The actual study can be found at this link: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.15050632.

Between 1950 and 2010, 230 languages went extinct, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Today, a third of the world's languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers left. Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker, 50 to 90 percent of them are predicted to disappear by the next century. Wikitongues wants to save these endangered languages from extinction. Bogre Udell, who speaks four languages, met Frederico Andrade, who speaks five, at the Parsons New School in New York City. In 2014, they launched Wikitongues, an ambitious project to make the first public archive of every language in the world. They've already documented more than 350 languages, which they are tracking online, and plan to hit 1,000 in the coming years. "When humanity loses a language, we also lose the potential for greater diversity in art, music, literature, and oral traditions," says Bogre Udell.

It's traditional during Chinese New Year to offer good wishes: positive language sets up the new year for happiness. This page provides some classic 4 word idioms （成語）to ensure good luck.

What we have learned is that the answer to this question is complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do you lack words for them because you don't think about them? Part of the problem is that there is more involved than just language and thought; there is also culture. Your culture-the traditions, lifestyle, habits, and so on that you pick up from the people you live and interact with-shapes the way you think, and also shapes the way you talk.

Have you ever had trouble describing one of your experiences? This article explores how language can restrict us. For example, color is fluid, but language isn't; at one point the color is going to change from red to orange when yellow is slowly added to it. Moreover, the environment in which we live has an influence on the words we use and the ones even in our language. Guugu Yimithirr doesn't have words for the English equivalent of "left", "right", "up", or "down". Instead, directional words (North, South, East, and West) are used. Languages have a great way of affecting how we think and offering new insights.

Due to the rising amount of female figures in this modern day, the local regional council of Sardinia, Italy has decided to ban all "sexist" language from official communication. This includes banning some traditional parts of the Italian language such as the different conjugations and distinctions between a profession based on gender (ie. consigliera instead of consigliere).

As Christmas draws near, I often find myself pondering with disappointment during the holiday season as to why our Western civilization continues to poison kids with the belief that Santa Claus exists as an actual, mystical individual. What are your takes on instilling this tradition as current or future parents? Do you believe that it's morally sane or unjustified that most parents are untruthful to their children for the sake of imagination and creativity? Does this issue do more harm than good for a child or vice versa? As a child, did you feel that the telling of the truth was of a great disturbance to you? Please feel free to comment on this post as it will help everyone in the Words R Us community know your thoughts and stances, as well as the pros and cons to this controversial issue.

Africanized versions of the Arabic alphabet are collectively called "Ajami." Much as the Latin-based alphabet is used to write many languages, including English, Ajami is not a language itself, but the alphabetic script used to write a language: Arabic-derived letters to write a non-Arabic-in this case, African-language. "Ajami" derives from the Arabic a'jamiy, which means "foreigner" or, more specifically, "non-Arab." Historically, Arabs used the word to refer to all things Persian or non-Arab, a usage they borrowed from the ancient Greeks. Yet over the last few centuries, across Islamic Africa, "Ajami" came to mean an African language written in Arabic script that was often adapted phonetically to facilitate local usages and pronunciations across the continent, from the Ethiopian highlands in the east to the lush jungles of Sierra Leone in the west. The use of Ajami is tied to the religious spread of Islam. From its beginning, Islam was a literate religion. Iqra' ("read") is the first word of God's revelations to Muhammad that became the Qur'an. Knowledge of Islam meant knowledge of the revealed word of God: the Qur'an. Consequently, wherever Islam went, it established centers of learning, usually attached to mosques, where children learned to read and write Arabic in much the same way that European and American children have often been taught literacy by using the Bible. For members of African societies where oral tradition predominated, Arabic was the first written language to which they had been exposed.

Researchers from King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, in collaboration with Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona, mapped the neural pathways involved in word learning among humans. They found that the arcuate fasciculus, a collection of nerve fibres connecting auditory regions at the temporal lobe with the motor area located at the frontal lobe in the left hemisphere of the brain, allows the 'sound' of a word to be connected to the regions responsible for its articulation. Differences in the development of these auditory-motor connections may explain differences in people's ability to learn words. Researchers used diffusion tensor imaging to image the structure of the brain before a word learning task and functional MRI, to detect the regions in the brain that were most active during the task. They found a strong relationship between the ability to remember words and the structure of arcuate fasciculus, which connects two brain areas: the territory of Wernicke, related to auditory language decoding, and Broca's area, which coordinates the movements associated with speech and the language processing. In participants able to learn words more successfully their arcuate fasciculus was more myelinated i.e. the nervous tissue facilitated faster conduction of the electrical signal. In addition the activity between the two regions was more co-ordinated in these participants. Dr Catani concludes, "Now we understand that this is how we learn new words, our concern is that children will have less vocabulary as much of their interaction is via screen, text and email rather than using their external prosthetic memory. This research reinforces the need for us to maintain the oral tradition of talking to our children."

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.

Despite the tradition of studying campaign effects, we know little about the rhetorical strategies of candidates. This study speculates about the types of appea...

The project, called Celebrating Indigenous Languages, is designed to honour the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages. Users of Google Earth are now able to hear over 50 Indigenous language speakers from across the globe saying words and simple phrases and even singing traditional songs.