Category: language acquisition (page 2 of 5)

290: Language Does Not Determine Your Thoughts (Whorfianism)

Does language influence the way we think?

Many people have thought so. And this thought has worked its way into an enormously popular idea called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Yet linguists often dismiss this idea as unfounded. So what’s the …

276: English Only

What’s behind the English Only movement?

Some people are trying to make English the “official” language of countries where there’s already a lot of English going on. Is this necessary? What are the pros and cons?

Daniel, Ben, and …

275: The Linguistic Listician (featuring Arika Okrent)

You won’t believe what it takes to make a good linguistic article!

Listicles, or list articles, can be interesting, amusing, and even informative. What goes into the creation of a good linguistic listicle? How can they change someone’s mind about …

274: Linguistic Activism (featuring Christine Mallinson)

How can you make a difference to language?

Linguists are doing a lot of great work, but what if you’re not a linguist? Is there anything that you can do to make the world a better place for language and …

268: Dialect (featuring Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalioglu)

Are dying languages worth saving?

That’s the concept of a new game that allows players to explore language creation, language community, and language death, all in the course of an evening. Heavy concepts. How does it work?

Linguist Daniel Midgley

260: Promoting LOTE (featuring Annie Demosthenous)

Language learning is important. Loads of kids are taking languages other than English (or LOTE). Lots of people are teaching them.

But for all that, we’re just not learning them. So why not? Are we doing it wrong? Not starting …

256: Numbers

One, two, three… Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

And yet different languages express numbers in very different ways. How are they handled in our brains? And how did –illion get to be the suffix for truly astronomical sums?

Linguist Daniel

254: Plagiarism

Did Melania Trump really plagiarise that speech?

Yeah, she totally did. But how can you tell if someone is copying someone else’s work? How do plagiarism checkers work? And can you beat them?

Linguist Daniel Midgley shows his work on …

251: Brexit Language Fallout

Seems the UK is eyeing the exits on the EU, but what would a UK exodus mean for language?

Would language learning be affected? How about Britain’s minority languages? And would the English language even be in the EU at …

247: Singlish (featuring Sean Yeo)

We’re talking about Singapore Colloquial English, or Singlish.

The Singaporean government would love to wipe it out, but Singlish is gaining prestige in the English-speaking world. Oxford is even adding Singlish words to its dictionary. But what is this …

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