The offensive poster is now the subject of a police investigation.
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The unpleasant ‘Happy Brexit Day’ poster misses the fact that the vast majority of people in the UK recognise the benefits of multilingualism.
Language and meaning are highly plastic: they adapt to what speakers have to say.
AAP Image/Peter Eve
People still find ways to express old ways of speaking in a new language, so that language does not fundamentally alter their cultural identity.
President John F Kennedy Meets with the President of the Republic of Ghana Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah
Wikimedia Commons
Compared to other politicians who tend to be indirect and evasive, Nkrumah was direct, explicit and assertive.
The American Dialect Society chose ‘they’ as its ‘Word of the Decade.’
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Pronouns rarely, if ever, change. Then along came the gender nonbinary ‘they,’ which was just anointed ‘word of the decade.’
Millions of shelter animals are adopted in the U.S. every year.
hedgehog94/Shutterstock.com
A new study analyzes the language in nearly 680,000 pet adoption ads.
What started as a SpongeBob meme took on a life of its own in 2019.
Alexander Oganezov/Shutterstock.com
As the year winds down, we’ll get you up to speed. Plus, there’s no better way to kill a trend than to bring it up at the dinner table in front of your kids.
Baboons make sounds, but how does it relate to human speech?
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Researchers say it’s time to finally discard a decades-old theory about the origins of human language – and revise the date when human ancestors likely were able to make certain speech noises.
Doctors protest against what they see as the Conservative Party’s push to privatise the health service.
Isabel Infantes/PA
One side wants to ‘get Brexit done’ while the other shouts the ‘NHS is not for sale!’. What does it all really mean?
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‘Greengrocer’s’ may be in mourning, but the rest of us can sigh with relief.
‘Cancel culture’ has been nominated Word of the Year by The Macquarie Dictionary, for reflecting the zeitgeist.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
There is a negative feel to many of the shortlisted contenders for The Macquarie Dictionary’s Word of the Year.
Trump: there was no quid pro quo.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA
The history of the Latin phrase at the centre of the impeachment investigation into Donald Trump.
The mysterious world of His Dark Materials.
BBC/Bad Wolf/HBO
Behind the magical tale is a deep layer of linguistic meaning.
It’s not what you say… it’s how you say it.
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Non-native speakers often face an uphill struggle to be heard and taken seriously.
How do you pronounce ‘Muslim’? What about ‘spiel’?
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How members of America’s two parties view the country – and its place in the world – might explain this phenomenon.
IR Stone
Some people claim it’s already been passed. But Alan Turing’s test of whether artificial intelligence can act like a human remains an important benchmark for our species.
The Prime Minister’s inflammatory language in Parliament provoked outrage.
PA
Use of the words ‘traitor’, ‘surrender’ and ‘betrayal’ have increased inside parliament but everyone outside needs to watch their language too.
The Grand Final isn’t just about the players – it’s about the crowd, too.
Michael Dodge/AAP
The AFL Grand Final is more than a physical contest between professional athletes: it is a day we collectively make meaning, and create culture.
The signature pirate voice is from the West Country in south-west of England. But why West Country?
IMDb
We may no longer say ‘shiver me timbers’, but we still use plenty of pirate words for other things.
Reading and writing can prevent cognitive decline.
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As we get older, our eyesight may dim and our recall may falter. But our linguistic abilities don’t seem to erode.
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Some animals, like rats, learn linguistic patterns better than humans can.