20/01/2017–27/01/2017 Headlines Do we convey more information if we speak at a faster rate? A new study from researchers at Brown University says no. The researchers found that an increase in the rate of speech correlated to a decline in the information…

13/01/2017–20/01/2017 Headlines Researchers in Hanyang University in Seoul led a study, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, to determine how much of their birth language babies recall, in spite of moving to another country in early life. The BBC reports on the study conducted…

06/01/2017–13/01/2017 Headlines Calling all emerging translators! Asymptote has launched the third edition of their international translation contest called Close Approximations with a top prize worth USD 1,000 and a feature in their April 2017 issue. Two runners-up also stand to win USD 250. Deadline: 1…

30/12/2016–06/01/2017 Headlines 2016 was an especially difficult year to sum up in one word, and results varied widely among the various countries that did so. For Americans, surreal, xenophobia, and paranoid came out on top, but other winning choices from around…

23/12/2016–30/12/2016 Headlines Duolingo, the company famed for gamifying language learning, has launched “Duolingo Clubs”. This new feature allows a language learner of any of the app’s 19 languages to form a Club of up to 15 players to compete with (or encourage) while…

16/12/2016–23/12/2016 Headlines Much has changed in the world within a year. In retrospect, Merriam-Webster Dictionary looks back at the words that has defined the year. The word surreal came out tops in the list of Words of the Year of 2016, because of the spike…

09/12/2016–16/12/2016 Headlines A sign of the times? A global, London-based translation firm called Today Translations is hiring what would be the first “emoji translator” in order to cater to a phenomenon that has revolutionised communication in this digital age, but may still…

02/12/2016–09/12/2016 Headlines A study by Indiana University researchers have found that a baby’s first words correlate strongly with the items that the baby is exposed to visually. This could help inform new methods for language teaching for children with language…

25/11/2016–02/12/2016 Headlines From describing hypersensitive millennials to being used as a generic insult for thin-skinned politicians or resistance to free speech, the term snowflake has become “the most combustible insult of 2016” writes The Guardian. Early learning of words “is…

18/11/2016–25/11/2016 Headlines The US has more than 130 endangered Native American languages, such as Wukchumni, which is spoken by a tribe with less than 200 members left. National Geographic documents the words and story of the last fluent Wukchumni speaker Marie…

11/11/2016–18/11/2016 Headlines In a bid to capture the zeitgeist since the long-drawn presidential elections in the US, the Oxford English Dictionaries have selected post-truth as the international word of the year! Thanks to the discourse of populist politics around the world…

04/11/2016–11/11/2016 Headlines 11 November marks the start of the Mother Tongue Language Reading Festival in Singapore! For a full list of events, the National Library Board has compiled this list. In a bid to encourage a new generation of readers, the government…