Monthly Archives: April 2017

The Icelandic language, with a long history and a 1000-year written tradition, may be threatened in today’s world: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/europe/iceland-icelandic-language-linguistics.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Frisian, the closest relative to English, spoken in Friesland (a province of the Netherlands), is still being spoken. A speaker of Modern English will not be able to understand it, but speakers of Old English and Old Frisian could have … Continue reading →

https://theconversation.com/anumeric-people-what-happens-when-a-language-has-no-words-for-numbers-75828

Wilhelmiina Toivo, a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow, describes her study, which is attempting to explain why bilinguals seem to have a “reduced emotional resonance” in their second language: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/mar/27/bad-language-why-being-bilingual-makes-swearing-easier

Here is a nice introduction to Proto-Indo-European, including a discussion of its homeland and a recording of what it might have sounded like: http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/half-of-all-languages-come-from-one-root-language-how-it-spread-is-something-of-debate

Kory Stamper, a lexicographer at Merriam Webster, has just published a book entitled Word by Work, the Secret Life of Dictionaries. Here is a preview: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/books/merriam-webster-dictionary-kory-stamper.html?_r=1

This article suggests that lexicography (especially in America) has always been political: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/americas-uncivil-war-over-words.html?mwrsm=Email

Contemporary linguistic doctrine is that a speaker’s knowledge of grammar is innate (at least in part). Stanford researcher Michael Frank uses a statistical model to show that a child’s grammar actually gets better over time, thus pointing to the possibility … Continue reading →

It may actually increase in size! https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/sep/04/what-happens-to-the-brain-language-learning?CMP=share_btn_link

The Dictionary of American Regional English is a treasure-trove of American speech. Here is the fascinating story of its creation written by Simon Winchester: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/communication/native-tongues