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Al-Sayyid is a village in Israel, populated by congenitally-deaf people. Over the past 75 years, the villagers have created an entirely new and unique language, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign language (ABSL). The seeds emerged spontaneously among the first deaf residents and, three generations later, it has flowered into a complex language capable of expressing anything a spoken one can. Since its discovery by linguists in 2000, ABSL has captivated researchers driven by two fundamental questions: how did language emerge, and what can that tell us about the nature of the human mind? ABSL offers a unique opportunity to test a theory that has dominated linguistics since the 1950s. Put forth by Noam Chomsky, it claims that language is an innate and uniquely human trait, programmed into our genes. Children are born with a "language instinct" that compels them to effortlessly acquire whatever language (or languages) they are immersed in as toddlers.

English originated in England and is the dominant language in many countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia. It is also the official language of India, the Philippines, Singapore, island nations in the Carribean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and many countries in Africa, including South Africa. About a third of the world's population uses English and it is the first choice of foreign language in most other countries in the world. The parent language of English Proto-Indo-European was used about 5,000 years ago by nomads. The closest language to modern English is Frisian, used by the Dutch province of Friesland. During the course of many millennia, modern English has slowly gotten simpler and less inflected. In English, only nouns, pronouns (he, him, his), adjectives (big, bigger, biggest) and verbs are inflected. English is the only European language to use uninflected adjectives (tall man & tall woman versus Spanish el hombre alto & la mujer alta. For the verb "ride", English has 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden) versus German reiten that has 16 forms. The simplification and loss of inflection has made English more flexible functionally and more open in vocabulary. English has "borrowed" words from other languages (e.g. cannibal, cigar, guerrilla, matador, mosquito, tornado, vanilla, etc. From Greek, English "borrowed": alchemy, alcohol, algebra, arsenal, assassin, elixir, mosque, sugar, syrup, zero, cipher etc. From Hebrew is: amen, hallelujah, manna, messiah, seraph, leviathan, shibboleth, etc. There are many other words in the English dictionary that are taken from other languages. Many countries speak or use English, but not in the same way we use it. The article is very long and goes through phonology (sounds), morphology inflection (grammar forms of tense, case, voice, person, gender, etc), composition, syntax (sentence forms), vocabulary, orthography (spelling systems) of English. It also gives

Even though you're reading this article in English, there's a good chance it might not be your mother tongue. Of the billion-strong English speakers in the world, only 33% consider it their native language. The popularity of a language depends greatly on utility and geographic location. Additionally, how we measure the spread of world languages can vary greatly depending on whether you look at total speakers or native speakers. This detailed visualization from WordTips illustrates the 100 most spoken languages in the world, the number of native speakers for each language, and the origin tree that each language has branched out from. One reason these languages are popular is that they are actively and consistently used. Unfortunately, nearly 3,000 (about 40%) of all languages are at risk of being lost, or are already in the process of dying out today.

This article is about how a child's first language can include more than just words. According to UNESCO, "Mother tongue or mother language refers to a child's first language, the language learned in the home from older family members." A child's language should be allowed and encouraged to be multilingual if their culture has a different language. There is more to a child's first language than just words because it also includes cultural and ancestral history that should and can be passed on to future generations. But since in some households parents don't encourage their children to learn their cultural language many children are losing out on this.

This article argues how there is a separate language of the law. This language consists of technical legal terms and it is different from ordinary language because ordinary language cannot compare to the amount of legal terms. This type of language allows for more precision by stating specifically the rules of something. This can prove that the Constitution was writing in the language of the law. This is because the Constitution consists of around 100 reasons why the United States shouldn't be a part of Britain.

A 2013 joint study, conducted by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -- The Neuro at McGill University and Oxford University, concludes that the pattern of brain development is similar if you learn one or two languages from birth. However, learning a second language later on in childhood, after gaining proficiency in the first (native) language, does in fact, modify the brain's structure, specifically the brain's inferior frontal cortex. The left inferior frontal cortex became thicker and the right inferior frontal cortex became thinner. The cortex is a multi-layered mass of neurons that plays a major role in cognitive functions such as thought, language, consciousness and memory. The study suggests that the task of acquiring a second language after infancy stimulates new neural growth and connections among neurons in ways seen in acquiring complex motor skills such as juggling. The study's authors speculate that the difficulty that some people have in learning a second language later in life could be explained at the structural level. "The later in childhood that the second language is acquired, the greater are the changes in the inferior frontal cortex," said Dr. Denise Klein, researcher in The Neuro's Cognitive Neuroscience Unit and a lead author on the paper published in the journal Brain and language. "Our results provide structural evidence that age of acquisition is crucial in laying down the structure for language learning."

