Languages

“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” - Amira from Bookmarklet

I have read several books in Japanese translation of his works .for example the language instinct etc.He was referring to the theory that Chomsky ,and has attempted to clearly the relationship between the brain and human language acquisition and more. - Ami Iida

This is especially true of blogs and science -- the Gallery has ways of browsing, contributing, and forming local galleries -- maybe a good place to increase knowledge of science blogging by establishing a local gallery for science2.0? - Mickey Schafer

"It's difficult for us to imagine what our mental lives would be like without language. Some theorists have even gone so far as to argue that language and logical thought are one and the same thing. A new brain imaging study challenges this notion by showing that logical inferences based on simple "not", "or", "if", "then" terms activate a separate, though overlapping, network of brain regions compared with logical inferences based on grammatical judgements. (...) Monti's team said their findings were hard to reconcile "with the claim that language and logic are a unitary phenomenon". Rather, they argued their results are consistent with language and logic being separate processes. The grammar-based statements appeared to be solvable using language networks of the brain, whilst purer logic was dealt with by a distinct neural network not dependent on language. (...) The new and old findings together show that "much of thought is not embedded in language", they said." - Amira from Bookmarklet

Linguists have known for years that human language is not logic. One person can say "there's nothing wrong with that" or another "ain't nothing wrong with that" -- both people mean exactly the same. A single phrase like "the ambassador was entertaining last night" can mean two different things -- he was behaving in an amusing manner, or he threw a party. One word like "sanction" can actually mean two opposite things -- allow to happen, or block from happening. You don't need brain scans to tell you this... - Andrew Clegg

This year it will be announced that China now has more English speakers than any other country in the world. And such is the demand for their services that top teachers have become big stars. (...) In China, English allows you to travel, to gain social advancement, and English-language teachers have become minor celebrities. Another giant of English-language learning is Dashan, a Canadian whose English name is Mark Rowswell and whose fluent Chinese has transformed him into the most famous Westerner in China – taxi drivers and passers-by point at him. His language-teaching shows, including programmes such as Dashan's Adventures in Canada, have made him a television legend. He also hosts shows teaching Chinese to foreigners – though his amazing Chinese skill annoys some incomers, who have been satirical of his ability to blend in at Chinese gatherings. But he is adored by the Chinese, especially for his mastering of the wildly popular xiangsheng (crosstalk) comedy style. - Amira from Bookmarklet

"This suggests a different way of thinking about the influence of language on thought: words are very handy mnemonics. We may not be able to remember what seventeen spools looks like, but we can remember the word seventeen. In his landmark The Language of Thought, philosopher Jerry Fodor argued that many words work like acronyms. French students use the acronym bans to remember which adjectives go before nouns ("Beauty, Age, Number, Goodneess, and Size"). Similarly, sometimes its easier to remember a word (calculus, Estonia) than what the word stands for. We use the word, knowing that should it becomes necessary, we can search through our minds -- or an encyclopedia -- and pull up the relevant information (how to calculate an integral; Estonia's population, capital and location on a map). Numbers, it seems, work the same way." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet

"Do bilinguals have an internal switch that stops their two languages from interfering with each other, or are both languages always "on"? The fact that bilinguals aren't forever spurting out words from the wrong language implies there's some kind of switch. Moreover, in 2007, brain surgeons reported evidence for a language switch when their cortical prodding with an electrode caused two bilingual patients to switch languages suddenly and involuntarily. On the other hand, there's good evidence that languages are integrated in the bilingual mind. For example, bilinguals are faster at naming an object when the word for that object is similar or the same in the two languages they speak (e.g. ship/schip in English and Dutch). Now Eva Van Assche and colleagues have provided further evidence for the idea of bilingual language integration by showing that a person's second language affects the way that they read in their native language." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet

This is a list of all the blogs that have been nominated for the category Language Learning. After pre-screening, 100 of the nominated blogs were admitted to the voting phase (you will find more details on the process here). Each admitted blog has a 'vote' button atttached to its name. Click on vote to cast your vote for your favourite blog! - Amira from Bookmarklet

