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This article analyzes how accent discrimination has become a problem. People often discriminate when an accent or someone's name is foreign. We also embrace that our words should sound a certain way and even though everyone has an accent, we struggle to have an open mind with those who have a different accent than us.

Here's how to be more emotionally intelligent: 1. Emotions are concepts: They're not hardwired or universal. They're learned. 2. Emotional intelligence starts with emotional granularity: If your doctor came back with a diagnosis of "you're sick", you'd sue the quack for malpractice. Doctors need to be able to distinguish between "chancre" and "cancer." And you need to know the difference between "sad" and "lonely." 3. Emotional intelligence is in the dictionary: You can't feel Fremdschämen if you don't know what it is. So learn new emotion words so you can feel new emotions and increase your emotional granularity, that is, the ability to distinguish the emotions you feel and recognize them as distinct and different. 4. Create new emotions: We could all use a little more "passion-o-rama" in our lives. Name those unnamed feelings you have and share them with others to make them real. In sum, finding specific words to describe the particularities of what you're feeling can lead to greater mental health. The article also discusses the differences that cultures/languages have in re: feelings and emotions we might've previously assumed were universal.

This study followed 1,000 people and compared their test results as children vs. at age 50. The kids who could name objects/animals in pictures, form a sentence, and share experiences more quickly than other children tended to show higher IQ's later on in life.

A recent Times article asked readers to name everyday words that repelled them. There was a wide variety of answers from simple words like moist to complicated words like pulchritude. There were also some random words that inspired word aversion for no apparent reason. This New York Times article explains why some people have word aversion to certain categories of words.

Briefly explores the difference of "swear" words and their severity across the globe.

For curses to have impact, they need a dominating societal power and control structure attached to them. Strong language often involves naming things you desire but aren't supposed to desire; at the very least, it aims to upset power structures that may seem a bit too arbitrary. We tend to think of swear words as one entity, but they actually serve several distinct functions. Linguist Steven Pinker, in The Stuff of Thought, lists five different ways we can swear: descriptively, idiomatically, abusively, emphatically, and cathartically. Worldwide, words for genitalia are the most common focus of preferred strong language, the kind used by default for Pinker's five functions.

We often think of "bad" language as something universal to everyone around the world. But swearing is special to each and every language. Depending on the type of language, there are different ways to express anger. For example, in Bikol (a type of language in the phillipines) they have a whole different vocabulary to use when conveying the emotion of anger. In Luganda (an african language) they can convey anger by just changing the noun class prefix. As we can see different cultures convey their emotions differently and there is no "one way" to swear or show anger.

Research from Concordia University in Montreal reveals a new perk visible in the problem-solving skills of bilingual toddlers. The study assessed the vocabularies of 39 bilingual children and 43 monolinguals when they were aged 24 months, and then again at 31 months. During the second assessment, the researchers also had the young participants perform a battery of tasks to test their cognitive flexibility and memory skills. While overall, there was little difference between the bilingual and monolingual toddlers, bilingual children performed significantly better on the conflict inhibition tasks than did their monolingual counterparts. Conflict inhibition refers to the mental process of overriding a well-learned rule that you would normally pay attention to. These were the two tasks: 1. Reverse categorization -- participants were told to put a set of little blocks into a little bucket and big blocks into a big bucket. Then the instructions were switched -- big blocks in the little bucket and little blocks in the big bucket. 2. Shape conflict -- participants were shown pictures of different sized fruit and asked to name them. Then a new series of images was shown, with a small fruit embedded inside a large one. Toddlers were asked to point to the little fruit. Crivello, one of the lead researchers, commented that "Language switching underlies the bilingual advantage on conflict tasks. In conflict inhibition, the child has to ignore certain information -- the size of a block relative to a bucket, or the fact that one fruit is inside another. That mirrors the experience of having to switch between languages, using a second language, even though the word from a first language might be more easily accessible."

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.

