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Black Americans have long contributed to the ways in which the English language is used, and now a new research project aims to compile the first Oxford Dictionary of African American English. The research project is a collaboration between Harvard University's Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and Oxford University Press.

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."

Jez Burrows is the author of Dictionary Stories: more than 150 short fiction pieces, composed entirely from example sentences taken from 12 different dictionaries. Describing his writing process, Burrows comments: "It was only a few weeks into writing Dictionary Stories that I realized the dictionary is something of a Trojan horse. Trundling up to the perimeter of your bookshelves, it presents itself as a harmless book of reference-but look inside and you'll find it crawling with thousands upon thousands of microscopic pieces of fiction, all in the form of example sentences. Fiction is perhaps a slightly misleading word to use in this context. Lexicographers do not write these examples from scratch in the service of whimsical narrative; they query huge corpora of texts that could include novels, news broadcasts, articles and essays, and select an example that demonstrates the most probable usage of a word. But surrounded by the neutral, instructive language of dictionary definitions, example sentences feel vital and full of personality. The New Oxford American Dictionary contains over 80,000 examples, but it was just one ("He perched on the edge of the bed, a study in confusion and misery," an example of the word "study") that set me on the journey of collaging these sentences together to create very short stories. Should you wish to try writing stories of your own in this vein, I give you this list of some of the most versatile words the New Oxford American has to offer-or at least, words with the highest number of example sentences, any of which would make a fine start to a story." So, if you want to try emulating Burrows' style, here're the 6 words: 1. go, 2. run, 3. take, 4. set, 5. cut, and 6. stand. These words illustrate the linguistic concept of polysemy: words that possess many meanings. Try creating a story using one--or collaging several example sentences. Have fun!

Emojis were Oxford Dictionary's word of the year. And it's quickly becoming the universal language of the Internet -- after Apple included an emoji keyboard on its phones five years ago. It's estimated 6 billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis are becoming a secret language for kids.

East Africa's elephants face few threats in their savanna home, aside from humans and lions. But the behemoths are terrified of African bees, and with good reason. An angry swarm can sting elephants around their eyes and inside their trunks and pierce the skin of young calves. Now, a new study shows that the pachyderms utter a distinctive rumble in response to the sound of bees, the first time an alarm call has been identified in elephants. … [T]he study suggests that this alarm call isn't just a generalized vocalization but means specifically, "Bees!" says Lucy King, a postgraduate zoologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the study's lead author. When they hear buzzing bees, the pachyderms turn and run away, shaking their heads while making a call that King terms the "bee rumble."

Four-letter words have been around since the days of our forebears-and their forebears, too. In Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, a book out this month from Oxford University Press, medieval literature expert Melissa Mohr traces humans' use of naughty language back to Roman times.

It's often said that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Given the fact that many of the words we use in English stem from Latin and Ancient Greek words - in common with many other European languages - what is it about English that has attracted this reputation for being so fearsomely difficult?

Learning a foreign language is hard. Learning English as a foreign language is also very hard. Words in the English language that we speak, say and write without question might not make sense to foreigners because of the many "exceptions" that comes with the English language. This article discusses what makes English so challenging for foreigners to learn. In particular, it gives examples of pronunciation and spelling, emphasis, homophones, synonyms, idioms, and dialects.

The age at which children learn a second language can have a significant bearing on the structure of their adult brain, according to a new joint study by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -- The Neuro at McGill University and Oxford University. The study concludes that the pattern of brain development is similar if you learn one or two language 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.

This article focuses on the emergence of emoji's and how widespread it has become. The first emoji alphabet was created in 2008, and adopted in 2011 by Apple. Even though emoji have only been around for a short time, it has gained huge popularity. Some of its successes are that it was crowned as this years' top-trending word by the Global Language Monitor, and was even added to the Oxford dictionary. According to an emoji tracker by twitter, "people are averaging 250 to 350 emoji tweets a second," showing how culturally diverse emoji has become. Although emoji are rapidly increasing in popularity, it is still not considered its own language because it has been criticized as being too limited. However, it is sure to gain more support in the mere future and maybe even replace some of the English language, as emoji's are said to be used as punctuation, emphasis, and as a replacement for words or to replace words altogether.

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."

This study examining the online identity and language use of teens who maintain personal blogs. Expression of gender, identity, and use of language were examined in terms of disclosed personal information (sexual identity, emotive features, and semantic themes).

As the topic surrounding gender identity begins to grow, so does questions about appropriate pronouns. The word "they" has been anointed the word of the year in 2015 by the American Dialect Society. Pronouns for those who don't identify under the gender binary system have been becoming increasingly larger. Colleges have started to use words such as "Ze", "E", and "Ey". The Oxford dictionary has also recently added "Mx" (mix) to serve as an alternative to Mr. or Mrs. Most people have learned that it is best to ask a person which pronouns they would like to be used.

Check this article out to learn more about how our own language and our Top 20 keywords in the Oxford Corpus has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. While some words are not uncommon, two new ones come to mind. These are "social distance/social distancing" and "self-isolate/self-isolation." We can see the impact of the coronavirus by seeing which words are now used more frequently.

This article talks about how sleep plays an active role in language and brain development and the role it plays in early language acquisition.

This journal is about how meaning in music can be communicated. Many people say that they express themselves through music, so this journal goes in-depth about how different people communicate their thoughts through music.

When children start studying music before the age of seven, they develop bigger vocabularies, a better sense of grammar and a higher verbal IQ. These advantages benefit both the development of their mother tongue and the learning of foreign languages. During these crucial years, the brain is at its sensitive development phase, with 95% of the brain's growth occurring now. Music training started during this period also boosts the brain's ability to process subtle differences between sounds and assist in the pronunciation of languages - and this gift lasts for life, as it has been found that adults who had musical training in childhood still retain this ability to learn foreign languages quicker and more efficiently than adults who did not have early childhood music training. Humans first started creating music 500,000 years ago, yet speech and language was only developed 200,000 years ago. Evolutionary evidence, as interpreted by leading researchers such as Robin Dunbar from Oxford University, indicates that speech as a form of communication has evolved from our original development and use of music. This explains why our music and language neural networks have significant overlap, and why children who learn music become better at learning the grammar, vocabulary and pronounciation of any language.

The author examines the meaning of rizz, which is derived from "charisma." This term, rizz, proves how dynamic language is. Rizz also emphasizes the role of online platforms, such as TikTok, where younger people can own and coin their linguistic expressions.