Linguists and other scholars have long wondered about the effect of language on thought. Do differences in language create differences in how we think? Or maybe it’s the other way around. Does the way we think affect the evolution of our languages? This area of study has turned up some fascinating observations. Do […]
As we’ve established before, Machine Translation is a trend on the rise, threatening to swallow whole any translators who don’t seek to adapt to the times as “they’re a-changin’”. But what will happen when machines are able to do everything we do by themselves? Is it even possible? Do we really want them to get […]
Evolution doesn’t imply improvement or progressive change towards perfection. In a straight darwinian sense, evolution means adapting to one’s environment in order to survive and endure, for the environment is ever changing, and so must we. All living creatures adapt to a constantly mutable environment, and so does language in a very organic, spontaneous and […]
I have already touched upon how our simian relatives seem to be making strides in communication with language here. Now word comes from the Ivory Coast that it appears that the Campbell’s monkey in the Tai National Park there is able to take its simple calls (“hok hok hok!” or “boom boom”) and combine them […]
English is the one language that can be found in every corner of the world. It is taught and recognized on every continent and its prevalence is much greater than any previous “universal language” (Greek, Latin, French). One tangential result of that ubiquity is that local cultures, for example those in Papua New Guinea, Nigeria, […]
Some of the casualties of globalization and rampant cultural hegemony that has defined the world have been regional languages, many of which were not written down and survived for generations upon generations via oral transmission. Many of these languages have already been lost to the world, but there are many others that are classified as […]
How I love the history and development of languages! It is a never-ending labyrinth of discovery and surprises, all reflecting the wonderful creative nature of human beings. Recently I found the BBC article on the oldest words in English, which used the study performed by researchers at Reading University as its basis. While I enjoyed […]
While language change may occur at varying speeds and due to diverse and numerous causes, many changes have political roots or explanations. Much of language change, obviously, has come about from human migration and the use of a language by non-native speakers, with the influences of the phonetic, syntactic and morphological rules of the migrants […]
English is evolving in numerous ways on a daily basis, be it through new words put in use (as cited here last week), new expressions, or a change in the way we use words already in use. The past tense is an excellent point of reference for this phenomenon. I was reminded of this when […]