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By Lera Boroditsky (Stanford researcher) "Scholars have long wondered whether different languages might impart different cognitive abilities. In recent years empirical evidence for this causal relation has emerged, indicating that one's mother tongue does indeed mold the way one thinks about many aspects of the world, including space and time. The latest findings also hint that language is part and parcel of many more aspects of thought than scientists had previously realized."

"Remarkably, how people used pronouns was correlated with almost everything I studied. For example, use of first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) was consistently related to gender, age, social class, honesty, status, personality, and much more. Although the findings were often robust, people in daily life were unable to pick them up when reading or listening to others... Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students' major."

"Rather than focusing on network dynamics, they decided to analyze the tributes by language. Jobs wasn't just an American visionary, but truly global."

wonderful radio interview with the woman who first discovered the songs of whales and is now researching how elephants communicate outside of human auditory range

"Pronunciation Book shows you how to say various words [454, to be precise] in American English."

"as the number of second- and third-generation Hispanic-Americans skyrockets, the perennial runner-up is embracing a new strategy - English-language subtitles and Spanglish - to attract deep-pocketed viewers and the advertisers who covet them.... Bilingual Hispanics, defined as speaking English more than Spanish or Spanish and English equally, are 82 percent of the United States Hispanic population... Shows that incorporate both languages and cultures can hook multiple generations."

Just having a feminine voice means you're probably not as capable at your job. At least, studies suggest, that's what many people in the United States think. There's a gender bias in how Americans perceive feminine voices: as insecure, less competent and less trustworthy.

Discusses current and ongoing changes in our language, and how language might evolve in the future.

A small circle of history researchers is racing to capture the last remnants of a little-known French dialect that endures in some old Missouri mining towns before the few remaining native speakers succumb to old age. So-called Missouri French is spoken by fewer than 30 people in Old Mines. The dialect is one of three French dialects to have developed in the U.S., and emerged 300 years ago. It's an amalgamation of old Norman French, Native American languages, and frontier English.

Barack Obama says his address to Congress this year is all about 'finding areas where we agree, so we can deliver for the American people'. And if there's one thing we can all agree upon, it's emojis.

As both a literary and scholarly achievement Webster's 1828 dictionary is widely regarded as both the first truly comprehensive dictionary of American English, and as one of the most important dictionaries in the history of our language. To mark World Dictionary Day - and to celebrate what would be Webster's 256th birthday - this article presents 26 of some of the most curious, most surprising and most obscure words from Webster's Dictionary in one handy A to Z.

Bilingual 1: "When I'm around Anglo-Americans, I find myself awkward and unable to choose my words quickly enough ... When I'm amongst Latinos/Spanish-speakers, I don't feel shy at all. I'm witty, friendly, and ... I become very out-going." Bilingual 2: "In English, my speech is very polite, with a relaxed tone, always saying "please" and "excuse me."

People have been asking this question for hundreds of years. Linguists have been paying special attention to it since the 1940's, when a linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, a Native American language spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies, Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the world differently because of differences in their language.

Schizophrenia is a very disabling psychiatric illness affecting about 2 to 3 million Americans. Contrary to popular perception, it has nothing to do with a "split personality." Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder involving "positive" and "negative" symptoms. Positive symptoms include hallucinations (hearing voices or seeing visions that aren't real), delusions (fixed false beliefs), and disorganized thinking or speech. A recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry by Paul Grant, Aaron Beck, and their colleagues found that a modified version of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a specific type of talk therapy, can produce clinically significant improvement in patients with schizophrenia. Importantly, significant improvement was seen in certain negative symptoms-apathy/avolition (lack of drive)-as well as in positive symptoms. These results are impressive, especially considering that the participants had been ill for an average of 18 years and suffered from severe symptoms. In this study, study participants were divided into two groups. One group received CBT in addition to "standard treatment," which included treatment with antipsychotic medications. The other group received standard treatment alone. CBT has been shown to be effective in a variety of psychiatric illnesses. It uses pragmatic techniques to help a person correct inaccurate or dysfunctional thoughts and emotions by promoting critical comparison of those thoughts with observable facts. For example, if a person believes that he/she is "doing absolutely nothing," one CBT technique would be to encourage the person to keep a detailed diary of daily activities. The therapist would later review this diary with the patient and facts would be compared to perceptions. Homework assignments would include strategies to increase productive activities. In the study mentioned above, the researchers focused CBT "on identifying and promoting concrete goals for improving quality of life and

We, Americans spell words differently than how Canadians spell words.