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"Non-native accents make speech somewhat more difficult for native speakers to parse and thereby reduces "cognitive fluency" - i.e., the ease with which the brain processes stimuli. And this, they found, causes people to doubt the accuracy of what is said. "...[However,] several recent studies suggest that modest disruptions of cognitive fluency - cases of cognitive "disfluency," if you will - prompt people to think critically."

Languages have to compete with technology. Digital media is becoming an integral part of Chickasaw life, just as it is in nearly every corner of the globe. But rather than pointing to technology as contributing to language loss, as some linguists have done for decades, Hinson decided to embrace technology as an opportunity. As someone who relies on the internet, he saw it as a potential route to success, not a barrier.

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.

Article talks about an adult Okinawan-language class in Hawaii. Okinawan, also known as Uchinaaguchi, is an endangered language--it fell into disuse due to Japanese colonization--hence few native speakers of the language remain. I've posted the text of the article below, as you've got to be a Star-Advertiser subscriber to see the full page: POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Aug 27, 2013 StarAdvertiser.com Learning Okinawan helps preserve culture and identity, an instructor says By Steven Mark In a classroom for preschoolers, a group of adults is trying to revive a language that is foreign to their ear but not to their heart. The language is Okinawan, or "Uchinaaguchi," as it is pronounced in the language itself. The class at Jikoen Hongwanji Mission in Kalihi, as informal as it is, might just be the beginning of a cultural revival thousands of miles to the east of the source. At least that is the hope of Eric Wada, one of the course instructors. "For us, it's the importance of connecting (language) to identity," said Wada, who studied performing arts in Okinawa and is now the artistic director of an Okinawan performing arts group, Ukwanshin Kabudan. "Without the language, you really don't have identity as a people." Okinawa is the name given to a prefecture of Japan, but it was originally the name of the main island of an archipelago known as the Ryukyu Islands that lies about midway between Japan and Taiwan in the East China Sea. For centuries, the Ryukyu kingdom maintained a degree of independence from other East Asian nations. As a result, distinctive cultural practices evolved, from graceful and meditative dance to the martial art called karate and the poetic language that sounds like a blend of Japanese and Korean. The islands were officially annexed by Japan in 1879. The 20th century saw the World War II battle of Okinawa, which claimed more than a quarter of the island's population, the subsequent placement of U.S. military bases and the return of the islands to

A quote from Liz Posner, the author of the article: "When I set out to research the German words that capture what it feels like to be an American living during the era of the Trump administration, I didn't expect there to be so damn many. Like many of my fellow citizens who have flocked to therapists' offices over the past year, eager to sort through their trauma at being governed by a narcissistic megalomaniac, I was already aware that the current political era was doing something strange to my psyche. But it can be hard to pin down exactly what these emotions are, if words for them, even exist." Fortunately, German, not English, is able to capture the nuances of these feelings

Think you'll enjoy these linguistic infographics! They cover a lot of territory: language families, linguistic diversity, to countries mapped by number of languages spoken, to American dialect maps, to bilingualism in the EU, to letter distribution in English...

Over the last 70 years, researchers have tried to gauge the effect on an individual of having an unusual name. It is thought that our identity is partly shaped by the way we are treated by other people - a concept psychologists call the "looking-glass self" - and our name has the potential to colour our interactions with society. Early studies found that men with uncommon first names were more likely to drop out of school and be lonely later in life. One study found that psychiatric patients with more unusual names tended to be more disturbed. But more recent work has presented a mixed picture. Richard Zweigenhaft, a psychologist at Guilford College in the US, pointed out that wealthy, oddly-named Americans are more likely to find themselves in Who's Who. He found no consistent bad effects of having a strange name, but noted that both common and unusual names are sometimes deemed desirable. Conley, who is a sociologist at New York University, says that children with unusual names may learn impulse control because they may be teased or get used to people asking about their names. "They actually benefit from that experience by learning to control their emotions or their impulses, which is of course a great skill for success."

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

This article talks about when the cutoff age to learn a new language is. Studies show that youth are proficient in learning a new language until the age of 18 but if they want to understand and learn the fluency of a native speaker it is best to start by the age of 10.

