According to The Economist, 4/2/2009, "Neuroscience and social deprivation: I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told": THAT the children of the poor underachieve in later life, and thus remain poor themselves, is one of the enduring problems of society. Sociologists have studied and described it. Socialists have tried to abolish it […]
I've been reading David Laitin's Politics, Language and Thought: The Somali Experience, which discusses a kind of linguistic determinism that (in my opinion) hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. So in keeping with my third annual New Year's resolution to emphasize positive blogging about linguistic issues, I'm going to tell you about some fascinating 35-year-old […]
Yesterday's Zits: For a teenage boy, according to this joke, the idea of cleaning up his own messes is so alien that learning to understand its expression in simple English is part of learning a foreign language. I suspect that the stereotype is at least somewhat unfair, in terms of age as well as sex; […]
Like most people to the left of Genghis Khan, I find much of what appears on Michelle Malkin's blog rather strange, but Mojave Mike left a comment today that is really remarkable: All the good armies of the world speak English. I’m serious. Think about it. It doesn’t surprise me that the taliban can’t maneuver […]
Julesy's knowledge of linguistics is not restricted to East Asia:
The Weird Way Language Affects Our Sense of Time and SpaceThe languages we speak can have a surprising impact on the way we think about the world and even how we move through it.Matt Warren and Miriam FrankelThis post originally appeared on BBC Future and was published November 4, 2022. This article is republished here […]
For the record: "Do Inuit languages really have many words for snow? The most interesting finds from our study of 616 languages", The Conversation (4/10/25); rpt. in phys.org/news (4/13/25) Authors: Charles KempProfessor, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne (PhD MIT)Ekaterina VylomovaLecturer, Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne (The University of Melbourne, […]
Below is a guest post by Andreas Stolcke. This is an item maybe worthy of a note on Language Log — Philip Oltermann, "Germans decry influence of English as ‘idiot’s apostrophe’ gets official approval", The Guardian 10/7/2024: A relaxation of official rules around the correct use of apostrophes in German has not only irritated grammar […]
From François Lang: I hope this isn't a well-known question. I searched LL for "good morning" romance and found nothing. So here goes. (1) One can say "good evening" idiomatically in Romance languages, but not "good morning" or "good afternoon". (2) However, all three are idiomatic in Germanic languages. I'm wondering if LL […]
In addition to a proto-regular-expression for English monosyllables, Benjamin Lee Whorf's 12/1940 Technology Review article has a weird diagram showing how a linguist (?) would organize French language instruction along the lines of mid-20th-century factory work:
Today's SMBC: Those first four panels resonated with my recent experience skimming Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. Vol II — Anthropogensis (1888). I learned of Blavatsky's existence due to the restaurant located in her former residence, and my sense of her influence in Philadelphia was reinforced by years […]