A study of Polish children in Glasgow reveals how they successfully navigate complex social rules relating to language to blend in with their peers.
One of the ways we work out what proto-language might have been like is by looking at languages which have developed from nothing in recent times. One of the best examples is Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Unsplash/Jo Hilton
In the space of a few short years, deaf Nicaraguan school children created their own language. This example may give us a clue about how spoken language developed over thousands of years.
Javanese still is used in art performance. Here is Javanese dance jathilan in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, March 2017.
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A new theory of language suggests that people understand words by unconsciously simulating what they describe. Repeated exposure – and the simulation that comes with it – makes it easier to act.
Afrikaner descendants representing Argentina, South Africa today and the country’s old flag.
Richard Finn Gregory / GOODWORK
A small community of Afrikaners has been living in Argentina since the early 1900s. Linguistic research has found they’re like a time capsule, reflecting pronunciation and syntax from an earlier era.
At the Maningrida football Grand Final in 2015, commentary was recorded in nine languages. But elsewhere, the threat of language loss poses a serious risk to our nation’s cultural inheritance.
Sometimes the only way of telling similar medication apart is by name.
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Concerns about non-English-speaking migrant populations leading to “parallel communities” are not well founded. Third-generation migrants are typically monolingual in English.