Jack Qu'emi is a writer and self-described "queer, non-binary femme," who among other terms identifies as Afro-Latinx. That's Latinx. Not Latino. Not Latina. The term (pronounced: la-teen-ex) is gaining traction in Spanish-speaking communities. But many are still asking, "What's the meaning of the 'x'?" Qu'emi explains: "The x [in Latinx], is a way of rejecting the gendering of words to begin with, especially since Spanish is such a gendered language." Like the use of they/them/their pronouns in English (in place of the gendered pronouns he/him/his and she/her/hers), "Latinx" is an attempt in Spanish to include non-binary people, those who are neither male nor female.

Even in America, there are different ways people speak English from different parts of the US. This article talks about some of the linguistic differences of people speaking in the US. There was a survey conducted by Harvard linguist Bert Vaux in 2003 to understand some of the differences in the way people talk. Generally, people in Atlanta call a sweetened carbonated beverage "coke" whereas in the Midwest, it's called pop, and it's called soda everywhere else. In New York, people say waiting "on line" rather than saying "in line." And the term "anymore" means different things in different parts of the country. Some people use it to mean "nowadays" and some use it to mean "already." In some parts of the country, there is a term for when it rains while still being sunny. People in the Northeast call it a "sunshower," but Southerners call it "the devil is beating his wife" and most of the rest of the country has no name for this at all. Finally, the northern half of the country is more likely to pronounce the second "a" in pajamas like "jam" whereas the southern half of the country is more likely to pronounce the second "a" in pajamas as "jam." This information is supposed to be useful in helping to figure out where the lines are between different American dialects and can also help to predict where someone is from.

Social media-from Facebook to Twitter-have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)-and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. Social interaction matters. Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants-that is, in quality social connections-has been dramatic over the past 25 years. In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.

the micro-nuances of their speech patterns, and how voters, and viewers, hear them - can also provide a fascinating window into how we perceive authority and who occupies it. Women and men tend to have different speech patterns, linguists will tell you. Women, especially young women, tend to have more versatile intonation. They place more emphasis on certain words; they are playful with language and have shorter and thinner vocal cords, which produce a higher pitch. That isn't absolute, nor is it necessarily a bad thing - unless, of course, you are a person with a higher pitch trying to present yourself with some kind of authority. A 2012 study published in PLoS ONE found that both men and women prefer male and female leaders who have lower-pitched voices, while a 2015 report in a journal called Political Psychology determined, in a sample of U.S. adults, that Americans prefer political candidates with lower voices as well. Lower voices do carry better, so that's not entirely without basis, said the linguist Deborah Tannen.

Recent History of Our Struggle to Make Foreign Languages Core Foreign language study is in the national education Goals 2000, which states: "By the year 2000 all American students will leave grades 4, 8, and 12 having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, foreign language, civics and government, arts, history, and geography..."

Useful info for all collaborative activities. The 3 takeaways: 1. SET THE AGENDA The meeting's agenda can be summarized on a handout, written on a whiteboard or discussed explicitly at the outset, but everyone should know why they've gathered and what they're supposed to be accomplishing. The agenda provides a compass for the conversation, so the meeting can get back on track if the discussion wanders off course. 2. ​START ON TIME. END ON TIME. A definitive end time will help ensure that you accomplish what's on your agenda and get people back to their work promptly. 3. ​END WITH AN ACTION PLAN Leave the last few minutes of every meeting to discuss the next steps. This discussion should include deciding who is responsible for what, and what the deadlines are. Otherwise, all the time you spent on the meeting will be for naught. Mark Toro, managing partner of North American Properties - Atlanta, a real estate operating company, uses a phrase to end meetings that has become a common acronym in office e-mails: W.W.D.W.B.W., which stands for "Who will do what by when?"

