The Status of the Least Documented Language Families in the World

This paper, by Harald Hammarström, aims to list all known language families that are not yet extinct and all of whose member languages are very poorly documented, i.e., less than a sketch grammar’s worth of data has been collected. It explains what constitutes a valid family, what amount and kinds of documentary data are sufficient, when a language is considered extinct, and more. It is hoped that the survey will be useful in setting priorities for documentation fieldwork, in particular for those documentation efforts whose underlying goal is to understand linguistic diversity.

This interesting report can be accessed here, through the Language Documentation & Conservation site.

A View from England: What did you say?

"It's well-known that England and America are two countries divided by a common language, but I wonder how many people realize that even the simplest words can have different meanings and be cause for confusion."

An interesting read of the differences between American English and British English can be found here...

The brain speaks: Scientists Decode Words from Brain Signals

In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.

Click here to read the full report

Australia tries to halt loss of Aboriginal languages

A recent article about language loss, language revival, and language maintenance, and bilingual schooling, in Australia.

Click here to read about Australia's attempts to save our Indigenous languages...

Language documentation and conservation

An extremely interesting journal for all those interested in language documentation and conservation - the Journal of Language Documentation and Conservation (LD&C). LD&C publishes papers on all topics related to language documentation and conservation, including, but not limited to, the goals of language documentation, data management, fieldwork methods, ethical issues, orthography design, reference grammar design, lexicography, methods of assessing ethnolinguistic vitality, archiving matters, language planning, areal survey reports, short field reports on endangered or underdocumented languages, reports on language maintenance, preservation, and revitalization efforts.

With many different and captivating journal articles, this is a must-see site for any budding linguist.

Click here to go to the LD&C site - and have fun!

Rare Find: A New Language

As native tongues rapidly become extinct, linguists discover an exotic specimen. In the foothills of the Himalayas, two field linguists have uncovered a find as rare as any endangered species—a language completely new to science. The language is named Koro. "Their language is quite distinct on every level—the sound, the words, the sentence structure," said Gregory Anderson, director of the nonprofit Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, who directs the project's research. Details of the language will be documented in an upcoming issue of the journal Indian Linguistics.

To read more, hear some Koro, or learn words in Koro, click here

Babylonian, dead for millennia, now online

The language of the Epic of Gilgamesh and King Hammurabi has found a new life online after being dead for some 2,000 years.
Academics from across the world have recorded audio of Babylonian epics, poems, and even a magic spell to the Internet in an effort to help scholars and laymen understand what the language of the ancient Near East sounded like.

To read the rest of the story, click here

A vanished language returns

OF THE thousands of languages now spoken in the world, about two dozen die out in any given year, linguists believe. But Mashpee resident Jessie Little Doe Baird is showing that, in the right circumstances, vanished tongues may yet be spoken again. Baird, the 46-year old director of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, won a so-called “genius’’ grant this week for her initiative to revive the language of her Wampanoag ancestors. The honor is richly deserved.

To read the full story, click here

Are dying languages worth saving?

Of course they are!! Using nine different languages, delegates at the Trinity College Carmarthen conference explain why it is worth keeping alive dialects that are sometimes only spoken by a handful of people.

Click here to read in full this interesting report.

The Brain Speaks: Scientists Decode Words from Brain Signals

In an early step toward letting severely paralyzed people speak with their thoughts, University of Utah researchers translated brain signals into words using two grids of 16 microelectrodes implanted beneath the skull but atop the brain.

Click here to read the full study & report at Science Daily

Eye Movements Reveal Readers' Wandering Minds

It’s not just you…everybody zones out when they’re reading. For a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists recorded eye movements during reading and found that the eyes keep moving when the mind wanders—but they don’t move in the same way as they do when you’re paying attention.

Click here to read the full report at Science Daily

Kiswahili becomes Kenya's official language

Kiswahili has now been given the status of Kenya's official language - read the update here

Languages Racing to Extinction in 5 Global "Hotspots"

From Alaska to Australia, hundreds of languages around the world are teetering on the brink of extinction—some being spoken only by a single person, according to a new study. Research has revealed five hotspots where languages are vanishing most rapidly: eastern Siberia, northern Australia, central South America, Oklahoma, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. In the last 500 years, an estimated half of the world's languages, from Etruscan to Tasmanian, have become extinct. But researchers say the languages of the world are now vanishing faster than ever in recorded history. More than 500 languages may be spoken by fewer than ten people.

To read the full article, click here

New study sheds light on how sign language may be ordered in the brain

When people are communicating in sign languages, they also move their mouths. But scientists have debated whether mouth movements resembling spoken language are part of the sign itself or are connected directly to English. In a new study on British Sign Language, signers made different mistakes in the sign and in the mouthing—which means the hand and lip movements are separate in the signer's brain, not part of the same sign.

Read the full study here

Quirks continued...

Here are some more fun little English quirks...

13. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.
14. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
15. When you've seen one shopping centre you've seen a mall.
16. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine .
17. When she saw her first strands of grey hair, she thought she'd dye.
18. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
19. Acupuncture: a jab well done.
20. Marathon runners with bad shoes suffer the agony of de feet.
21. The roundest knight at king Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.
22. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

English quirks

The English language is full of all kinds of quirks. A very remarkable language with an equally remarkable spelling system that we all somehow have learned...enjoy!

1. A bicycle can't stand alone; it is two tired.
2. A will is a dead giveaway.
3. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
4. A backward poet writes inverse.
5. A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
6. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
7. The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered.
8. You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
9. He broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
10. A calendar's days are numbered.
11. A boiled egg is hard to beat.
12. He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

More quirkies later...stay tuned!

English turning into German?

What's this? A reformation of our English spelling system? Into German?

A fun little snippet about English spelling, enjoy!

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).
In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replaced with “k”. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horrible mes of silent “e”s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.
By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” by “z” and “w” by “v”.
During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou”, and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
After zis fifz year, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.
Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

Aboriginal placenames around Sydney chart

Here is a chart of place names for the coastal Sydney region in Australia, including current place names, references, and historical names and descriptions. A very interesting read of what our places were traditionally called before it was taken over by & renamed by the Europeans in the late 18th century.

In fact, a number of Councils in Australia have adopted, or are examining the adoption of, dual naming policies. Adelaide is one of the first major Australian cities to adopt this approach, and today you will find Adelaide's parks and many other places with dual name signage. Sydney Council has also begun to explore this option, and as a first move, in October 2002, the point where the southern end of the Harbour Bridge stands, known as Dawes Point, has also been signposted as Tara.

Ancient language mystery deepens

A linguistic mystery has arisen surrounding symbol-inscribed stones in Scotland that predate the formation of the country itself. To read the full article, click here

Did you ever wonder Who or Why?

Some ponderings I came across in my English studies...

Why is there a light in the fridge and not in the freezer?
Can a hearse carrying a corpse drive in the carpool lane?
If the professor on Gilligan's Island can make a radio out of coconut, why can't he fix a hole in a boat?
Is Disney World the only people trap operated by a mouse?
Why do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?
Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup?
Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?
Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster?

Warlpiri

Here is a great website with information on the Australian Aboriginal language Warlpiri, spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia. There is info on the dialects, structure, & sounds of the language, plus other resources for more info on Warlpiri, for example, papers on Warlpiri grammar, etc.

Australian Aboriginal languages map

Here is a map showing all the Australian Aboriginal languages and where they are spoken within Australia. There certainly is a diversity of them spoken all over the continent.

Good old-fashioned phone calls going out of fashion

Apparently this new texting generation doesn't share the same enthusiasm for chatting away on the phone as previous generations once did. It's been found that a generation of e-mailing, followed by an explosion in texting, has pushed the telephone conversation into serious decline, and it's only those in their mid-50s and early 60s who are the only ones still yakking on the phone as they used to.

Click to get the full article here

More Students Choose a Junior-Year Abroad in the Middle East

This article is interesting: American college students are increasingly choosing to spend their traditional junior year abroad in places like Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, wanting to experience the Arab world beyond America’s borders and viewpoints.

Hebrew information & facts

Here are some interesting facts about the Hebrew language, including a list of words in English which are derived from Hebrew:

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/Hebrew/#fact

Battle to save languages

Hundreds of languages across the world are dying out. Valentina Jovanovski talks to the World Oral Literature Project about the desperate race to save them. Preventing the deaths of many languages, or at least slowing the process, is the massive challenge faced by researchers and academics at the World Oral Literature Project, which was established by Cambridge University in January 2009. It is an exceptional step in the right direction & everyone should be commended for their efforts so far.

For more info click here

Beautiful Ancient Greek proudly returns!

This is just too exciting for words! Ancient Greek is going to be taught to school students as of September in England. My most favourite language finally makes a come-back. Any thoughts on this, anyone? What is your reaction to teaching a 'dead' language that hasn't been spoken in hundreds of years?

Click here to read more

UA Researchers Help Preserve Scottish Gaelic

Andrew Carnie, a UA linguistics professor, is heading a research project to analyze and document Scottish Gaelic, a language that is slowly being lost because natives more readily are learning and speaking English. This is a wonderful step in the right direction of saving the world's languages - when a language is lost, it's not just the language that dies, but a whole culture, an entire way of life dies with it. And while Scottish Gaelic has a lot of strange properties (quite strange to us English-speakers at any rate!), it's a wonderful language and we should commend the efforts being done to preserve this unique language.

Here's the link for the full article if you'd like to check it out further - http://uanews.org/node/32670

This is the sort of thing we need to be doing for our Australian Aboriginal languages which are fast dying out!

Still under construction...

As you might've guessed by now, I set this blog up for every and all things language. Now, I'm still in the process of organizing the blog and getting it set up; however, due to my busy work hours & university studies I don't usually have as much time as I would like. But, hopefully I'll have this blog up and running in the next few days or so.

So stay tuned for interesting language news, language quirks, etymologies, and much much more.

Thanks for reading!