linguistics

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Germans Not Happy With New Rules on 'Idiot's Apostrophe'

Or would that be 'idiots apostrophe' in German?

(Newser) - Worldly punctuation pros know that Germans typically don't use an apostrophe to indicate the possessive—meaning it's correct to write "Newsers readers," not "Newser's readers." According to the Council for German Orthography, however, which dictates grammar for schools and other public institutions in...

Noam Chomsky Hospitalized After 'Massive' Stroke

Valeria Chomsky says husband is recuperating in Sao Paulo hospital after stroke in June of last year

(Newser) - Linguist, activist, and social critic Noam Chomsky is hospitalized in his wife's native country of Brazil, recovering from a massive stroke he had a year ago, she confirmed Tuesday. Valeria Chomsky said via email that her 95-year-old husband is in a Sao Paulo hospital, where she took him on...

Isolated Staffers in Antarctica Show How New Accents Begin

During months of isolation, staffers at British Antarctic Survey began talking differently

(Newser) - Together through extreme isolation for months on end, wintering researchers in Antarctica develop close relationships—and, as one study found, a new way of talking, too. The BBC reports that over six months, staff members at British Antarctic Survey's (BAS) Rothera Research Station slowly began to pronounce certain words...

Forensic Linguist Solves a Jack the Ripper Mystery

Confirms 2 iconic early letters were written by same person

(Newser) - It's a Jack the Ripper mystery solved. Unfortunately that's "a" mystery, not "the" mystery. A forensic linguist with the UK's University of Manchester says that after learning no forensic linguistic analysis had been carried out on any of the letters purportedly written by the infamous...

Expert Linguists Wage War on Anthropomorphic Poo

Inside the great emoji debate of our time

(Newser) - Andrew West and Michael Everson are two of the top language encoders in the world, experienced linguists—and definitive proof that it's impossible to not sound silly while discussing poo. "Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF...

Study: One of 'Best Letters in History' Likely Not Written by Lincoln

Linguistic experts say letter 'almost certainly' written by Lincoln's secretary

(Newser) - Abraham Lincoln may have been a world-class orator, but one of his famous letters—known as one of the best English-language letters ever written—was "almost certainly" not authored by the former president. According to a press release , Lincoln sent a letter to a woman named Lydia Bixby in...

She Coined 'On Fleek,' Wants You to Pay Her for It

Internet hit Peaches Monroee is crowdfunding for planned cosmetics line

(Newser) - If you've ever used the term "on fleek," Kayla Lewis is hoping you'll see fit to pay her for it. Lewis, better known by her Vine moniker Peaches Monroee, was a teen who broke onto the internet scene in 2014 after supposedly being the first person...

How Scientists Are Cracking One of the World's Oldest Codes

Cognitive science and complex statistical processes are both playing into it: the Verge

(Newser) - Since the late 1800s, scientists have been stumped over small pieces of stone found buried in India and Pakistan, each carved with a line of symbols over a depiction of an animal—all evidence of the since-IDed Indus Valley Civilization, said to be the oldest Indian civilization known to exist....

How the Words We Use Changed Over 200 Years
How the Words We Use
Changed Over 200 Years
new study
Dec 4, 2016 12:59 PM CST

How the Words We Use Changed Over 200 Years

'This is an indicator that happiness may be on the decline'

(Newser) - It is well established that humans across languages and cultures have a tendency to use more positive words than negative ones. This is called linguistic positivity bias (LPB), but why the phenomenon exists remains unclear. Now researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their big...

Term of Endearment That Was Big in 1870 Is Back

Anecdotally, some fathers think 'papa' is more hip, cute and feminist than 'dad'

(Newser) - With the name "mama" on the rise in the US, the Daily Beast proposes anecdotal evidence that "papa" is now also in vogue—at least among Brooklyn hipsters with offspring, that is. But will it make its way back across the rest of the country, where it reached...

