Words R Us

With 2020 being an election year, several key states along the presidential campaign trail get thrown into the spotlight. Candidates, celebrities, and the media all have been criticized for pronouncing some states' names incorrectly. States such as Nevada, Florida, Missouri, and Colorado are some controversial states with debated pronunciations. As this article investigates, although states have pronunciation from its original language, it has evolved and people today believe they're in the right. Read the article to find out whether you're pronouncing state names correctly.

Fun article! And then there's "Hah-WHY-yuh"...LOL!

This story takes a look at other papers on JSTOR to outline how politicians can deploy metaphors, vocabulary, and rhetorical devices to frame the debate and sway voters and listeners. This is the first of a two part article. It describes, specifically, the similarities between political rhetoric and advertising techniques deployed by companies. In both instances, those using language are seeking to present a certain image of themselves.

This UCLA conducted study focuses on how children need social language cues to assist with their linguistic development. There were two studies conducted. One focused on what social cues are given to children by their parents to assist in language development and if parents even facilitate this process by giving social cues and knowledge all all.

This article details on why it can be easier to learn a language when you're exposed to multiple languages. It strengthens your ability to differentiate and potentially recognize different languages. It comes from research conducted at University of Washington.

One of the central questions of Words R Us is what conditions fostered the emergence of language. In this article, you can discover where the 'F' and 'V' sounds, so challenging to replicate in ventriloquism, came from. A hint is that diet influenced the human bite and mouth shape, but take a peek to find out more!

The letter X is in vogue: from the iPhone 10 X, Latinx, to Gen X, it's everywhere. What catapulted this letter to notoriety? Read this article/listen to the podcast to find out what gives this letter its trendy and edgy vibe.

Maori is having a revival across New Zealand. Indigenous people are increasingly embracing their language, rejecting generations of stigma and shame associated with its use. And white New Zealanders are looking to Maori language and culture to help them make sense of their own cultural identity. As of 2013, just 3.7 percent of New Zealanders spoke the language fluently, and many predicted that it would soon die out. But analysts say Maori's status is shifting, and a basic knowledge of the language has come to signify cultural cool in a country that continues to wrestle with its colonial and indigenous roots. Now New Zealand's government, which says it wants more than 20 percent of the country's population to speak basic Maori by 2040, has pledged to provide Maori lessons in all New Zealand schools by 2025, despite a dearth of teachers who can speak the language.

This article talks about how the native Maori language is being revived in New Zealand. New Zealand was colonized by the British in the 19th century. Since that time, Maori language was looked down upon making it the minority language, but now with the recent rise of Maori speakers, it has started to become a common language used. This article talks about how every school is teaching Maori in their classes, and how they want Maori to be one of the dominantly spoken languages in New Zealand by 2040.

This article discusses the history of the Maori language and its progression throughout recent history. The Maori language was threatened like many other native languages in the world due to the aggression from the British. In the article shows how the people of the country are coming to terms with the past in order to build a brighter future for the native Maori culture and language.

In a group of internationally adopted children with cleft lip and/or palate, speech at age five is impaired compared to a corresponding group of children born in Sweden, a study shows. The adopted children also need more extensive surgery, which may be due to their surgical interventions taking place later in life.

In an article in Brain, researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and elsewhere report which brain regions must be intact in stroke survivors with aphasia if they are to perform well in a speech entrainment session, successfully following along with another speaker.

As language evolves and new terms enter the mainstream, teenagers are often blamed for debasing linguistic standards. In some cases, their preferred forms of communication-like text messaging-are attacked. But, teens don't actually influence language as much as is often claimed. That's one of the key findings in the latest linguistic research by Mary Kohn, an assistant professor of English at Kansas State University. How much a person's vernacular changes over time may have as much to do with personality and social standing as it has to do with age. The extent to which teenagers are credited with (or blamed for) driving lasting change to language is, she says, "grossly overstated." The same factors that prompt teens to experiment with new language are applicable to people at many stages of life.

This article is essentially explaining that teens aren't the main cause for a dramatic change in our language but actually innovators bringing in new words into our daily vocabulary. It also says that everybody can change language, as some words become "dated" and others don't. Teens aren't the only ones to blame for modern lingo.

Rhett and Link go through an entire day basically only saying one word. I find this to be pretty interesting for the first few minutes, but it gets boring afterwards. This is due to the fact that they end up using gestures (like pointing or mimicking) to convey what they mean. While it gets boring, there are some moments where they seem to understand each other perfectly. Other people also catch on, so that is pretty interesting too.

This article discusses the newly arising Internet Language. Not only can these new internet grammar structures and phrases often convey messages that conventional language simply cannot, but it also does this more efficiently and casually.

In our mouths or in print, in villages or in cities, in buildings or in caves, a language doesn't sit still. It can't. Language change has preceded apace even in places known for preserving a language in amber. You may have heard that Icelanders can still read the ancient sagas written almost a thousand years ago in Old Norse.

This article examines the evolution of the work like, and how new usages of the word are still arising.

Researchers have long agreed girls have superior language abilities to boys, but haven't clearly provided a biological basis to account for their differences. For the first time and in unambiguous findings, researchers show both that brain areas associated with language work harder in girls during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on very different parts of the brain when performing these tasks. Language processing is more abstract in girls, more sensory in boys.

This article discusses how we might alter the language we use to discuss climate change in order to instill urgency and encourage meaningful action. It describes Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy's publication "An Ecotopian Lexicon," a book of words to better convey the crisis of climate change. In the spirits of science fiction writers who often create new vocabulary for their imagined worlds, the two professors assembled a committee of writers, scholars, and artists to compile loan words that would more adequately communicate the reality of the climate crisis. These words were taken from languages such as Thai, Gaeilge, Norwegian, and Luganda. They hope that intentionally influencing the language we treat climate change with will help influence the action and imagination we apply to it. As written, "our inability to imagine another path forward reflects a limited vocabulary. "

This article is about how a child's first language can include more than just words. According to UNESCO, "Mother tongue or mother language refers to a child's first language, the language learned in the home from older family members." A child's language should be allowed and encouraged to be multilingual if their culture has a different language. There is more to a child's first language than just words because it also includes cultural and ancestral history that should and can be passed on to future generations. But since in some households parents don't encourage their children to learn their cultural language many children are losing out on this.

This article is about how the pronoun "they" has been used more frequently to refer to someone who identifies as non-gender binary. I find it interesting that now society has been more accepting of the LGBTQ community in recent years more than in the past. "They" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun.

This article examines the relationship between borrowed language and bilingual speakers' grasp of their known languages. It highlights the implicit understanding of grammar rules that bilingual speakers naturally develop for their languages and debunks the misconception that loan words damage a speaker's understanding of another language. The article described a study on bilingual speakers in Ottawa-Hull who combined language (code-switching or "mish-mashing") while still following the correct grammatical structures. (i.e. "If a verb was borrowed from English, it was conjugated in strict accordance with the rules for conjugating French verbs..") It also reminded readers that pronunciation is not intrinsically tied to language proficiency.

This article talks about how the Quakers have had a unique use of pronouns in history. I found it interesting that the Quakers refused to use the proper pronouns for rich people such as "you" in the 1600s. They would call people "thou" regardless of class, but rich people were used to using "thou" for lower people. However, "thou" evolved into "they" which is now presently used.

This article discusses how the African American Diaspora affected the vernacular of Black English. I found it interesting how black people in Canada have a different English vernacular than those in the South. The difference was astounding. You could hear some audio clips in the article.