Straddling the imaginary border between the Balkans and Central Europe, Slovenia is home to two million citizens united by a common language. But this wasn't always the case. For about six hundred years, the Slovene lands were the domain of the Habsburgs, with the occasional appearance by the French, Italians, Hungarians, and Serbs. The Slovene language-and with it the core of Slovene identity-should by all rights have disappeared long ago, subsumed by the much stronger languages and political powers surrounding it. The language survived thanks to the efforts of many people, from the 16th-century protestants who first wrote it down to the 18th- and 19th-century intellectuals who coaxed it out of the church and spread it among the people. Among their arsenal of weapons: a cookbook, wielded by one relentlessly determined priest, Valentin Vodnik. Vodnik was a man of boundless energy, curiosity, and drive: Besides his work as a priest and later a high-school teacher and headmaster, he was fluent in half a dozen languages, wrote some of the first Slovene poetry, published the first Slovene newspaper, and began corresponding with intellectuals in Slovene. Vodnik's mission was popularizing and elevating the reputation of the language at a time when educated Slovenes mostly spoke German, considering their native tongue to be the vernacular of poor illiterate farmers, unfit for polite society and incapable of expressing complex ideas.

People have always spoken differently from how they write, and texting is actually talking with your fingers Texting has long been bemoaned as the downfall of the written word, "penmanship for illiterates," as one critic called it. To which the proper response is LOL.

This article explores the argument that texting might be ruining and defacing the importance behind the english language. It explains how texting has really become its own language. It has created a different type of grammar, conventions, and patterns to writing.

When you text someone, are you writing or talking? People have always spoken differently from the way they write. This article says that texting properly is actually closer to spoken language than it is to writing, and that it is a new kind of talking and is developing its own kind of grammar and conventions. It uses "LOL" to give an example of how the texting language is changing, just like spoken languages are constantly evolving.

Beginning with Gangnam Style, followed by the success of K-pop groups such as BTS, interest in Korean popular culture has skyrocketed in the past decade. One way this has manifested is through a steep rise in individuals learning the Korean language. According to a study conducted by the Modern language Association, U.S. college student enrollment in Korean language classes has risen 78% from 2009 to 2016, reaching 15,000, while total enrollment in language classes has plateaued in recent years. The only other widely learned language with significant growth in the span was American Sign language, which increased enrollments by 37%. Despite this trend, East Asian Studies departments have struggled to accommodate the increasing demand for Korean classes. This is because Korean language classes have been historically limited and under-resourced due to the fact that language programs in East Asian Studies have traditionally focused on Mandarin and Japanese. Experts say that K-pop is the main reason for this trend, coupled with the success of several Korean TV shows and films such as Parasite and Squid Game. The current growing trend of interest in the Korean language and culture has also been an opportunity for South Korea to engage Americans in a variety of other sectors relating to the country including business, politics, economics, and history.

This article was about the language of love and took us, the reader, through the author's love history, given her very peculiar situation. The story began with Emily Robbins, moving to Syria as a young linguist trying to assimilate herself with the Arabic language. She met a Syrian doctor of similar age that she soon fell in love with. She was a beginner Arabic speaker and Arabic was his first language. There was an obvious language barrier between the two and it was often hard to convey messages to each other. The doctor was actually quite eloquent with his writing and speaking, but Robbins butchered his messages because of her blunt and broad knowledge of the language. They soon became distant because of their inability to understand each other. A few years have passed since Robbins has returned from Syria and she is definitely more adept to Arabic. She went through her old letters from the doctor and read them, with a better background of the Arabic language. From reading his letters she finally understood the full meaning behind his messages. The doctor's notes were beautiful and evidently showed his once devoted love to her. Robbins learned that being able to give and receive language is a huge base that ultimately holds love together. Had she understood the meanings of his messages before, there would be a possibility that they could still be passionately in love with each other today.