Our Languages May Have More in Common Than We Thought

New findings challenge long-held theories about languages forming independently

(Newser) - About 100 years ago, one of the founders of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, wrote that the relationship between the sounds we make and the concepts they signify are arbitrary. Many have long agreed. But now the inherent randomness of human language is being challenged by a large new study...

Why People in Hot Climates Use Fewer Consonants

Linguists see link between language and weather, landscape

(Newser) - It turns out there might be a simple reason why native Hawaiians have a word like "luau," whereas mainlanders say words like "spritz" or "Cumberbatch." And its the same reason you'd probably rather sunbathe on Oahu than in Svalbard. Discover Magazine reports two linguists...

10 Words Deciphered From Mysterious 600-Year-Old Text

Stephen Bax has figured out 14 characters from the Voynich manuscript

(Newser) - What has been called the most mysterious manuscript in the world has at last given up a tiny handful of its secrets. An applied linguistics professor thinks he's deciphered 14 characters from the famous Voynich manuscript, and with them 10 complete words, LiveScience , the BBC , and the Independent report....

Our Ancestors May Have Sounded Like This
 Our Ancestors May 
 Have Sounded Like This 
in case you missed it
Oct 5, 2013 12:30 PM CDT

Our Ancestors May Have Sounded Like This

Prof records story in millenia-old language

(Newser) - Recording studios were hard to find 6,500 years ago, but thanks to centuries of scholarship, we may now be able to get a sense of how our ancient ancestors sounded. A linguist at the University of Kentucky has recorded a short story in Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, a language probably...

New Language Born in Outback Town

 New Language 
 Born in Outback Town 
in case you missed it
Jul 20, 2013 7:04 PM CDT

New Language Born in Outback Town

Nobody over 35 speaks Light Warlpiri

(Newser) - Linguists more accustomed to dealing with dying languages have been thrilled to witness the birth of an entire new language in one of Australia's most remote communities, the New York Times finds. Nobody over 35 speaks "Light Warlpiri," which is spoken only in Lajamanu, an isolated village...

Rare Dialect Dying in US: Texas-German?

Last speakers in their 60s, as professor tries to preserve it

(Newser) - Another unique American dialect is fading into obscurity, and it's a safe bet that most never knew it existed in the first place: "Texas German." It's so unusual that University of Texas linguist professor Hans Boas tells the BBC he has "found no two speakers...

These 23 Words Have Survived 15K Years

 These 23 Words Have 
 Survived 15K Years 
new study
May 7, 2013 7:55 AM CDT

These 23 Words Have Survived 15K Years

Linguists discover 'ultraconserved words'

(Newser) - Plants and animals aren't the only things that go extinct: Most words are replaced every few thousand years, with a maximum survival of roughly 9,000 years, say linguists. But in a new study published yesterday, four British researchers say they have found 23 words that have persisted for...

'Me, Me, Me': Book Analysis Shows the Fall of 'We'

New study finds individualistic words on the rise

(Newser) - A new study of more than 750,000 American books from the past half-century shows that Americans have become more focused on individualism since the 1960s, researchers say. The study found that individualistic words like "I" were used more than communal words like "we," USA Today reports....

Young Women: Our Linguistic Pioneers?

Their speech patterns set trends the rest of us follow, say experts

(Newser) - Girls often get mocked for their uptalking—ending sentences at a higher pitch—or frequent use of "like." But it's time to give them credit for leading the way when it comes to language patterns, linguists tell the New York Times . "If women do something like...

'Uhs' and 'Ums': Among the Verbal Tics of Psychopaths

They interrupt speech to mask their madness: study

(Newser) - Know someone who uses "uh" and "um" a lot, and cause-and-effect conjunctions like "because" and "so that"? Well, not to exaggerate, but your friend may be a psychopath. Researchers recently interviewed 52 convicted murderers in an effort to suss out the linguistic tendencies of psychopaths—...

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