Category: minority languages (page 1 of 7)

385: You Look Like a Thing (with Janelle Shane)

Artificial intelligence is everywhere, and that freaks some people out. But the real problem is that AIs may not be smart enough.

Whether you’re concerned about the future of human/computer interaction, or you just want a fun description of machine …

383: Decolonising the Archive (with Emma Murphy and Caroline Hughes)

Communities need language. But a lot of the documentation is locked up in the archives.

So now linguists are teaming up with community researchers to demystify linguistic research, so that this work can be taken to their communities to help …

382: There’s No Enhance Button (with Helen Fraser)

We hear what we expect to hear.

That’s a problem in court, where covert audio recordings are often unclear. Who decides what goes into the transcript that lawyers, judges, and juries will see?

We’re talking to Dr Helen Fraser about …

377: Mailbag of Uncomfortableness

The mail keeps coming, and we keep answering.

  • Is English really a dialect of Chinese?
  • Why do people say “uncomfortableness”, when we already have “discomfort”?
  • Are “ankh” and “anchor” related?
  • How does learning traditional languages help communities?
  • Is there a

369: The Grammarian Is In (with Ellen Jovin and Pete Swanton)

If you’re at a park in New York City, you may see someone at a table offering free grammar advice.

That person is writer Ellen Jovin, and she dispenses wisdom from her Grammar Table. What motivates her to do …

365: Difficult Words (with Jane Solomon, Alexandra Marley, and Janice Nalorlman)

Juxtapose. Obfuscate. And of course, absquatulate.

All these words appear in a new dictionary for young people. It’s The Dictionary of Difficult Words, and we’re talking to the author, lexicographer Jane Solomon.

Activate your sesquipedalian …

363: Talking Race (with Jessi Grieser)

What happens to language when newcomers move in?

Language isn’t just for communication — it also signals membership in a group, and this is especially clear in a gentrifying community in Washington DC. Black residents are using African-American English to stake …

362: Gesture in Mind (with Violet Wardrill)

Gesture. We all do it. But what are our brains doing while it’s going on?

What does gesture contribute to our interpretation? Can we work out complex meanings when words are replaced by gestures? And when a gesture like the …

350: Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (with Zalmen Mlotek and Motl Didner)

Fiddler on the Roof is heading to Broadway — in Yiddish for the first time.

What went into the production? How did translation work? What does this production mean to the cast and to audience members?

Daniel speaks with Zalmen Mlotek

340: Ethics in Big Data (featuring Hannah Rashkin and Maarten Sap)

Do you know where your data is?

Language researchers can learn a lot from publicly available internet data. But what are the ethical issues surrounding the collection and use of this information? What about data that comes from home assistants? Does it …

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