Visuwords is a thesaurus reimagined as a toy. It asks you to think of a word and then turns that word into a universe of bouncing, rotating, vibrating meaning by pulling related words into orbit around it. The words careen off one another like balls on a billiard table until they settle down, at which point you can set them in motion again — or choose a new word. It's highly addictive, especially for English majors. - Amira from Bookmarklet

great link! - Ashalynd

Visual Thesaurus does something like this, too -- http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ - Mickey Schafer

"A new study looks at what happens when a language doesn't have words for numbers. (...) "We think in words. The more words you know, the more thoughts you can have." This compound notion that language allows you to have ideas otherwise un-haveable, and that by extension people who own different words live in different conceptual worlds -- called "Whorfianism" after its academic evangelist, Benjamin Lee Whorf -- is so pervasive in modern thought as to be unremarkable. (...) This suggests a different way of thinking about the influence of language on thought: words are very handy mnemonics. We may not be able to remember what seventeen spools looks like, but we can remember the word seventeen. In his landmark The Language of Thought, philosopher Jerry Fodor argued that many words work like acronyms. French students use the acronym bans to remember which adjectives go before nouns ("Beauty, Age, Number, Goodneess, and Size"). Similarly, sometimes its easier to remember a word (calculus,... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

Absolutely. About to start on Chapter 2: Culture. Try the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, some of the Thomas Theorum, and Harold Garfinkel. Of course Weber, Mead, Cooley and the like emphasized that without language we have no communication, no culture, no society. That's what makes us different from apes. - Chad Gesser from iPhone

"Time was, fail was simply a verb that denoted being unsuccessful or falling short of expectations. It made occasional forays into nounhood, in fixed expressions like without fail and no-fail. That all started to change in certain online subcultures about six years ago. In July 2003, a contributor to Urbandictionary.com noted that fail could be used as an interjection “when one disapproves of something,” giving the example: “You actually bought that? FAIL.” This punchy stand-alone fail most likely originated as a shortened form of “You fail” or, more fully, “You fail it,” the taunting “game over” message in the late-’90s Japanese video game Blazing Star, notorious for its fractured English." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet

"On March 20-22 at Brown University, the Language Creation Society hosted the 3rd Language Creation Conference, a tribal gathering of self-described language geeks, (a label I proudly wear along with my newly acquired LCS pin, with its symbolic Tower of Babel). Conlanging (from constructed language) is obsessional, hermetic, prolix, and involves Deep Chops, combined with the spirit of play. It’s geeky, even cosmically geeky, as Jeff Burke (aka White Thunder), creator of the Central Mountain Languages, puts it. [...]" - Peter from Bookmarklet

"[...] In "In The Land of Invented Languages", author Arika Okrent tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. Peopled with charming eccentrics and exasperating megalomaniacs, the land of invented languages is a place where you can recite the Lord’s Prayer in John Wilkins’s Philosophical Language, say your wedding vows in Loglan, and read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in Lojban. [...]" - Peter from Bookmarklet

In fact, i've just bought it! - Eyoki

The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages. Since becoming a National Science Digital Library collection in 2004, the Rosetta Archive has more than doubled its collection size, now serving nearly 100,000 pages of material documenting over 2,500 languages--the largest resource of its kind on the Net. - Amira from Bookmarklet

"We think differently from all other creatures on earth, and we can share those thoughts with one another in ways that no other species even approaches. In comparison, the rest of our biology is almost incidental. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have produced hundreds of thousands of species with brains, and tens of thousands with complex behavioral, perceptual, and learning abilities. Only one of these has ever wondered about its place in the world, because only one evolved the ability to do so." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Though we share the same earth with millions of kinds of living creatures, we also live in a world that no other species has access to. We inhabit a world full of abstractions, impossibilities, and paradoxes. We alone brood about what didn't happen, and spend a large part of each day musing about the way things could have been if events had transpired differently. And we alone ponder... more... - Amira

Really like this quote, though I would add the caveat:" to the best of our knowledge at present".. (I refer to this:" Only one of these has ever wondered about its place in the world, because only one evolved the ability to do so."" - Wildcat

I never really bought into the idea of subjectivity. I think that really any disagreement about how things are is due to misconceptions, not because of a different viewpoint caused by the use of different abstractions. Red is always red, even if you call it green, even if you perceive it as green. - Alexander Kruel

