People who speak languages missing from Google Translate, Siri, and Wikipedia will face future crises—leaving aid organizations scrambling.

As we mentioned in a previous post, cleaning the translation memory (TM) of one of our largest and oldest clients was a task that required the use of Xbench and a consequent report which we imported into an Excel spreadsheet, and finally choosing Olifant to edit the TM. The TM had thousands of segments, and …

David Skinner on why the American Heritage Dictionary closed its usage panel this year—and why it existed in the first place.

The future of work is neither fully human or fully machine. It's something in between.

Brigitte Nerlich and Carmen McLeod at the Synthetic Biology Research Centre at the University of Nottingham have given ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ a new twist, by focusing on responsible language use. As everybody knows by now, words matter in politics as well as in science. Here is a brief account of how this new focus came about and how it led up to a new thematic series now fully published in Life Sciences, Society and Policy.

The English language can be a hard language to grasp fully because it has so many idioms. | Learn how to properly localize and translate marketing content.

People who speak languages missing from Google Translate, Siri, and Wikipedia will face future crises—leaving aid organizations scrambling.

Approximately 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today, but only about half are expected to survive this century. One factor contributing to this loss is climate change.

When proofreaders take out their red pens, their main purpose is to get rid of any errors that may hinder comprehension or sidetrack the reader. One aspect of this task is a certain economy of corrections: a proofreader should spend their time on warranted changes. These changes have to do with grammatical errors and with …

The number of people speaking Italian, Hungarian, German and Greek in the US is dropping precipitously.

Over the past 15 years, Yiddish has gotten hip, and an unprecedented wave of cultural expression—including a popular Folksbiene production of 'Fiddler on the Roof'—is the result.

These films make protagonists out of the ultimate supporting actors in history, the translators.

What do Klingon, Elvish and Esperanto have in common?  They are all explicitly constructed languages -- some for fictional worlds, some for the real world.  Some are created to entertain, others have such lofty goals as achieving world peace.  Some have dictionaries, grammars and language academies.

Recently heard a rumor that Klingon had surpassed Esperanto as the most commonly spoken conlang (constructed language, sometimes called artificial language). This is a massively unlikely possibilit…

The world is experiencing a state of unprecedented connectivity thanks to technology. But language remains a barrier. Even though technological devices can quickly and easily connect, humans from different parts of the world often can’t. Translation software may be the solution, but it isn't yet perfect—here's why.

https://youtu.be/zHYlNNV-etQ I've been enjoying watching The Miniaturist on PBS.  You might well think that "miniature" has something ...