The takeaway suggestions: 1.Give one piece of constructive feedback and let it stand on its own. Don't undermine your message by padding it with irrelevant positive statements. This might be uncomfortable at first, but research shows that people are hungry for constructive feedback. 2. Before your next one-on-one, pause to reflect before giving feedback. If you're stressed or rushed, you're more likely to deliver feedback without compassion or empathy - even if that's unintentional. 3.When you notice a problem, find a way to surface it immediately. Don't just hope a problem will go away, or assume someone else will fix it. When you speak up with compassionate directness, everyone benefits. 4. In your next meeting or one-on-one, consider another person's perspective. It can be as simple as pausing before a meeting to ask yourself, "Where is this person coming from?" By zooming out, you'll be better able to see others' motivations and understand their priorities. 5. When you receive constructive feedback, write it down and come back to it later. This will allow you to move beyond the emotion of the moment and consider more dispassionately whether it holds truth for you. 6.Turn a digital exchange into an in-person conversation. A lot of nuances of human communication are lost in digital interaction. When you get to know your co-workers as people instead of just names in your inbox, you'll build trust and camaraderie. 7. Once a day, have a conversation where you mostly listen. Don't underestimate the power of your silence. Instead of giving your opinion or changing the subject, invite the other person to go deeper.

Analyzing the verbs that followed male and female pronouns in 100K stories, the following patterns were observed: 1. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he kidnaps" or "he beats". Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like "he saves"/"he rescues" are distinctly positive- but almost all are active rather than receptive. 2. There's an old stereotype (that's appeared in works like Game of Thrones and Sherlock Holmes) that "poison is a woman's weapon", and this is supported in our analysis. Female characters are more likely to "poison", "stab", or "kick"; male characters are more likely to "beat", "strangle", or simply "murder" or "kill". Men are moderately more likely to "steal", but much more likely to "rob". 3. Based on this text analysis, a fictional murderer is about 2.5X as likely to be male than female, but in America (and likely elsewhere) murderers are about 9X more likely to be male than female. This means female murderers may be overrepresented in fiction relative to reality. David Robinson, the data scientist who ran the text analysis, offers these questions for future research: 1.Is the shift stronger in some formats or genre than another? We could split the works into films, novels, and TV series, and ask whether these gender roles are equally strong in each. 2. Is the shift different between male- and female- created works? 3. Has the difference changed over time? Some examination indicates the vast majority of these plots come from stories written in the last century, and most of them from the last few decades (not surprising since many are movies or television episodes, and since Wikipedia users are more likely to describe contemporary work). 4. I'd also note that we could expand the analysis to include not only pronouns but first names (e.g. not only "she tells", but "M

This article talks about the importance of the level of respect when it comes to a student-teacher interaction. Mark Tomforde, a math professor at the University of Houston who has been teaching for almost two decades, said that he had to draw the line when students started calling him his first name. This article goes over the fact that students should not assume that teachers will reciprocate the same language-use such as speaking casual terms like "LOL" or "SMH." Students should not be contacting teachers through text message-like emails. Students should keep in mind that professors have much more knowledge and wisdom and as their superiors, should be given a good amount of respect. This respect starts by using appropriate language when communicating and not treating them like your friend.

Critter Challenge: How Many Animal Sounds Can You Make in Chinese? Do you know how to say "woof" in Chinese? Learn how to bark, squeak, meow, roar and hee-haw instead! This page provides the word for 22 kinds of animals, along with the particular sounds they make. Each item first lists the animal sound in Chinese, followed by the English name of the animal who makes that sound.

Hearing is important for humans to understand the world around them and it lies in our nature to want to describe what we hear. To do this, we frequently make use of onomatopoeias. But what exactly is an onomatopoeia? It is 'the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named'. This blog post offers a cross-linguistic peek at onomatopoeia.

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.

This article shows the importance of music therapy practice when focusing on communication skills with a speech pathologist within a pediatric rehabilitation setting. There is a case about a kid named Sam who is an eleven year old boy who sustained a severe garrotting injury. The article goes over how the individual music therapy program helped him to maximize his potential and motivation in achieving his communication goals, while speech pathology provided therapeutic intervention and outcomes while he re-learned his speech skills.

