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Stories related to: language

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Stories 1 - 20 of 27

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  • June 2008

    • 300M 'Chinglish' Speakers Can't Be Wrong

      newser  |  Wired  |  Jun 29, 08 5:52 AM CDT

      300M 'Chinglish' Speakers Can't Be Wrong

      Some 300 million English speakers in China are altering the language in small but important ways—and may be creating their own dialect, Michael Erard writes in Wired . So-called "Chinglish"—which stresses unique syllables, drops dos and dids, and adds sounds for questions—has already been studied in a Hong Kong exhibit and is used widely in Singapore books and films. More »

      Tags

      language  • Singapore  • English  • Chinese  • grammar

    • Unseemly Word Loses Its Sting

      newser  |  Esquire  |  Jun 21, 08 12:42 PM CDT

      Unseemly Word Loses Its Sting

      The word douchebag is in danger of losing its bite thanks to rampant overuse, writes Richard Dorment in Esquire . It's not that the "toxic mess of a man" population has increased, he observes. It may seem that way, what with reality TV and cable punditry promoting unsavory characters. But it's really that the term's literal meaning makes it clean enough to use on network TV. More »

      Tags

      language  • obscenity  • opinion  • profanity  • swearing  • insult

    • Doobly? Fipper? What Do You Call the Remote?

      newser  |  Guardian (UK)  |  Jun 17, 08 6:42 PM CDT

      Doobly? Fipper? What Do You Call the Remote?

      The English Project is looking for unique words used among friends and families, and it's found a particularly rich vein in alternative terms for the TV remote control, the Guardian of London reports. Favorites include: doobly, podger, blipper melly, didge, clicker More »

      Tags

      language  • TV remote control  • slang

  • May 2008

    • Chinese Create Slang for New Technology

      newser  |  I.D. Magazine  |  May 28, 08 5:05 PM CDT

      Chinese Create Slang for New Technology

      New technology has kids in China generating their own modern lingo, I.D. Magazine reports. The millennia-old Mandarin language lacks terms for things like cell phones (which go as shou ji , or "hand machine") and USB (which goes as yo pan , a word created partly phonetically), forcing users to resort to slang. The new words are spread through television and other pop culture. More »

      Tags

      China  • technology  • language  • slang  • Mandarin

    • Baby Birds' Babbling Suggests Intricate Brain

      newser  |  Boston Globe  |  May 5, 08 4:54 PM CDT

      Baby Birds' Babbling Suggests Intricate Brain

      Being bird-brained might not be much of an insult: New MIT research paints a more intricate portrait of how songbirds learn to sing, with one part of the brain used for learning and another for singing itself. Rather than maturing from babbling to birdsong, the independent but overlapping pathways work together during different life stages. More »

      Tags

      science  • brain  • language  • birds  • neuroscience  • speech  • science experiment

  • March 2008

    • Philly Steak Shop Can Keep 'Please Speak English' Signs

      newser  |  Philadelphia Inquirer  |  Mar 20, 08 5:10 PM CDT

      Philly Steak Shop Can Keep 'Please Speak English' Signs

      The owner of a Philadelphia institution can keep signs that ask customers to order their cheese steaks in English, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. A city agency ruled the signs at Geno's Steaks—"This is America. When ordering, please speak English"—do not violate discrimination rules; owner Joey Vento says he never turned away customers and just wanted to make a political point. More »

      Tags

      immigration  • Philadelphia  • America  • language  • English

    • Why Girls Are Better at Language

      newser  |  Scientific American  |  Mar 6, 08 11:12 AM CST

      Why Girls Are Better at Language

      Study after study has found that girls have better language skills than boys, and scientists now think they've found a biological reason why, Scientific American reports. Researchers discovered that girls showed more activity in the language part of their brains, which deciphers abstract encoding, than boys. The boys had more activity in the regions of the brain linked to auditory and visual function. More »

      Tags

      children  • education  • research  • language  • neurology  • neuroscience  • fMRI

    • Miami Needs to Study Spanish

      newser  |  Miami Herald  |  Mar 3, 08 1:30 PM CST

      Miami Needs to Study Spanish

      Miami's role as an international city—the "financial hub of Latin America," as one businessman calls it—is threatened by its residents' declining Spanish skills, the Miami Herald reports. Many descendants of the Cuban entrepreneurs and businessmen who flooded South Florida in the '60s and '70s speak only "kitchen Spanish"—good enough to talk to grandma, but not for business transactions. More »

      Tags

      immigrant  • Miami  • language  • Latinos  • Hispanics  • Spanish  • Cuban Americans  • bilingual education

  • January 2008

    • New Dictionary Helps Germans Steer Clear of 'Nazi Words'

      newser  |  Der Spiegel  |  Jan 31, 08 5:10 PM CST

      New Dictionary Helps Germans Steer Clear of 'Nazi Words'

      German words like "Endlösung" (final solution) have been tainted, likely forever, by their association with the Nazis. A new dictionary looks at how the horrors of Hitler's regime changed the German language, Der Spiegel reports. The "Dictionary of Coming to Terms With the Past" looks at how the usage and meaning of approximately 1,000 German words has changed. More »

      Tags

      Germany  • Nazi  • language  • dictionary

    • The Most Useless Words of 2007

      newser  |  Associated Press  |  Jan 1, 08 6:00 PM CST

      The Most Useless Words of 2007

      Do you roll your eyes every time a newscaster calls a coincidence a "perfect storm"? Cringe the thousandth time a teenager invokes "random"? The faculty at Lake Superior State University shares your vexation. Here are some selections from the school's list of words and phrases to be "banished" for "Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness" in 2007: "Perfect Storm" "Webinar" (web seminar) "Waterboarding" "Organic" "Wordsmith"/"Wordsmithing" More »

