Does Bigfoot use language?
Can your brain understand a message if it’s backwards?
We don’t always understand how language works, so it’s natural that myths and legends about language should arise. Now a new book “Language Myths, Mysteries, and Magic” examines them.
Daniel Midgley talks with author, linguist, and skeptic Karen Stollznow on this episode of Talk the Talk.
Listen to this episode
You can listen to all the episodes of Talk the Talk by pasting this URL into your podlistener.
http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlPromo
Show notes
A U Kansas linguist has been approached to help with switching the Kazakh writing system to Latin script
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-03/university-kansas-linguist-risking-ire-russia-helping-kazakhstan-change-its
Kazakh is spoken in Kazakhstan (of course)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_language#Writing_system
It has about 11 million speakers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
It’s had a number of writing systems over the years
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/kazakh.htm
But it might soon be joining the 70% of languages that use the Latin writing system.
http://centralasiaonline.com/en_GB/articles/caii/features/main/2013/04/02/feature-01
Linguist, skeptic, and author Karen Stollznow
http://karenstollznow.com/
Language Myths, Mysteries, and Magic is out now from Palgrave Macmillan
http://www.palgravemacmillan.com.au/palgrave/onix/isbn/9781137404855
OMG Ben was right. It’s grotesque. Totally going to do this though.
http://io9.com/the-creepy-story-of-how-budapest-became-a-city-of-smil-1635708606
Yes, employers still use graphology as a way of finding out about the personality of potential applicants. Think about that: you could be knocked out of the running for a job, based on thoroughly discredited pseudoscience.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22198554
Graphologists do no better than random chance at predicting personality traits.
http://www.skepdic.com/graphol.html
What do you call a word you mispronounce because you’ve only read it? An onlyreaditism? A persephone? How about a calliope?
http://ask.metafilter.com/266681/Looking-for-a-term-mispronouncing-a-word-youve-only-ever-read
