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The University of Southampton recently discovered that there is "no difference in the time it takes people from different countries to read and process different languages." If reading in their respective native languages, two people from different countries will take the same amount of time to read text. In other words, languages are all equally efficient in conveying meaning.

Article talks about the growing field of forensic linguistics: that is, the study of language to identify who said or wrote that verbal sample. Applications are enormous, from evaluating the identity of potential asylum seekers to pinpointing the Unabomber or perpetrators of crimes where language data is involved, but critics maintain that computer scans alone to evaluate language are insufficient and that overreliance can pose dangers.

We've all laughed at some horrible puns and made them as well! This article explores why English enables us to create word play and the extreme level to which people have taken it! For example, the pun masters of this world dubbed Gandhi as "a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis" for his barefoot and food fasting lifestyle. There are even competitions to show off your skill.

Jennifer Sclafani, a linguist at Georgetown University, recently wrote a book set to publish this fall titled "Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity." Sclafani notes Trump has used language to "create a brand" as a politician. "President Trump creates a spectacle in the way that he speaks," she said. "So it creates a feeling of strength for the nation, or it creates a sense of determination, a sense that he can get the job done through his use of hyperbole and directness." The features of Trump's speech patterns include a casual tone, a simple vocabulary and grammar, frequent 2 word utterances, repetitions, hyperbole and sudden switches of topics, according to Sclafani. Trump also sets himself apart by the words he doesn't use. For example, he started his sentences with "well" less frequently than other Republican contenders during the 2016 GOP primary debates. Omitting the word "well" at the start of a sentence helped Trump come across as a straight talker who wouldn't try to escape a question asked by a moderator, Sclafani said.

This article talks about why it is impossible to study a sentence and look at the physical structure of the letters without reading or comprehending the sentence meaning. It references the Stroop Effect, which is a cognitive interference where there is a delay in the reaction time of a certain task occurs due to a stimuli conflicting. So when people are told to read a set of words such as "orange, purple, green, blue, yellow", but the color of these words are not that of what they read, people usually stumble as they read. It was interesting because when we are children, it was the opposite, but once we learn the skill to read, it becomes irreversible.

This article was intriguing as it highlighted how even one word can symbolize a definitive change. In this case, the article focused on how President Biden is using the word "equal" in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the context of "Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely and to enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and democracy." In turn, this signifies a political push, likely from Democratic progressives, who want to define the concept of equal rights as a objective the U.S. should focus from now on.

An app called Duolingo is the top app to learn a new language. The site includes learning vocab and grammar and doing exercises that are tailored to what the person learns quickly and what the person need to repeatedly review. Teaching language has changed from early "grammar translation" (learning grammar rules and translating sentences) to "audiolingualism" (learn rules and patterns by repeating sentences over and over) after World War II to other methods in the 60s and 70s that turned into a general "communicative approach" which focuses on the function of language as communication not the rules and structure. The app is mostly "audiolingual" because it drills users to repeat words and phrases over and over, but it also helps users learn a lot of words, reminds them to practice, and keeps them practicing with virtual rewards so can be effective.

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.

This article talks about how Shakespeare was one of the first people to write down words, created new ones and even used existing words differently than how they used it.

This article talks about how new meanings for words have been created by women such as "spring cleaning"

In 2010, two articulate powerhouse linguists, Lena Boroditsky, of Stanford, and Mark Liberman, of U. Penn., squared off on the above topic. Boroditsky advanced the Neo-Whorfian position that language does indeed shape thought. Liberman countered, noting that thought also shapes our language we speak, and the way we live shapes both language and thought. When we encounter or create new ideas, we can usually describe them with new combinations of old words. And if not, we easily adapt or borrow or create the new words or phrases we need. As Edward Sapir once put it, "We may say that a language is so constructed that no matter what any speaker of it may desire to communicate … the language is prepared to do his work."

"The results are bad news for universalists: "most observed functional dependencies between traits are lineage-specific rather than universal tendencies," according to the authors. [...] If universal features can't account for what we observe, what can? Common descent. "Cultural evolution is the primary factor that determines linguistic structure, with the current state of a linguistic system shaping and constraining future states." It's important to emphasize that this study looked at a specific language feature (word order)."

"[New research] is suggesting that atypical brain function is a fundamental aspect of speech production tasks for adults who stutter. ... "Now because many speech areas are interconnected across the two hemispheres through the corpus callosum, it might suggest that hemispheric dominance for speech and language has not been established to the same degree as it has been for normally fluent adults." ... Loucks then used functional magnetic resonance imaging of brain activity to study participants who stutter and found that even brief, simple speech tasks - such as producing a single word to name a picture - is associated with altered functional activity."

Why has Twitter spawned a whole twitterverse of new words from tweet cred to twitterrhoea? This article examines the birth of Twitter-based neologisms, offering some theories underlying the surge of tw- prefixed words.

Marketers and brand managers responsible for naming new products should be interested to learn that people associate certain sounds with nearness and others with distance, say researchers from the University of Toronto, whose new study adds to the body of knowledge about symbolic sound.

2006 NPR interactive news special on the social underpinnings of language, containing short sound bites with various language researchers. 5 topics are covered: the importance of context in helping deduce meaning, social connections and language, Theory of Mind (how humans observe each other, gauging the effect that words are having on listeners, in order to assess others' beliefs, intentions and desires), and empathy. The video clip of Kanzi, the bonobo ape, cooking hamburgers with his human friends is a classic!

Notes about Chaucer's writing, including his "golden rule" (polyvocality), and favorite trick ("conjuring new words to make lines rhyme or scan").

"A fascinating new exhibition at the British Library shows how all attempts to standardise the English language have been resisted - and that's why it continues to flourish today, says Adrian Hamilton."