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Award-winning, Chinese contemporary artist, Xu Bing, has created _Book From the Ground_, a text that speakers of any language can "read." His interest in pictorial storytelling was heightened by a bubblegum wrapper he happened upon-a series of three images connected by two arrows that instructed the chewer to put the gum back into the wrapper after chewing and throw it in the trash. This became Xu's inspiration for _Book from the Ground_. Xu's book reflects cultural literacy and modern tools and technologies, rather than traditional literacy. The author predicts that the younger generation is likely to find his icon language easier to "read" because they've been exposed to these images for as long as they can remember on the Internet. "I think it can be seen two ways," says Robert Harrist, a professor of Chinese art history at Columbia University who has taught a semester-length course on Xu's work. "It's great that everybody can communicate now and stay in touch constantly through one medium or another, a kind of shared, plugged-in visual world." But at the same time, with the "flattening and evening out in communication so much is lost," especially when it comes to tense or nuance. "The real surprising thing here and the challenge and the thing I love about it is he makes you ask yourself: What is writing?" adds Harrist, who describes Xu as "the greatest living Chinese artist, simple as that.... Everything he does is profoundly thoughtful."

This article is interesting. It makes me theorize that birds can speak different languages, like how humans can be bilingual, trilingual, etc. I don't think animals can really understand each other, but they learn to do so in their hostile environment. My questions is this: humans are animals, so why can't we understand other animal's language like how, the video we watched in class claimed/Mrs. Stewart said, one species can understand the calls of other species? My answer is simply because we don't have to. Our environment doesn't force us to really pay attention to the signs and warnings of calls and such of predators because we are the dominant animals.

This is an interesting article adding a positive outlook on swearing and how it can be beneficial to us. It also emphasizes the difference between "swearing" and "cursing."

This article was very interesting because it analyzed the way President Trump delivers his speeches. The linguist talks about how many perceive the way he talks as "uneducated", however, this is not the case. He speaks the way he does because he wants to talk like a normal person and therefore be relatable to everyday Americans.

research-based on digital technologies and teen "courtship" practices

This is really interesting because it fairly accurately depicts teenagers use of technology in relationships. Also it's something a lot of people in Words R Us can relate too...

Donald Trump is probably known as one of the most interesting presidents and speakers we know. His common short phrases of, "Believe me", "Not good", and "Build a wall" are some of his most known. This article explains how a linguistic professor studied Trump's speech for two years to try and understand what makes Trump so intriguing to listen to. It also goes on to explain how his speech compares to normal everyday Americans and commonly known politicians.

Just in case you were under the misimpression that artificial intelligence will be taking over the world shortly, this article suggests that digital assistants really can't even handle the sort of everyday linguistic interaction that humans take for granted. Still, it is interesting to find out how product engineers are designing the assistants to become "smarter" at comprehending your words and requests. Machine learning algorithms can help devices deal with turn-by-turn exchanges. But each verbal exchange is limited to a simple, three- or four-turn conversation.

Interesting article exploring how idiomatic phrases like "under my thumb", "fed up," and "hoodwinked" have their origins in falconry.

Love comes in all different shapes, sizes and languages. Helena Halmari, English and Linguistics professor, held a forum on Friday that examined love letters between Finnish composer Jean Sibelius and his wife, Aino. Halmari has been studying the letters through which the couple corresponded. What Halmari has found to be so interesting is that Jean wrote mostly in Swedish, while Aino wrote in Finnish. She talked about the different ways she studied the languages. "I wanted to get a general idea of how the languages were divided," said Halmari. "I knew that it could be very simple because Sibelius uses Swedish and Aino uses Finnish, but it wasn't always simple because they sometimes mixed each other's languages together. Most of the time, though, they stick to their own languages, which didn't make it hard for them at all because they were both bilingual." One would expect the use of two different languages to affect communication in some way, especially negatively. However, Jean and Aino were able to clearly understand each other, and even appreciated the other's use of their first language. Halmarin discussed the relationship between the two. "I don't think their use of two different languages impeded their communication because they both knew each other's languages," said Halmari. "For Jean, Swedish was the preferred written language, because he always worried that he would make mistakes when writing in Finnish." While she has examined forms of bilingual audio communication, such as medieval sermons and recordings, the letters are the first written form of bilingual communication that Halmari has come across. "I haven't looked at letters that were like this before," Halmari said. "In my research, I've looked at bilingual spoken language like recordings, and even email correspondence. They tend to follow the same patterns, though it's not as clear, because some people mix the languages sometimes within the same senten

Linguist are trying to document and record quickly dying languages. They try writing down and making dictionaries of these endangered languages. Documentation can be the key to revitalization. But if no one is interested in revitalization then there it is just like keeping museum artifacts.

English is the most used language on the internet. But it affects the way different language speakers interpret information. There is a disconnect in interpretation even though information is easily accessible in other languages. It is also interesting that many of those whose L1 is not English, prefer to post on Twitter in English.

Interesting interview with Steven Weinberger, linguistics professor at George Mason University, about how and when we develop accents, and how they affect our identity.

This article talks about why people swear, and when it could be acceptable. It's interesting how swearing has become such a big part of our language when only a few years ago it was considered extremely bad. This article also goes into how swearing can be used in speeches to further convey a point. Swearing is seen to portray more passion.

The constant crackle when you go underwater at the beach is actually shrimp communicating through different volume and intensity of clicks and snaps. Very interesting way of language and communication for these invertebrates.

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

There was nothing very interesting in Katherine P. Rankin's study of sarcasm - at least, nothing worth your important time. All she did was use an M.R.I. to find the place in the brain where the ability to detect sarcasm resides. But then, you probably already knew it was in the right parahippocampal gyrus.

This article talked about basic rules and structures in creating your own language. For example in creating your own language, you have to consider nouns, verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. You need to first start with verbs in the infinitive form and then structurally conjugate them with prefixes or suffixes. This article was interesting and all, but I was sort of looking for how to create your own language. This article seemed to talk about how Aliens would talk in the english language.

In this article, Peterson talked about how he got inspired to create the dothraki language. He said he took a course at UC Berkeley because he took a course in morphology which is the study of forms of things in particular. So he researched the words he wanted to use in the show and found their origin and started playing with sounds, phrasing, sentence structure, and ordering. But, he did pull language tools from J.J. R Tolkein and it seems like he had help from other outside sources. Although his made up language became famous in the world of Game of Thrones, he did not entirely create it himself. This article was interesting and all, but I still didn't find what I was looking for in how people create their own languages. Maybe ill try looking into J.J.R Tolkein's work.