A new study, Fish intake during pregnancy in relation to offspring’s early cognitive development, shows that women who ate fish regularly during pregnancy had children with better language and communication skills by the age of 18 months. Interesting, then, that fishermen seem to be such silent ghits: communicative fisherman 0 uncommunicative fisherman 0 talkative fisherman…
Mark Liberman notes that Nuer is considerably more irregular than English, which leaves me wondering how to measure linguistic irregularity. For example, Can we include orthography as one of our criteria? Nuer orthography looks pretty rational, and certainly has none of the ghoti-ness of English. What about actual use? I’ll bet Nuer isn’t as rich…
One way of passing evenings when a talking pig looks like being the highlight of the televisual entertainment is to improvise stories on the basis of collections of found words. Here is a short Chinuk-wawa glossary, taken from an article by Nancy Bartley on the language revival which appeared in the Seattle Times: chinuk-wawa english…
The Observer informs us that a new language class being tested by Thomson in Spain could help holidaymakers untie their tongues. Spanish (Out There!) lessons were given to travellers in Tenerife last month. A group of over-50s took five two-hour lessons over the course of their holiday, then put what they’d learnt into practice with…
Interlingua is a highly user-friendly language with a pedigree that is a bagful of doughnuts better than bitter, twisted Esperanto. Try this: Interlingua es un lingua international facile e de aspecto natural elaborate per linguistas professional como un denominator commun del linguas le plus diffundite in le mundo in le dominios del scientia, cultura, commercio,…
Qov, who has just commented an old post, appeared in the documentary called Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water and writes a blog, bo logh, in Klingon, which is most admirable. (Are there more blogs in Klingon than Welsh?) Anyone got video of TV3 news on Saturday? Apparently my choir were on it.
Paddling its little coracles to the farthest reaches of the sea of confusion (mind the serpent!), the Language Log tribe is muttering obscure acronyms which it believes will help us understand web searching better. Too late, for “the most excellent (and only) glossary of the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve” has spoken: ghits: Google HITS. An accepted…
This is really cool: Every morning, when Corinthian Barthelmess’s tummy rumbles for her breakfast banana, she lets her daddy know. She communicates not through whining or babbling or pointing, but through sign language. “Banana” is a favorite sign of this sweet-natured 14-month-old girl, who has been learning American Sign Language the past several months. Through…
These guys crack me up: Mr Atukwei Okai, Secretary General of the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), on Tuesday advocated African Common Language Policy to enhance communication among Africans as a vital ingredient in ensuring the success of African unity. He said some proponents had indicated Swahili as a possible adoptive language, but cautioned that…