These interviews are always titled “Interview with a…”, but when it comes to language creation, David J. Peterson has been the person over the last decade bringing other worlds to life with his conlang skills. He’s behind the Dothraki, and Valyrian languages from Game of Thrones,  Shiväisith from Thor: The Dark World and Trigedasleng from The 100. As well as being a very talented language creator and font maker, David is also an enthusiastic and supportive person who is always the first to point out the great work being done by other language creators. Check out his website for some of his favorites. David is on Twitter (@Dedalvs), and here on Tumblr (@dedalvs). He also has a great book on constructing language called The Art of Language Invention (my review here), and supporting videos that go into more detail on YouTube. What did you study at university? I began at UC Berkeley as an English major, then added Linguistics as a second fun major. I finished both, and then went on to graduate school in Linguistics at UC San Diego, where I received my Master’s degree. What is your job? I work on a variety of different projects in film and television and sometimes theater. What I do varies, depending on what stage of a project I’m at, and what I’m working on that day. The longer the project lasts, the more time I’ll be spending translating into my new conlang than creating the language. Actual language creation is done during the first stage; thereafter it’s just translation, recording, and general consulting or voice coaching, depending on the project. Sometimes I also create writing systems, which entails designing the system, and then, if necessary, building a font for it, and then after that doing translation as well as trouble-shooting. I’ve also written a few books, so sometimes part of my day is spent working on a new book project. How does your linguistics training help you in your job? In creating a language, nothing you learn about language is wasted, be it actual linguistic education, language study, or work on a conlang, big or small. Every single day of my life is spent engaging with language in one capacity or another. Most useful in my day-to-day life is coursework I did in phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical linguistics, field work, cognitive science, and pidgin and creole studies. Do you have any advice you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university? Yes: TAKE MORE LANGUAGE COURSES! However many you’re taking right now is not enough. There will never be another time in your life that it will be so easy or inexpensive to take courses in a second language, and the variety afforded you at a university is so much greater than you’ll find in your regular day-to-day life. Any other thoughts or comments? Education in linguistics is not the same thing as conlanging ability. Just because you have a B.A. or M.A. or Ph.D. or equivalent in linguistics doesn’t mean you can create even a mediocre conlang (and note that “functional” is not the same thing as “good”. Functionality is a very low bar to clear). Similarly, you don’t need any formal education in linguistics to create a language—you can start right now! Linguistics can definitely help, though. The best conlanger is one who has a solid understanding of theoretical and practical linguistics, who has studied many languages from many different language families, and who has spent a good amount of time creating languages. This person will know when linguistic theory can improve their work, and when it needs to be set aside because the linguists haven’t figured out the theory is garbage yet—or because the linguists must pay lip service to the theory for political reasons. Conlangers are beholden to no one, which means they’re ultimately responsible for all choices—and all mistakes. A conlanger who comes to conlanging from academic linguistics will need to unlearn some things to really get going, but they’ll already have a pretty good handle on the multifariousness of language, and that’s key. See also: David J. Peterson on Tumblr The Language Creation Society My review of The Art of Language Invention Previously: Interview with a Translator and Business Owner Interview with a Conductor Interview with an Accent Coach Interview with two Communications Professionals Interview with a university course coordinator Check out the Linguist Jobs tag for even more interviews  (image credit: Wikipedia)

A thorough debunking of the myth that apes can learn language from Skeptoid podcast. Excerpt:  In June of 2018, the famous gorilla Koko died of natural causes. Koko had become famous around the world for her incredible ability to speak in sign language. Koko wrote books. She raised kittens. Koko developed friendships with visiting celebrities. Koko would tell jokes and be silly. Koko would hear things on the news, feel sad, and express her sadness, all using sign language. But it turns out that the field of ape linguistics has virtually evaporated. What evidence there is that apes have been able to sign comes to us not from the academic literature, but only from the mass media — feel-good stories written for the people, apparently devoid of much scientific validity. Today we’re going to point our skeptical eye at the field of apes who speak in sign language. Here is the first thing that suggests not all is as it seems in the world of signing apes. If it works, and the ability to communicate with us can be instilled into apes, then why aren’t there signing apes everywhere? Why don’t we teach it to all of them — indeed, why don’t ape parents teach it to their own young? If apes had any meaningful ability to communicate at even a rudimentary level using sign language, you’d think many of those who interact with humans would do so. They would tell their zookeepers what they want (probably to be set free). They would accompany primatologists on expeditions and translate between the scientists and the native apes. Every animal research institution would have signing apes, and everyone in the world with a degree in primatology would have experience communicating with them. After all these decades, we’d have a deep understanding of ape communication and their thought processes. Signing with apes would be commonplace and widespread. But none of these things has happened. Not one of them. Not only did signing apes never become common, the number of research programs studying ape signing has gone from a few to even fewer. At its peak in the 1970s, the field of teaching apes to communicate with humans never had more active research programs than you could count on your fingers and toes; today, there is not even a single program anywhere in the world making publishable claims. Backwards is not where promising directions in research tend to go. In every field of science, when we see researchers abandoning projects, the reason nearly always tends to be that the project was a dead end. Read the rest of the article, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript. 