"WORRIED about the loss of rainforests, the ozone layer, quokkas? Well, none of those is doing any worse than a large majority of the 6000 to 7000 languages that remain in use on earth. One-half of the survivors will almost certainly be gone by the middle of this century, while 40 per cent more will probably be well on their way out. In their place, almost all humans will speak one of a handful of megalanguages - Mandarin, English, Spanish - although often a poor version of them. [...]" - Peter from Bookmarklet

"[...] Who is to blame? Noam Chomsky [...]" // Yeah! - Peter

"Usarufa is a language of Papua New Guinea with just 1200 speakers (ISO-639 code "usa"). There's no fluent speakers under the age of 25, so the language must be considered moribund....I played them a recording of the "last words" of the Jiwarli language of Western Australia. After some questioning looks I explained that this language is now dead, and we were listening to its last speaker before he died. As one they all looked down, shaking their heads in disbelief and saying sorry, sorry, sorry…. It was as if I told them a mutual friend had died. They urged me to put that recording on a cassette tape so they could take it back to their village. That way, everyone would surely understand what will happen to the Usarufa language unless there are serious attempts to revitalize it." - Shannon Jiménez from Bookmarklet

"For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at best untestable and more often simply wrong. Research in my labs at Stanford University and at MIT has helped reopen this question. We have collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. What we have learned is that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. [...]" - Peter from Bookmarklet

An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them. A dictionary that evolves as language does. On Wordnik, users can add new words and meanings, tag words with related expressions, see real-time search results for words from Twitter and Flickr, discover how many Scrabble points each word is worth. http://www.wordnik.com/ - Amira from Bookmarklet

I've contributed to this. Don't know if it will be accepted yet, lol - Peter McLean

"ARTICLE 20: THE RIGHT TO BE IN-BETWEEN - This article enshrines inalienably the right to alienation for those who want it: Republicans of the in-between, celebrants of the glorious prefix trans and all its panoply of cognates: cousins, second cousins, siblings, half-siblings, in-laws and out, the neither/nor, the both/and, the none of the above, the signatories of the dotted sideline, citizens of the hard-shoulder, the terrain vague, the inside-out and outside-in, the bi-, the semi-, the demi-, the ambi-, the half-blood, the half-cast, the rainbow-shades of grey, the entre deux-guerres and the entre-deux-mers, the slipstream and the tributary, the river that changes its name, the visa that’s all in the vista and the port that’s all in the passing. [...] " - Peter

"[...] De Europese Grondwet in Verzen: een lang gedicht waarin Europees enthousiasme wordt genuanceerd door kritische zin, het grote gebaar aanschurkt tegen poëtische intimiteit en de nodige sérieux zich laat rijmen met satire. [...]" - Peter

Thanks for the post. I bookmarked the site. - Peter McLean

http://zompist.com/euro.htm#ie the numbers 1 to 10 in Indo-European Languages - John Hardy

Beautiful visualization, although it's politically really incorrect to list Croatian as Serbo-Croatian. - Goran Zec

The political reality doesn't change linguistic one. - John Hardy

"Like modern-day explorers, the two academics featured in The Linguists travel to forgotten places around the globe to unearth rare treasures—in this case, endangered languages. On a shoestring budget, professors David Harrison and Gregory Anderson" - Peter from Bookmarklet

The film is a bit hyper. Trying too hard to show that linguistics is NOT DULL. - Peter

Here's a direct link to the movie: http://www.babelgum.com/html.... The editing could've been better. It seems to me that the structure of the film makes it seem hyper and maybe even a little bit confusing. Either way, I liked the part with the man who claimed to be an expert in Kallawaya. If I had been one of the linguists, I would've started laughing as soon as I heard him speak in Quechua and Spanish. - Rebeca

http://www.drentswoordenboek.nl/ - Peter

Do you write posts in more than one language? Are you concerned that one of the languages you use could cause your followers to unsubscribe or hide your posts? Have you created separated accounts or restrain your usage of specific languages to specific groups? - Brome

I don't hold back using my native language. If people object to being confronted by languages they don't care to know, it's their problem. - Peter