The US has no national-level mandates for studying foreign language, and requirements are mostly set at the school-district and state level. According to a 2017 statistic, only 20% of American K-12 students are enrolled in a foreign language class. In contrast, most European countries have national-level mandates for formally studying languages in school. Across Europe, students typically begin studying their first foreign language as a required school subject between the ages of 6 and 9. Furthermore, studying a second foreign language for at least one year is compulsory in more than 20 European countries. Overall, a median of 92% of European students are learning a language in school. Check out the article to see the statistics--it really puts our monolingual nation to shame.

Are the 10% of people who are left-handed and of those whose language is located in the brain's right hemisphere the same? Is the location of language areas in the brain correlated to handedness? Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers have demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

Through an innovative approach using a large psychometric and brain imaging database, researchers have demonstrated that the location of language areas in the brain is independent of left- or right-handedness, except for a very small proportion of left-handed individuals whose right hemisphere is dominant for both manual work and language.

CNN has looked at the Penn Center to learn more about the Gullah language and what people are doing to preserve it and its culture. (https://glc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Gullah%20language.pdf) Gullah is a creole English based language that has been influenced by African languages. Gullah is also known to be from the "target language" of English. This means that the words they use are what the dominant and economically well group of people often used.

A spoken language is more than just words and sounds. Speakers use changes in pitch and rhythm, known as prosody, to provide emphasis, show emotion, and otherwise add meaning to what they say. But a language does not need to be spoken to have prosody: sign languages, such as American Sign language (ASL), use movements, pauses and facial expressions to achieve the same goals. In a study appearing in the September 2015 issue of language, three linguists look at intonation (a key part of prosody) in ASL and find that native ASL signers learn intonation in much the same way that users of spoken languages do. Children learning ASL acquired prosodic features in three stages of "appearance, reorganization, and mastery": accurately replicating their use in simpler contexts, attempting unsuccessfully at first to use them in more challenging contexts, then using them accurately in all contexts as they fully learn the rules of prosody. Previous research has shown that native learners of spoken languages acquire intonation following a similar pattern.

Similarities: Both are used to communicate, both form language families, both have semantics and syntax Differences: Human language used to communicate between humans, programming languages used to communicate between human and computer, no morphology in programming languages, No synonyms, cultural significance, metaphors, analogies, in programming languages, no room for interpretation in programming languages

This article talks about how diverse languages are around the world and how thousands of languages are becoming extinct. It talked about how every language has different forms of grammar and linguists are not necessarily interested in "correct grammar" because we know that grammar changes throughout time and places. This can help us understand our history and how our minds work. I found it interesting that many indigenous languages will become extinct in the near future. For example, South America and Australia are expected to lose all indigenous languages.

The critical period hypothesis is one of the reasons that some adults are hesitant to take on learning their heritage language. The theory essentially argues that there's a biological window where language learning is the most automatic, somewhere between the age of 2 and puberty. This theory has entered our popular consciousness as a rule that you can't learn a second-language fluently when you're older. However, scientists disagree with this notion because although it will take more conscious effort, it is still possible to become fluent in another language past the "critical window." Specifically, second language acquisition becomes more difficult with age because it requires rewiring your brain to break certain habits that relate to language learning. For example, pronunciation and accent requires breaking habits related to the way you move your mouth to speak, making it more difficult to have native-level pronunciation as you grow older. Beyond neuroscience, though, research has shown that other factors, such as exposure and education influence language learning.

Imagine putting on a virtual reality headset and entering a world where you can explore communities, like Missoula, except your character, and everyone you interact with, speaks Salish, Cheyenne or Blackfoot. Imagine having a device like Amazon's Alexa that understands and speaks exclusively in Indigenous languages. Or imagine a digital language playground in Facebook's Metaverse, where programmers create interactive games to enhance Indigenous language learning. Michael Running Wolf, a Northern Cheyenne man who is earning his Ph.D. in computer science, wants to make these dreams a reality. Running Wolf grew up in Birney, a town with a population of 150 just south of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. He spent most of his childhood living without electricity. Running Wolf can speak some Cheyenne, but he wants Indigenous language learning to be more accessible, immersive and engaging. And he believes artificial intelligence is the solution. Running Wolf is one of a handful of researchers worldwide who are studying Indigenous languages and AI. He works with a small team of linguists and data scientists, and together, they analyze Indigenous languages and work to translate them into something a computer can interpret. If his team can accomplish this, Running Wolf reasons, then perhaps AI can be used to help revitalize Indigenous languages everywhere.