Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity

Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of “social technology” that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool: cooperation.

“Occupy” has been named the 2011 Word of the Year.

The word was voted on by the American Dialect Society, which was founded back in 1889 and is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it.

http://www.longislandpress.com/2012/01/09/occupy-word-of-the-year/

The society is made up of linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, historians, grammarians, academics, editors, writers and independent scholars in the fields of English, foreign languages or other disciplines.

Apple’s Siri Still Hates the British. And Southerners

Siri comes with support for five languages: three dialects of English (U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia), French and German.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/20/apples-siri-still-hates-british-and-southerners/

A growing number of accented Americans have taken to Apple’s forums to voice their complaints in the only language Apple tech support understands: the written one.

Pennsylvania’s dialects are as varied as its downtowns — and dahntahns:

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/pennsylvania_dialects.html

The bottom line is few kitchen tables can be as linguistically cluttered as a Pennsylvania table when the family comes to town.

Based solely upon pronunciation and grammar, researchers generally split the United States into a number of linguistic regions. Those regions come together in Pennsylvania — which makes the state kind of a crossroads of the English language.

Thanks in part to immigration patterns and relative geographic isolation, Pennsylvania is home to six — count’em six — distinct English dialects.

Languages and dialects also exist in the animal kingdom: Scientists ask public to help decode whale song. Global ‘crowdsourcing’ experiment aims to discover new phrases, meanings and dialects among pilot and killer whales.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/nov/29/scientists-public-whale-song?newsfeed=true

“The Whale Project” was launched on Tuesday by Scientific American and the online citizen science organisation “The Zooniverse.”

Participants visiting whale.fm will be asked to study and then compare the sound wave patterns, or spectograms, of calls made by whales in different pods and families of whales around the world.

iPhone 4S can’t get its head around our dialects: The new iPhone 4S with its voice-activated personal assistant enabled by Siri software, can identify only the British, American and Australian accents. It cannot decipher the kind of English that is spoken in India. Siri is yet to enable the detection of different accents and dialects.

Sami, Frisian and Udmurt – the obscure languages of Europe compete in song contest: the “Liet International Song Contest” was staged ths Saturday night, open only to entries performing in European based dialects which few people understand.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/8902137/Sami-Frisian-and-Udmurt-the-obscure-languages-of-Europes-minority-song-contest.html

Organisers claim that the contest “promotes tolerance, multilingualism, friendships and combats racism and eventual risks of ethnic conflicts.”

Janna Eijer, the Friesian singer, won the show. Hope you enjoy her performance!

Vanuatu Languages: A world-first study is about to begin into an intriguing feature of the languages used by Vanuatu’s indigenous populations. While other languages indicate whether an event is in the past, present or future, the Oceanic languages of the French Pacific republic look at whether something is real or unreal. New Zealand linguistics lecturer Julie Barbour has been given a $345,000 grant from her country’s Marsden research fund to carry out the study. More here:

http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/201111/3357802.htm?desktop

Major Chinese dialect to be saved in database - The eastern coastal province of Zhejiang plans to build a vocal database to preserve Wu Chinese, a millennium-old dialect that was once used to chant China’s ancient poems.

Researchers will invite competent speakers to collect words and phrases commonly used in the dialect and read them for recording. The collection and recording will benefit the study of the pronunciation as well as the grammar of the dialect, better preserving the ancient tone. Known for its tender, music-like rhythm, Wu Chinese is spoken by some 80 million people in China’s south and east.

The Navajo people contributed their language, as a communication code, during the World War II effort of the Unites States of America. This documentary sheds light on this activity and on the ancient and sacred dialect of the Navajo people.