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5 votes
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A finger-sized clay cylinder from a tomb in northern Syria appears to be the oldest example of writing using an alphabet rather than hieroglyphs or cuneiform
23 votes -
Should a country speak a single language? In India, one of the world’s most polyglot countries, the government wants more than a billion people to embrace Hindi.
10 votes -
The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan
11 votes -
Character amnesia in China
34 votes -
Epiousion
18 votes -
A lawmaker representing Greenland in Denmark's Parliament was asked to leave the podium of the assembly after she refused to translate her speech delivered in Greenlandic into Danish
19 votes -
Babel Lecture 2022 with Stephen Fry: 'What we have here is a failure to communicate' (17/06/22)
8 votes -
Where does punctuation come from?!
15 votes -
Viossa and venting about Etymology Nerd
The first half of this post is a vent about recent events I have to get out of my system. Below is some hopefully actually interesting content about the constructed conpidgin Viossa. If you are...
The first half of this post is a vent about recent events I have to get out of my system. Below is some hopefully actually interesting content about the constructed conpidgin Viossa.
If you are interested in languages & linguistics and, like me, are not immune to the draw of short-form video content, you are probably familiar with the creator Etymology Nerd. He makes shorts on TikTok and other platforms about all things linguistics, usually pointing out some cool facet or etymology. The videos are, due to the their length, often very surface level, but they’re informative and fun, and for the most part, accurate enough – at least as far as I can tell. However, two days ago, he posted this short on TikTok and then a bit later to YouTube: conlangs are so back. It points the spotlight on a constructed language by the name of Viossa: A collaborative con-pidgin, that is, a conlang created by users attempting to establish communication despite speaking different languages. This is rather meaningful to me, as I was one of the original co-creators of Viossa – more on that below. At first, I was quite happy about this, until I went to check out the Discord server and found it effectively on fire. While there were about 1700 members on the discord server, the number of active members was much smaller, certainly less than 100.
In the first day after the TikTok video, over 1000 users sought out the discord server and joined it.
Etymology Nerd didn’t ask for permission, he did not even give a heads-up. He found and joined the server on the 27th, asked a few questions, and then posted his short on TikTok two hours later. And while he learned that the server’s moderation was getting overwhelmed, he reposted the video to YouTube unchanged the next day anyway, merely leaving a pinned comment asking people to be respectful. The Viossa discord is currently on lockdown (invites paused) until things settle down. In the meantime, the short has amassed close to two million views on TikTok & Youtube combined. While I don’t think this can be called malicious, it speaks of a lack of care of the impact it can have to shine a spotlight on a small community when you have such a big following. Who cares what happens to them, I got my clicks, right?
But that’s enough venting. Time for some history. As I mentioned above, I was one of the people who started this whole thing. Back in 2014, before Discord, there was a Skype group for people interested in conlangs. I was in high school at the time, as were most other members – reddit demographics. We realized that many of us spoke at least one language other than English, and decided to conduct an experiment: Could we establish communication through those other languages by finding common grounds and learning each other’s words for things? So on Christmas Eve that year, six of us hopped into a video call and tried to communicate without using English. Each of us would contribute with one or two languages: Norwegian, Finnish, Japanese, Irish, Albanian&Greek and Swiss German. Within the first night, we had a few words and could ask simple questions. Within the first week, we had a few hundred words and were able to hold uninterrupted, if simple, conversations. We had some other people join the project over the course of the first year, and presented the results on reddit:
Things continued quietly from then on. The number of members grew slowly, while others got bored and dropped out of the project. At some point, Discord rolled around and the community moved there – a far easier platform to join than Skype. Some copycat projects sprung up, but to my knowledge, sadly none really persisted. In 2017, I held a talk at the Language Creation Conference about this style of language creation, and on Viossa in particular. The conference was livestreamed, so you can watch it on Youtube here (ca. 30 minutes):
A major influx of new members came in 2020, when Jan Misali made a video on the language as part of his Conlang Critic series. His video is extremely well put-together, and created in close collaboration with many regular members of the community, and it really is the best showcase of what Viossa had become in the six years since its inception. You can find it here:
This video put the project on the radar for many more people, and it has definitely changed the language. When you get many learners in a short amount of time, the things they pick up tend to reinforce each other, and you get sudden drastic shifts. I’m finding that I struggle with understanding a lot more of the language used by people who joined after this video than from other oldtimers. Then things settled again, until the etymologynerd post two days ago.
And that’s the history of, weirdly, one of the more successful constructed languages, built on just two rules:
- If you can understand it, it’s correct Viossa.
- Learn Viossa through Viossa, no translation.
