Words R Us

Childrenʻs hospital questionnaire explores the adverse affects of lack of Spanish proficient staff members on the communication and care of Spanish-speaking families with Limited English Proficiency. Debunks perception that suboptimal communication is achieved, even though nonproficient residents rely on their own inadequate language skills, impose on their proficient colleagues, or avoid communication with LEP families.

This editorial explores and details the positives and subsequent draw backs of English being used nearly exclusively as the language of science. Discusses the present prejudices implicated against non native speakers of english, and how those within the science community can minimize these challenges.

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).

An analysis of tweets written by self-reported twitter users with ADHD. Aims to understand how their language is used and how it is correlated to personality and temporal orientation.

NPR Short Wave host and reporter Emily Kwong is a third generation Chinese American, but she hasn't spoken or learned her language. She begins her journey at 30.

An unreleased study tracked infants', a group with autistic older siblings and another without, gaze when shown a video of an adult speaking while surrounded by toys. The two groups had similar times in watching the screen and mouth and face of the actor as a whole. But it was shown that the younger siblings may not internalize the linguistic clues that help babies learn language.

Chinese characters have been an obstacle preventing the development of Chinese proficiency for learners of Chinese whose native language does not have characters. A substantial literature review identified linguistic, pedagogical, and political factors as causes of those difficulties. Tone changes represent different meanings of a word. Compound characters include the phonetic component radicals that do not always sound the same as the phonetic radicals. These unique linguistic features of the Chinese language add even more challenges for learning of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL).Technology integration has been found to facilitate the teaching and learning foreign languages in many efficient and effective ways.

When the Communists took over Mainland China, the literacy rate in China was below 20%. It is now 95%, according to some estimates. The same rate among young people (15 to 24 years old) is now 99.6%, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. And while the literacy rate in 1990 was 87% for men and 68% for women, in 2010 it was 98% for men and 93% for women. Many experts ascribe this considerable achievement to the simplification of Chinese written characters, actively promoted by the communists in the 1950s. Along with traditional Chinese characters, a simplified set of Chinese characters is one of the two sets of the contemporary Chinese written language.

An NPR/Ipsos poll in December found that a significant number of Americans believe disinformation about the coronavirus and about settled historical facts. The findings underscore the enduring nature of unfounded conspiracies at a time when experts say disinformation is being spread on an unprecedented scale. The Internet gives conspiracy theorists a place to connect, and social media gives them a way to quickly disseminate their ideas on a mass scale. Disinformation peddlers are trying to drive traffic to websites where they can make money, or they're trying to shape a political narrative.

Interesting article re: designing an efficient and responsive bot: leveraging key human linguistic features in order to have the machine "converse" with humans, comprehend their needs, and respond appropriately. Programming a machine to exhibit the conversational nuances and sophisticated comprehension of a normal human=hard.

Review of some large studies around social media use and mental health by the nih.

Interesting video on how using social media in different ways can affect mood positively / negatively. Specifically passive versus active use of social media.

Article about social media effects on mental health. Talks about fear of missing out and reward dopamine centers and brain.

mood and social media

Article was shared by my friend and colleague, Yunus Peer. The etymology of why we call groups of animals a particular noun truly derives from humans' instinctive nature to categorize and compartmentalize identifiers in their brain. For this reason, collective nouns were created to describe particular animal groups. That way, even without the identifying noun of the animal itself, when referring to collective nouns like a shrewdness roaming the jungle, one can safely assume the speaker is talking about a group of apes.

Duke professionals discuss linguistic racism, inclusive language, how they can avoid linguistic racism, use inclusive language, and more.

This article talks about our relationship with our own language. It is interesting because it makes a connection between our grammar/word choice and our mental health and gives advice on how to improve our lives.

This is an interesting page from dictionary.com the qualifications that a word needs and the process a word goes through to change from just a word to a part of an official dictionary.

This article talks about an interesting discovery that our speed to understand language may be able to change, as deaf people, who are more used to sign language, were also quicker to recognize human body language unrelated to sign language.

A common occurrence in text messages is the emoji. More people use emojis worldwide than the amount of people that are fluent in the world's most popular language, Mandarin. With the evolution from "keyboard emojis" [i.e. :) and >:( ] to what we currently know as emojis (the little pictures of faces and whatnot), we have developed these "unwritten definitions" for each distinct emoji, such as the different meanings behind each of the smiling emojis (