The English language is a wonderful thing, and we know some rules without knowing we know them.
‘Have you ever heard that patter-pitter of tiny feet? Or the dong-ding of a bell? Or hop-hip music? That’s because, when you repeat a word with a different vowel, the order is always I A O. Bish bash bosh. So politicians may flip-flop, but they can never flop-flip. It’s tit-for-tat, never tat-for-tit. This is called ablaut reduplication, and if you do things any other way, they sound very, very odd indeed.’ From ‘The Elements of Eloquence’ by Mark Forsyth.
Hello Fediverse. This is my #Introduction. I'm an audiovisual and editorial #translator looking to connect with fellow #translators and #language lovers to exchange ideas on: why languages are great, why translation is amazing, and how we can navigate the #translation industry now AI is becoming more and more impactful. #Xl8
Hello! We're a bunch of linguists, lexicographers, authors and editors who enjoy swearing and writing about swearing on Strong Language: https://stronglang.wordpress.com/
Interested in the linguistics and culture of swearing, profanity, taboo language, etc.
“All gendered "-men" nouns immediately become delightful when you substitute "-folk": fisherfolk, countryfolk. And even when there's a perfectly suitable gender-neutral alternative, firefighters & guards pale in comparison to firefolk & watchfolk. In this essay I will”
For more context, people in China have been assembling plain white bread sandwiches to try to understand how we live in this part of the world, and they are posting through it (the idea of eating anything cold or raw, especially a vegetable, is seen as especially disgusting in the Chinese world, with some exceptions)
I love that the French word for a large public lobby or the entrance hall to a big public building (such as a train station, courthouse, city hall, etc.) is "salle des pas perdus"—literally "the room of lost steps"—because people tend to pace around a lot in those places, so their steps are essentially lost, wasted, going nowhere.
As a kid, my sister misheard that term and called it "la salle des pains perdus"—"the room of French toast"—which does sound like a much better place to hang out. I think she was on to something. #language
Language can be a time machine—we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? Ph.D. candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left traces in Lithuanian and...
I ended my time on Duolingo in the #NewYear, after finding out they sacked a bunch of translators and are now relying on AI to generate sentences for learning. Essentially, they are just generating the content via AI and having a limited number of translators "check the work" before putting it up into their programs.
I also noticed that, the longer I went on in my Duolingo program, the quality of the learning seemed to decrease dramatically, and after learning about the AI thing, it started to dawn on me that this could be part of the reason for that. But even if it isn't related, the fact that they are making this move toward AI only means in the future, the learning WILL decrease in quality whether we like it or not, and that's no fun at all.
So No Thanks, #Duolingo. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
We are looking for talented junior scientists to join our International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Two fully-funded 4-year #PhD fellowships (2024-2028) are available to carry out cutting-edge research on #genetics and #development of human #language, with several innovative projects to choose from, co-supervised by leading researchers at the Max Planck Institute and our partners at the Radboud University. Projects include investigating rare #DNA variants in genes that cause developmental speech/language disorders, and neuroimaging #genomic analyses of language circuits in the brain.
Researcher investigates undocumented prehistoric languages through irregularities in current languages (phys.org)
Language can be a time machine—we can learn from ancient texts how our ancestors interacted with the world around them. But can language also teach us something about people whose language has been lost? Ph.D. candidate Anthony Jakob investigated whether the languages of prehistoric populations left traces in Lithuanian and...
The Role of Myth in Language: From Lingua Adamica to Babel (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
Linguist Marina Yaguello traces the myths, legends, and religious narratives that have shaped humanity's understanding of the origins of language.