20 votes -
You can learn Lord of the Rings’ Elvish — just not Tolkien's version
26 votes -
English still rules the world, but that’s not necessarily OK. Is it time to curb its power?
23 votes -
“Authentic” is dead. And so is “is dead.”
22 votes -
Study: Language affects how quickly we perceive shades of colour
15 votes -
Debunking the myth of Hollywood's "fake" transatlantic accent
35 votes -
110 new languages are coming to Google Translate
15 votes -
How babies and young children learn to understand language
8 votes -
Assume the Sapir-Whorf Linguistic Theory is accurate: What languages would be best to learn, to improve one's cognitive functions and/or worldview?
Inspired by the recent post about Arrival / The Story of Your Life The idea of linguistic relativity ... is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers'...
Inspired by the recent post about Arrival / The Story of Your Life
The idea of linguistic relativity ... is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus individuals' languages determine or influence their perceptions of the world.
There's, of course, a lot more to it, many variations, and all still at least somewhat in dispute.
Nevertheless, as the title says, assume it's true, and speculate on which languages would be the most interesting to learn from an "expand your mind" perspective.
7 votes -
Do you speak Estonian?
10 votes -
The Canterbury Tales, or, how technology changes the way we speak
14 votes -
The most mispronounced brand from every country
22 votes -
How do I fix my (stupid) use of excessive punctuation?
In online forums I use far too many punctuation marks. I especially use dashes - to separate clauses that don't need a dash (and sometimes I'll add brackets like this because, well, I dunno). And...
In online forums I use far too many punctuation marks. I especially use dashes - to separate clauses that don't need a dash (and sometimes I'll add brackets like this because, well, I dunno). And sometimes I'll start a sentence with "and" when it doesn't need to be there. My comma use is wild and uncontrolled, but I feel it's a bit more controlled than these other marks.
Importantly: I do not care how other people use punctuation.
But I would like to try to fix, or perhaps just improve, my punctuation use. Like the way I just start a new paragraph at random.
I feel like my posts are the same as those flyers that use 7 different fonts, with bolds and underlines and italics (and combinations of them), and with some words in red and some in green and some in black and there's no rhyme or reason to it.
I do like a casual tone but I feel that I go far too far in the informal direction. English is my first, and my only, language. (I love Europe, but I am a bad European. "Please look after our star" we said, and most of us said it in English because most of us who said it don't know other European languages)
Do you have any advice? I'd be interested to hear about books, or videos, or courses, or podcasts, or anything at all that can help. I'd even pay for this. But not Eats Shoots and Leaves please
29 votes -
Language learning thread #1 - Share your progress, tips and questions
As discussed and suggested here. What are you learning? How is it going? Share your progress, tips and tricks. Ask other learners questions. Writing in non-English languages is welcome in this...
As discussed and suggested here.
What are you learning? How is it going? Share your progress, tips and tricks. Ask other learners questions.
Writing in non-English languages is welcome in this thread if you want to practice, but please at least include a Google Translate or Deepl translation in a foldable paragraph, using
<details>[your translation]</details>
18 votes -
The beautiful dissociation of the Japanese language
31 votes -
How Russian-language poets and their translators have responded to the war in Ukraine
8 votes -
Pittsburgh smokers more inclined to say jagoff than yinz
21 votes -
In the AI era, is translation already dead?
18 votes -
Northern Sámi, a language spoken in the Arctic, has more than 300 words for snow and a special word for "frightened reindeer" – can it survive in a warmer world?
19 votes -
A new way to learn vocabulary. A story about a word nerd and AI. And a call for help.
Hi logophiles! I am a total word nerd. Over the last six years--mostly accidently--I ended up creating a bunch of vocabulary learning materials and spent way too much time thinking deeply about...
Hi logophiles! I am a total word nerd. Over the last six years--mostly accidently--I ended up creating a bunch of vocabulary learning materials and spent way too much time thinking deeply about how we learn new vocab and how to teach it. My story: basically, via word of mouth, people with kids taking the SSAT and the SAT kept asking me for my materials which I continually iterated on as I got feedback. It wasn't my day job, lol, it wasn't even a side hustle.... just an obsession :) As I shared my "system", I kept dreaming of even better ways to make vocab learning effective, easy, and fun.
Some interesting things about learning vocab. The "keyword method" is extremely effective. (The keyword method is associating a target word with a similar-sounding word (the "keyword") and then creating a vivid mental image connecting the keyword with the target word.) [Ávila & Sadoski, 1996; Shapiro & Waters, 2005]. Further, connecting the new word and its meaning to your own personal experience is much effective than rote memorization. ("...engaging in deeper semantic processing and relating information to personal experiences can activate distinct neural circuits compared to those involved in rote memorization." [Andreasen, O'Leary, Cizadlo, Arndt, Rezai, Watkins, Ponto, & Hichwa, 1995]).
