To the untrained ear, monkeys of a certain species may all sound the same, but Japanese researchers have found that, like human beings, they actually have an accent depending on where they live.
Read the full article at Mail & Guardian Online
Parli Berluschese? Silvio Berlusconi might be criticised for his handling of the economy or his domination of the Italian media but no one can deny that he has worked wonders for the Italian language. According to 2006 Nuove Parole, a dictionary of Italian neologisms that was published this week by Sperling and Kupfer, 14 words have entered Italian that take as their stem the name of the Prime Minister.
Read the full article at Telegraph
According to Eric Bressler, a psychologist at McMaster University in Canada, men and women don’t mean the same thing when they say they value humor in a long-term partner. His research, forthcoming in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, manipulated how funny both men and women appeared on paper. Subjects were asked to choose a potential date of the opposite sex. Bressler found that women want a man who is a humor “generator,” while men seek a humor “appreciator.”
Read the full article at Psychology Today
In the end, the zobo and the ogive could not quite triumph over the qanat and the euripi, and thus the contender was birsled – Scottish dialect for scorched or toasted. It was with such linguistic acrobatics that the eighth World Scrabble Championships came to an end Sunday in a London hotel, when Adam Logan, a 30-year-old mathematician from Canada, scored 465 points to beat Pakorn Nemitrmansuk, a 30-year-old architect from Thailand, with 426 points in the final game of a playoff.
Read the full article at International Herald Tribune
Miller and Barbara Kahn, professors of marketing at Boston College and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, respectively, recently collaborated to author a study on the color and flavor of names’ effect on consumer choice.
Read the full article at The Heights
Some British speech therapists warn children’s language ability could suffer if the kids spend most of their time with nannies from other countries.
Read the full article at United Press International
Historians and linguists have tried to revive Cornish, one of a group of old Celtic languages whose cousins include Gaelic, Welsh and Breton. But the campaign isn’t going so well. For one thing, only about 200 people currently speak it well enough to hold a conversation. For another, there are four competing groups promoting the language, each with its own spelling system.
Read the full article at Austin American Statesman
In what will be music to the ears of arts advocates, researchers for the first time have shown that mastering a musical instrument improves the way the human brain processes parts of spoken language. The findings could bolster efforts to make music as much a part of elementary school education as reading and mathematics.
Read the full article at Stanford University
Text messages sent by men are shorter and use more sarcasm and swearing than those sent by women, says a study from Sheffield Hallam University. But the messages get longer when men are writing to women, say researchers.
Read the full article at BBC News
Controversy has been brewing since last week’s announcement that a team of archaeologists had discovered an ancient alphabetic inscription on a stone unearthed near Tel Zayit, Israel.
Read the full article at Language Log
In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C’s on a limestone boulder – actually, his aleph-beth-gimel’s, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet. Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.
Read the full article at The New York Times
Researchers gather at Nov. 28 at the University fo Mississippi to examine “On the Displacement of New Orleans Speakers: Linguistic Consequences of Hurricane Katrina” a roundtable discussion focusing on Mississippi Gulf Coast French, New Orleans Isleno Spanish and the New Orleans dialect of English.
Read the full article at Newswise
Shelar, a junior kindergarten student at St Jude’s in Panvel, can speak in seven languages – Sanskrit, German, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi and English. It all started when Tanish was eight-months-old when his mother, Dr Vedika Shelar, then living in Sholapur with her in-laws, heard through a friend about Siddha Samadhi Yoga (SSY). Founded by Rushi Prabhakar Guruji, their Infant Siddha Programme helps the overall development of a child. The programme specified that a child can be taught up to 20 languages by the age of six.
Read the full article at DNA Mumbai
A groundbreaking study from the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research examines the correct and incorrect ways of mixing languages with regard to marketing messages. Called ‘codeswitching,’ language mixing can result in lower ad evaluations when done incorrectly.
Read the full article at EurekAlert!
New research from the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Consumer Research reveals that we pick certain brand names for an entirely narcissistic reason – because they contain letters of the alphabet that are in our own name. The theory is an extension of the ‘name letter effect,’ which has demonstrated that people indeed like the letters in their name more so than others letters. The current research extends this phenomenon to consumerism and defines ‘name letter branding,’ which shows a connection between a consumer’s name and the brands one chooses.
Read the full article at EurekAlert!
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