      Tags

      list  • language  • vocabulary  • words

  • December 2007

    • It's All Greek to Miss Belgium

      newser  |  AFP  |  Dec 17, 07 2:28 PM CST

      It's All Greek to Miss Belgium

      The new Miss Belgium sparked fury in Flanders this weekend with her admission that she doesn't speak Dutch, AFP reports. In a country already torn over the Flemish-French conflict that's derailed the government for months, 20-year-old Alizee Poulicek's attempt to speak the language of the country's majority was met with boos and mockery—but she still emerged victorious. More »

      Tags

      Netherlands  • language  • Belgium  • Flanders  • beauty pageant  • Guy Verhofstadt

    • Winning Word of 2007: 'W00t'

      newser  |  Associated Press  |  Dec 12, 07 10:47 AM CST

      Winning Word of 2007: 'W00t'

      W00t is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. The term is the victory cry of computer hackers and gamers, who also heatedly argue its origins. Merriam-Webster cites the explanation that gamers coined it as an alphanumeric acronym for “We Owned Other Team.” Contentious hackers claim it was code for when they gained “root” or complete access to a system. More »

      Tags

      language  • English  • dictionary  • Merriam Webster

    • American Languages Nearly Extinct

      newser  |  Smithsonian  |  Dec 2, 07 1:44 PM CST

      American Languages Nearly Extinct

      Johnny Hill Jr., a 53-year-old Arizonan, talks to himself in Chemehuevi, a language once spoken by many Southwestern Native Americans. He does that because there's rarely anyone for him to speak Chemehuevi with; Hill tried to teach the language to his stepson without success. There is every chance that the tongue will die with him, Smithsonian magazine writes, in a feature on Native American languages at risk of extinction. More »

      Tags

      language  • anthropology  • Native American

  • November 2007

    • Immigrant Kids Talk the Talk: 90% Master English

      newser  |  Los Angeles Times  |  Nov 30, 07 5:40 AM CST

      Immigrant Kids Talk the Talk: 90% Master English

      Although many Spanish-speaking immigrants who moved to America know little English, that's not true of their children and grandchildren, according to a new Pew survey. Only 23% of first-generation immigrants said they were competent in English, but 88% of second-generation and 94% of third-generation residents said they can carry on a conversation in English very well. More »

      Tags

      immigration  • immigrant  • language  • Latinos  • English  • Spanish  • bilingual education

    • I Swear! And More and More, in Public

      newser  |  Baltimore Sun  |  Nov 27, 07 2:55 PM CST

      I Swear! And More and More, in Public

      Profanity seems to be more and more widespread, but linguists suggest people aren't actually swearing more—they're just swearing more publicly. The tide of athletes and musicians who pepper their language with choice four-letter words is meeting a surge of media avenues that aren't regulated by the government, resulting in a flood of profanity, reports the Baltimore Sun . More »

      Tags

      television  • FCC  • language  • profanity  • Parents Television Council

    • Arabic, Asian Languages Gaining More US Students

      newser  |  San Jose Mercury News  |  Nov 14, 07 10:00 AM CST

      Arabic, Asian Languages Gaining More US Students

      American students are studying Arabic and Asian languages more than ever before, according to a Modern Language Association survey. Spanish has been the most studied language since 1995, still with more than 50% of students, but Arabic is fastest-growing, jumping 126.5% from 2002 to 2006—making up 1.5% of all language enrollments. Overall, modern language study was up 13%. More »

      Tags

      language  • Chinese  • Spanish  • Koreans  • Arabic

  • October 2007

    • Me Caveman, Me Talk

      newser  |  LiveScience  |  Oct 19, 07 5:20 AM CDT

      Me Caveman, Me Talk

      Neanderthals may have spoken much like we do, new research shows. Scientists examined a gene linked to language called FOXP2 in the DNA of cavemen bones discovered in northern Spain, and found that it was identical to ours. The gene is the only one known to be involved in human speech and language, though the lead researcher cautioned that others play a role. More »

      Tags

      DNA  • genes  • language  • speech  • genetic code  • Neanderthals

    • To Be, or Not: That Is the Question for Irregular Verbs

      newser  |  Los Angeles Times  |  Oct 11, 07 10:44 AM CDT

      To Be, or Not: That Is the Question for Irregular Verbs

      Irregular verbs, much like the Kennewick Man, evolve. But, much like the woolly mammoth, sometimes they vanish altogether, and linguists and evolutionary theorists have teamed up to compute their extinction times—in terms of half-lives. The study, published this week in Nature , shows that irregular forms of lesser-used verbs are the first to become regularized. More »

      Tags

      evolution  • language  • linguistics  • Kennewick Man

  • September 2007

    • Mum's Almost The Word for Endangered Languages

      newser  |  Yahoo!  |  Sep 19, 07 5:10 AM CDT

      Mum's Almost The Word for Endangered Languages

      A language dies about every two weeks and thousands are at risk, warned linguists, who yesterday identified five global hotspots where languages are most endangered. Several native American languages are dying out in the Southwest and regions including British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Indigenous communication is also vanishing in rural Australia, Siberia and central South America. More »

      Tags

      language  • mathematics  • Native American  • linguistics

    • World's Smartest Parrot Is No More

      newser  |  Boston Globe  |  Sep 11, 07 3:27 PM CDT

      World's Smartest Parrot Is No More

      Brandeis researchers feel as though they’ve lost a colleague: Alex, the African gray parrot they studied for 30 years, died Friday. He helped them reach surprising new conclusions about the avian brain and “was extraordinary in breaking the perceptions of birds as not being intelligent,” according to scientist Irene Pepperberg, who bought him in 1977. More »

      Tags

      obituary  • language  • African gray parrot  • parrot  • cognitive development

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