language

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Grammar Blogger Fired Over 'Homo' in 'Homophones'

Boss thought confused students would think of gay sex

(Newser) - You've heard of homophobia. Now comes homophonia. The Salt Lake Tribune has the strange story of a social-media specialist who got fired after writing a blog post about homophones—the grammatical term referring to words that sound the same but are spelled differently, like too and two. It seems...

Study: Saying 'Like' All the Time Isn't All Bad

Those who do may be more conscientious than most

(Newser) - Those who speak by packing their sentences with words such as "you know," "I mean," and "like" aren't being ditzy as pop culture would suggest—they're being conscientious. So suggests a new study in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology whose authors...

To Slow Brain Aging, Learn a New Language

Even if you're already an adult, researchers suggest

(Newser) - We've already heard that being bilingual can help you fight dementia . Now, some follow-up good news: Even if you're an adult, it may not be too late to reap the cognitive benefits of learning a new language, the BBC reports. Researchers performed intelligence tests on 262 bilingual people...

What Language Did Jesus Speak?

Pope Francis, Benjamin Netanyahu disagree

(Newser) - This week saw a small disagreement between Pope Francis and Israel's prime minister. When the two met publicly in Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu told the pope that "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew." Francis corrected him, Reuters reports: "Aramaic." Netanyahu's response: "...

Michigan Wiping 'R-Word' From Its Laws

Bills will remove 'retarded' and related words from the books

(Newser) - A few choice words are likely to be excised from Michigan law today, as Lt. Gov. Brian Calley is set to sign what is known as the "R-Word" package of bills into state law. The package—which contains eight House bills and seven Senate bills passed unanimously last Thursday,...

Paw-Paw French Dialect Disappearing in Missouri

Al Jazeera America looks at fading tradition

(Newser) - A little bit of history is petering out in eastern Missouri—a dialect known as paw-paw French introduced centuries ago by settlers in the region. In a story on the decline in the community of Old Mines, Al Jazeera America figures the number of speakers left is in the "...

'Selfie,' 'Twerk' Dubbed Most Annoying Words of 2013

People are pretty sick of '#hashtag' too

(Newser) - A Michigan university has issued its annual list of annoying words, and those flexible enough to take selfies of themselves twerking should take note. In addition to "selfie" and "twerking," there was a strong sense among those who nominated words to this year's list that the...

Internet Invents a Preposition, Because Irony

Blogs, social media changing grammar: Megan Garber

(Newser) - Because politics. Because science. Because money. Remember when you'd need an "of" in these sentences? No longer, because Internet-speak, writes Megan Garber in the Atlantic . In short, the Internet has turned "because" into its own preposition (as language expert Stan Carey has pointed out ). For example,...

Humble &#39;Huh?&#39; Might Be Rare Universal Word
Humble 'Huh?' Might Be
Rare Universal Word
study says
Nov 9, 2013 7:39 AM CST

Humble 'Huh?' Might Be Rare Universal Word

Linguists find it in every language they studied

(Newser) - Listen in on any language anywhere in the world and you're bound to hear a familiar sound: "Huh?" Dutch researchers who studied 10 languages on five continents say the one-syllable utterance might be that rarest of things: a universal word. And it's no mere tic or meaningless...

Language Gap in Rich, Poor Kids Begins Earlier Than Thought

Stanford study finds differences at 18 months

(Newser) - A Stanford study finds that kids from low-income families begin falling behind their richer peers in language development earlier than thought, reports the New York Times . The study found clear differences at 18 months, with kids in the higher-income families able to identify simple words a lot faster. (A previous...

Seattle: Please Don't Call It a 'Brown Bag'

That phrase and 'citizens' are deemed offensive

(Newser) - They may look like citizens carrying their lunches in brown bags, but Seattle's Office of Civil Rights would prefer you restate that as "residents" carrying their "sack lunches." The office sent out a memo to city workers declaring that the words "citizens" and "brown...

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...

NYPD Rips Cop —for Speaking Spanish

Department calls for 'one voice' in English

(Newser) - On-duty NYPD officers are banned from speaking any language other than English—as a 13-year cop recently learned the hard way. Jessenia Guzman got a "memo of reprimand" after she spoke a single sentence in Spanish while working the switchboard, the New York Daily News reports. "It was...

100-Year-Old Hoax May Be 600-Year-Old Code

UK researchers find new patterns in mysterious manuscript

(Newser) - Many people believe that the Voynich manuscript—a book found in 1912 written in an unknown language with images of plants and astronomy—is a hoax. Cryptographers, mathematicians, and linguists have been trying to decipher the supposedly 15th-century text found by book dealer Wilfrid Voynich in 1912 for 100 years,...

Hot Twitter Account Is ... in Latin

Pope's Latin Twitter account is surprisingly popular

(Newser) - Latin may be a dead language, but it's very much alive on Twitter, thanks to an unexpectedly social-media-savvy old man: the pope. Pope Francis' Latin language Twitter account began under the auspices of Pope Benedict in January (it is the official language of the Holy See, after all), and...

Word Choices Show We&#39;re Me-Centric, Less Moral
Word Choices Show We're
Me-Centric, Less Moral
OPINION
May 21, 2013 1:22 PM CDT

Word Choices Show We're Me-Centric, Less Moral

And those long-term trends should worry left and right: David Brooks

(Newser) - Lexicologists poring over a Google database of books and word usage suggest three general traits of the past half-century, writes David Brooks in the New York Times . Society has become more individualistic (with words and phrases such as "self" and "I come first" on the rise), less moral...

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...

Ben Franklin Tried to Change Our Alphabet

His phonetic approach never took off

(Newser) - If Benjamin Franklin were alive today, he'd probably be a dynamite texter. As Smithsonian explains, Franklin once designed a phonetic alphabet for the nation because he thought the one in place was too unwieldy. Alas, it never caught on. Some highlights of his "A Reformed Mode of Spelling,...

Jimmy's or Jimmys? Feds Wage War on Apostrophes

Punctuation in place names spawns fight

(Newser) - Residents of New York's Adirondack Mountains have a bone to pick with the federal government. At issue: punctuation. A nearby mountain known to many as Jimmy's or James' Peak, but US officials won't stand for the apostrophe in the name, leading a local supervisor to grumble, "...

Isaac Newton Tried to Invent New Language

Is it 'utor' enough for you?

(Newser) - Isaac Newton had a thing or two to say about gravity and the laws of motion, but if a lesser known creation of his took off, we'd all be speaking a different language right now. As Arika Okrent explains at the Week , Newton drew up plans for a "...

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