This week’s round up compiles language news from the last fortnight.
02/06/2017–23/06/2017
Headlines
“There are fewer than 20 people fluent in Haida, the language of the Haida people of British Columbia.” A new feature film in Haida called Edge of the Knife tells an iconic Haida story of a feral man of the forest and is set in the beautifully forested archipelago that is Haida Gwaii. Read about the trials and tribulations of the team behind the film in The New York Times here!
No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. The Sealaska Heritage Institute inspires with its work on Tlingit and other endangered languages in Alaska, where “only three of the 20 recognized Alaska Native languages have more than 1,000 native speakers”. Find out more about the Tlingit app, games, and podcast.
People with autism may no longer face difficulties with interpreting sarcastic statements, thanks to a system capable of “turn[ing] sarcastic sentences [in written text] into (non-sarcastic) ones”. The system was trained to do this by researchers in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology using a database of “3,000 sarcastic tweets” and their non-sarcastic translations. Much commercial potential lies in such systems that are able to detect sentiment in text.
Interested to know more about the ancient Sanskrit language and its importance not just to India but to the wider world? Leiden University Library is hosting an exhibition on Sanskrit: Across Asia and Beyond from 18 May to 5 September 2017. The exhibition covers areas ranging from Sanskrit’s relationship with religion and daily life, to its use and adaptation by peoples in Southeast Asia, who were big receivers of Indian culture.
A Scottish court has delayed proceedings because its staff are unable to understand the accused’s strong Geordie accent —which has caused discrepancies between his recorded interview with the police and the interview transcript. Said his lawyer, “The difficulty is that the accused has a very, very strong Geordie accent and (a substantial) part of his response is missing. I will need to go through it with him and put in the responses which are missing.”
A recent report from the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research Lab describes their chat bots’ surprising ability to negotiate. So evenly matched were they as negotiators, the bots’ iterative one-upmanship even led to their developing their own non-human language to communicate with each other. Much work needs to be done, the report states, in adding to the diversity of the bots’ utterances without diverging from human language.
Commentaries and Features
Scarred by the story of a Bangladeshi migrant worker friend who lost his hand and his job in Singapore because he could not understand safety instructions in English, Sazzad Hossain, 23 year old Bangladeshi Singaporean (who also goes by the moniker ‘Dr English’) founded SDI Academy to help foreign workers in Singapore learn the country’s lingua franca, English. CNA‘s Melissa Zhu covers Sazzad’s inspirational story of a rocky journey to mastering the English language and helping others who shared his tough experience.
Differentiating between voices “is an important social component of communication”. In a task where children were exposed to pairs of words where one word in each pair was spoken in English (with a German accent) and the other spoken in German, bilingual children were found to be more apt than their monolingual peers in deciding whether the relevant words were spoken by one and the same person or by different people. The bilingual advantage in “learning voices” suggests that bilingual children “have better social perception” than monolingual children.
BBC Radio 2‘s yearly 500 Words story contest for children has served as an indicator of pop culture and political trends since its inception in 2011. This time around, references to US President Donald Trump rose by more than 800% from last year and included over 100 puns based on his name.
How do women communicate? And do they do it differently from men? Listen to this podcast conversation between linguist Deborah Tannen and host Charity Nebbe. Tannen’s latest book You’re the Only One I Can Tell: Inside the Language of Women’s Friendships looks at the interpersonal communication patterns between women and “how having shared experiences creates a deep, indirect understanding among women”.
We take dictionaries for granted these days, especially for widely-spoken languages like German. How long do you think it took to compile the first ever Deutsches Wörterbuch? For Atlas Obscura, Sarah Laskow traces the origins of the fist German dictionary compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm—otherwise known as the famed fairy tale tellers, Brother Grimm. “Close to two centuries after it was first conceived, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, started as an effort to pay the rent, is a monument to the German language—and the legacy of the Brothers Grimm.”
12 Responses to “This week in languages: June 23, 2017”
광양출장샵
جفف مكيفك بالمجفف
إذا كان التكييف الخاص بك قيد الاستخدام광양출장샵 ، فمن المحتمل أنه رطب وقد يحتوي على ماء بداخله. قبل البدء في تنظيف التكييف ، من الضروري تجفيفه. شغلي التكييف على “وضع المروحة” وشغليه لمدة 30-40 دقيقة حيث يساعد ذلك على تبخر الرطوبة
افصل الجهاز عن مأخذ التيار الكهربائي قبل تنظيف أي جهاز ، يجب فصله عن مأخذ التيار الكهربائي. قبل أن تبدأ في تفكيك مكيف الهواء لتنظيفه ، تأكد من أن مكيف الهواء غير متصل بمصدر طاقة
qadirkhatri
Just to follow up on the up-date of this subject on your web page and wish to let you know just how much I prized the time you took to publish this beneficial post. Within the post, you actually spoke regarding how to truly handle this challenge with all comfort. It would be my own pleasure to collect some more thoughts from your web-site and come up to offer other folks what I have benefited from you. Thanks for your usual good effort. جيلي امجراند2023
Qadir Seo
Any time i actually turned against your web-site while having special particular attention without difficulty a small amount of touch submits. Gratifying way of duration, Soon we will be book-marking at this point currently have styles execute springs perfect right up. What can I do with Polymers in Pubg?
Qadir Seo
My husband and i felt very glad Michael could deal with his investigations out of the ideas he obtained from your own weblog. It’s not at all simplistic to simply happen to be giving for free helpful tips that other folks have been selling. So we discover we’ve got the writer to give thanks to for that. Those explanations you have made, the simple blog navigation, the friendships your site give support to promote – it’s many spectacular, and it’s really aiding our son and the family believe that this concept is enjoyable, and that’s extraordinarily indispensable. Many thanks for everything! ufabet1688 มือถือ
Qadir Seo
Oh my goodness! a wonderful article dude. Thanks a ton Nevertheless We are experiencing problem with ur rss . Don’t know why Struggle to register for it. Possibly there is anyone finding identical rss problem? Anybody who knows kindly respond. Thnkx ufa7777
Qadir Seo
Your articles are inventive. I am looking forward to reading the plethora of articles that you have linked here. Thumbs up! อเมริกันชอตแฮร์
Bhutan Teer Result
We Provide Today Bhutan Teer Result Live, Bhutan Teer Result, All Teer Result, Bhutan Teer Common Number Every Day 100% Working On
bhutan teer result
Qadir Seo
I propose just about any written content. It is amazing to exercise you can make clear throughout words and phrases via midst plus picture quality employing this important written content is pretty just regarded. đăng ký bongbet
nimabi
Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks. nimabi
Vytvorit bezplatn'y úcet
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
melhor código de indicac~ao da binance
I don’t think the title of your article matches the content lol. Just kidding, mainly because I had some doubts after reading the article.
Your Name *btglass-ae
Welcome to the world of sophistication and craftsmanship, where innovation meets excellence in glass and aluminum solutions. Meet Bilal Tayyab, the visionary founder of BT Glass & Aluminum, a trailblazer in the industry, crafting dreams into reality with a touch of elegance and precision.https://btglass-ae.com/