allthingslinguistic: I suppose it’s okay to admit after three years of linguistics blogging that I actually am one of those linguists who speaks quite a few languages, and I’ve studied even more at various levels. Here are some of my favourite posts about language learning: Tips for learning another language 7 ways to fake-pronounce any foreign language How to learn vocabulary in 12 steps (using science!) Up-goer five, Taboo and language learning How to learn a third language (while keeping your second one) 12 ways to stop freezing up when you try to speak a second language Someone trying to switch into English on you is like them trying to pick up the cheque How second language acquisition works Why can’t adults learn languages like children? (video with Tom Scott) Finding “lost” languages in the brain Learning languages without conscious effort How to teach old ears new tricks Speaking to babies, pets, and language learners How learning a new language improves tolerance First lesson in modern versus classical languages Learning languages linguistically (Lingthusiasm podcast episode) Learning Indigenous languages Should linguists or non-Aboriginal people learn Aboriginal languages? Non-Indigenous people learning Australian Indigenous languages Benefits of Indigenous language learning Roadblocks to effective Indigenous language development OLA - Oral Language Acquisition CoLang and Breath of Life Learning less popular and minority languages when resources are hard to find How to teach when the teacher isn’t fluent How to make learning materials for conversation and document at the same time Sk̲wx̱wú7mesh language revitalization house Europe has indigenous minority languages as well  Languages and linguistics Why linguists get annoyed when you ask how many languages they speak Will learning a second language help me learn linguistics? Will learning linguistics help with learning a second language? Using Gricean maxims to deflect the “how many languages do you know?” question in a way that leads to a better conversation Bonus fun links: Now You’re Just A Language That I Used To Know (parody of that Gotye song) and Language Gothic. Revised and updated with more links! 

‘Haha and hehe denote laughter in both Latin and English, and they sound like laughing when you say them.’ So says my favourite part of the grammar textbook by Ælfric (d. c  1010), Old English author + teacher (Harley MS 3271, f. 90r). -A V Hudson on twitter

When the world turns completely upside down

The students in my class were arguing a question of semantics: is a hamburger a sandwich? One student noted that the menu designer at the restaurant where she worked couldn’t decide if a Chicken Burger should be listed under Hamburgers or Sandwiches.

Catherine Sangster brings us up-to-date with this year's Geek Dictionary Corner suggestions and reports back on the progress of past years' contributions:

One of the courses I teach is individual pronunciation tutoring for international students who are going to be teaching assistants here at Ohio State University. One of the resources I use a lot is…

superlinguo: The Swadesh list is a classic set of 100 vocabulary items that are collected by linguists in different languages to compare the similarities and differences of those languages. The Swadesh list is by no means perfect, but it’s a generally recognised set of basic vocabulary. For different languages you may find that there’s one of two things that don’t quite work, maybe there aren’t many animals with horns, or maybe there are several different words that are used for ‘all’. So what happens when you try and do a Swadesh list of emoji? Well, if you needed even more proof that emoji aren’t language, here it is. Firstly, I was relatively fussy, but not too fussy. Some are great, some are not. For things like ‘bark (of a tree)’ I could have just put tree up again, but the part-whole relationship gets difficult. Colours are there, but on particular objects. There are also very few emoji of people just standing, full-bodied? And verbs… well verbs are tough. Adjectives are difficult as well, because they’re pretty abstract until applied to something (we know what a ‘good dog’ is, but what’s a ‘good’?). Pronouns are a challenge for emoji because they require context for ‘me’ to mean the particular person speaking at the time, very easy to do with language, difficult to do with emoji. Emoji updates might fill a few gaps. You might also think I missed some things? If so, you can leave a comment on the Google Sheet I used to make the list (bit.ly/emoji-swadesh). I was very pleased to help @superlinguo a little bit with this Emoji Swadesh List!  It seems like “feather” would be a good candidate for inclusion in a future emoji update, as well as some more of the body parts.