This article talks about the latin origins of the ampersand, or "&" symbol. Originating from the latin word for 'and,' 'et,' the ampersand is a combination of the "e" and "t" written in cursive often to save time while writing. Although the name "ampersand" comes from the 18th century from the alteration of the phrase "and per se", the ampersand has been seen in use as early as 79AD in Pompeii, although its definite origins are unknown.

Neuroimaging studies suggest that sign languages are complex linguistic systems processed much like spoken languages, even though they're gestural/visual, not oral. Wernicke's area activates when perceiving sign language; Broca's when producing sign language. In deaf people, lesions in left hemisphere "speech centres" like Broca's and Wernicke's areas produced significantly more sign errors on naming, repetition and sentence-comprehension tasks than signers with damaged right hemispheres.

Ar Metlaloke (The Tlaloques Hunter), a comic book reimagining a traditional indigenous Mexican story, is the first of its kind written in Hñäñho, the language of the Ñäñho people, as well as in Spanish and English. It represents a larger, ongoing effort to preserve the people's culture, which is under threat as speakers decline and cultural bonds erode from centuries of colonial policies. The language-sometimes called Otomi, from the Spanish name for the community-is imperiled. Today it is one of several regional dialects of a mother tongue with fewer than 300,000 speakers, a figure that's been dropping for decades.

Jonah DeChants, a research scientist at the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ mental health nonprofit notes an "explosion of language that we're seeing around how young people express their gender." A 2001research study of 34,700+ US youth released Monday by the LGBTQ mental health nonprofit the Trevor Project found that over one in four (26%) LGBTQ youth identified as nonbinary. An additional 20% said they are not sure or are questioning whether they identify as nonbinary. The term "nonbinary" refers to people whose gender does not fit within the traditional binary construction of male or female. Drawing from an online survey conducted between October and December of 2020 of over 34,700 LGBTQ youth in the U.S., the Trevor Project found that while the term "nonbinary" has often been associated with a trans or transitioning person, only half of the respondents who identified as nonbinary also identified as transgender. (An additional 20% said they were not sure or questioning whether they are transgender). While 72% of respondents who identified as nonbinary said they use the term to describe their gender identity, other terms were also cited, including queer (used by 29% of respondents), gender non-confirming (27%), genderfluid (24%), genderqueer (23%), androgynous (23%), agender (15%), demigirl (10%), demiboy (8%), genderflux (4%), and bigender (4%). (Queer is also a term people can use to identify their sexuality, which is separate from gender identity. Most the nonbinary youth sampled reported being multisexual or attracted to multiple genders.) "More and more young people are taking control over their gender identity, and finding language and terms that resonate with them," DeChants continues. "And expressing that in the world in [ways] that we haven't necessarily seen in the past." The majority of nonbinary respondents said they use pronouns outside the gender binary-such as "they/them" or "xe/xem." Here, DeChants notes an "emp

This article combines data from two lists. This first one was compiled by National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center at Beijing Language and Culture University: "Big data analysis" of over a billion online posts and forum discussions from the Chinese internet in 2021 was reportedly used to decide on the final list, but it's clear from the selection that the artificial intelligence tool used has a good understanding of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The second list comes from Yaowen Jiaozi, a magazine founded in 1995 that publishes stories about the the misuse and abuse of language in Chinese society. This combined list has items that made BOTH lists. Separately, the magazine Yǎowén Jiáozì (咬文嚼字) published its year-end list of "popular buzzwords" (2021年十大流行语). Yaowen Jiaozi is a magazine founded in 1995 that publishes stories about the the misuse and abuse of language in Chinese society. Its name is variously translated as "Correct Wording," "Verbalism," and "Chewing Words." The Yaowen Jiaozi list does not claim to be created by big data, but rather from reader suggestions, online polling, and selection by specialists.