Born between 1995 and 2012, teens are growing up with smartphones, have an Instagram account before they start high school, and do not remember a time before the Internet. There is compelling evidence that the devices we've placed in young people's hands are having profound effects on their lives-and making them seriously unhappy.. Some interesting (and disturbing) findings: 1. A 2017 survey of more than 5,000 American teens found that three out of four owned an iPhone. 2. While teens are physically safer than they've ever been, they're also more isolated and more subject to psychological harm. Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. In addition, the number of teens who get together with their friends nearly every day dropped by more than 40 percent from 2000 to 2015; the decline has been especially steep recently. It's not only a matter of fewer kids partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out. 3. Teens who spend more time than average on screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, and those who spend more time than average on nonscreen activities are more likely to be happy. 4. Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms among today's teens. Boys' depressive symptoms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015, while girls' increased by 50 percent-more than twice as much. The rise in suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. While boys tend to bully one another physically, girls are more likely to do so by undermining a victim's social status or relationships. Social media give middle- and high-school girls a platform to ostracize and exclude other girls 24/7. 5. Sleep deprivation: nearly all teens sleep with their phones in close proximity, and the devices are interfering with sleep: Many teens now sleep less than seven hours most nights. Sleep experts say that teens should get about nine hours of sleep a night; a teen who is getting less than seven hours a night is signific

"Whether it is by random chance or selection, one of the things that is true about English - and indeed other languages - is that the language changes," said Joshua Plotkin, co-author of the research from the University of Pennsylvania. "The grammarians might [win the battle] for a decade, but certainly over a century they are going to be on the losing side." Writing in the journal Nature, Plotkin and colleagues describe how they tracked different types of grammatical changes across the ages. Among them, the team looked at changes in American English across more than one hundred thousand texts from 1810 onwards, focusing on the use of "ed" in the past tense of verbs compared with irregular forms - for example, "spilled" versus "spilt". The hunt threw up 36 verbs which had at least two different forms of past tense, including quit/quitted and leaped/leapt. However for the majority, including spilled v spilt, the team said that which form was waxing or waning was not clearly down to selection - meaning it is probably down to chance over which word individuals heard and copied. "Chance can play an important role even in language evolution - as we know it does in biological evolution," said Plotkin, adding that the impact of random chance on language had not been fully appreciated before.

Jennifer Sclafani, Georgetown University linguist, examines the idiolect of Trump. Everyone possesses an idiolect: an idiosyncratic form of language that is unique to an individual. Trump's idiolect seems particularly polarizing. Critics might decry Trump thusly: "He doesn't make any sense." "He uses a lot of small words." "His speeches are non-substantive." On the other hand, supporters see Trump as "authentic," "relatable," and "consistent." He's a "straight shooter" who "doesn't mince words." So how does one idiolect produce such polarizing evaluations? It has to do with the precarious connections between linguistic form and meaning. The relationship between the two, as the anthropologist Elinor Ochs describes, is non-exclusive, indirect, and constitutive. Put simply, there are multiple meanings associated with any given linguistic feature, and the connection between form and meaning is a two-way street Whichever meaning is activated by a specific pronunciation, or any other aspect of your idiolect, has everything to do with context: Where are you? Who is your audience? What is your purpose? What image are you trying to project? These are factors that candidates are always taking into account as they put forth their presidential selves on the campaign trail. Tailoring their speech to the context, like when a candidate takes on a drawl while campaigning in the South, has been grounds for being labeled "inconsistent" or "fake," as we've seen with Hillary Clinton, even though this type of linguistic accommodation is a perfectly natural feature of everyone's idiolect.

Fascinating look at the subcultural language of hospitals! The article provides several examples of "argot," the formal name for slang or jargon. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "argot" as "an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group" [1]. According to its stated definition, argot permits those in the know to 1. share complex pieces of information without bystanders understanding what they are saying. 2. create or reinforce a bond between users. 3. give some emotional distance between the speaker and the event and its impact on patients and family members. 4. permits those in the know to express regret or even revulsion at having to deal with unpleasant situations. "Code brown," which refers to a conspicuous episode of fecal incontinence, is an example frequently used in the hospital setting.

It's not often that a broadcast interview by a diplomat wows listeners, but a recent conversation involving the American ambassador to Nigeria, James F. Entwistle, is causing a buzz - and winning applause. The praise is not so much for the content of the interview or the pressing issues the ambassador discusses. It's more for the language in which he chose to express himself: pidgin English.