There are a lot of other cool things I discovered on my (research-obsessive) path to make learning vocab radically easier. A core driver for me has always been thinking about the epistemology of word-learning. What does it mean to "know" a word? "Knowing" a definition is different from truly knowing a word, where you can deploy it effortlessly when the context is right. That led to endless rabbit holes of learning about polysemy, colocations, and a whole lot more.
The first day I saw Dalle my jaw dropped. This was it! This was the missing piece for learning vocab 2x, 3x, 4x(?) more efficiently than has ever been possible. The image generation AI tools can make a custom image that packs in your own favorite keyword mnemonic and your own personal story into a cool image. Whoa! Because what has been my total obsession could finally be created in the real world, I teamed up with two good friends with the technical chops to build what had been percolating in my brain for six years. We've built a beta version over the last four months and it is ready to test!
I love Tildes, and I don't want to self-promote, so I am not going to drop the app name / website, but I am here with an ask. We want feedback! We want to make this the dream app for anyone who is serious about growing their (English) vocab. We want you in our beta test group.
The commitment I'm asking of our beta testers is a bit onerous. I want to hop on a zoom call with you while you use the app for an hour or so and have you tell me what you love and hate. I want to ask you a bunch of questions about what you want to see in your dream learning app. Then I want to give you the app for a month a two; hopefully you'll use it and learn a bunch of words; then I want to hop on a 20 minute call with you and get your hot take on the whole thing.
It is such an intense passion project for me; I want to make the app just rock-your-world-awesome. That's why I want to do live user interviews. (Which is a little out of the ordinary for sure.) And I can't do that without talking to real people who care about growing their vocab who are willing to hang out with me for an hour or two. :)
As a thanks for your help, when we go to the paid version, you'll get three months free, and a massive lifetime "friends and family" discount. But more than that, you'll really impact what we build next, and how we can make it better. While it's maybe a little idealistic, or might even sound silly to some, I feel like better vocab = better communication = better relationships. So I am all-in, fervently devoted, and hopeful that you'll come along for the ride and help me make it epic.
Who is it for? Studying for standardized tests? Oh yeah. This will help a lot. Want to raise the ceiling on what you can read. Let's go! Want to improve your English skills? This is for you. Love words. Yep! I'd love to meet you! Basically, if you love words, and/or have something coming up that requires that you know more words, I really hope you'll be part of our test!
More interesting stuff about vocabulary:
--Average high school graduate has a vocab size of 16,000 words
--Average college grad, 20,000 words
--Average PhD. 28,000 wordsTildes is a very smart and well read group, so I' bet the average vocab size around here is 25,000 to 35,000. Want to know your (approximate) vocab size. One of the best (easy and fast) tests is here:
https://preply.com/en/learn/english/test-your-vocab
(I have nothing to do with that site or company, and do not endorse them. It's just that their vocab size estimator is really well done.)Want to be a beta tester, or just talk more about vocab, shoot me a message!
pandacat@onmail.com11 votes -
The decimal point is 150 years older than previously thought, medieval manuscript reveals
16 votes -
The endangered languages of New York
16 votes -
What is the horrible phrase my wife learned from her grandpa?
Hello! My wife's grandfather would say the phrase "ʃɛkrɛplj jɛɽɛ" from what I can decode from the phonetic alphabet on Wikipedia, or my best English estimation "shikrepple yere" with a flipped r...
Hello! My wife's grandfather would say the phrase "ʃɛkrɛplj jɛɽɛ" from what I can decode from the phonetic alphabet on Wikipedia, or my best English estimation "shikrepple yere" with a flipped r if that makes no sense. He would say this when he lost a hand in poker, when she repeated it as a kid got chewed out and told not to say it, and he died without having ever said what it meant. He was stationed in Germany during the Korean War, so our best guess is something Polish..? But we can't find much that matches.
Tilderinos, can you translate what horrible phrase my wife has been casually repeating to people trying to figure it out and what language it's even in? Apologies if this is a slur or something... And thanks!
71 votes -
Does your Irish child speak with an American accent? The change may not last forever, linguistic expert says.
16 votes -
Why does the letter 'S' look like an 'F' in old manuscripts?
22 votes -
shī shì shí shī shǐ - Story of Stone Grotto Poet
14 votes -
The state of the world’s 7,168 living languages
18 votes -
Engraving on an almost 2,000-year-old knife believed to be the oldest runes ever found in Denmark
11 votes -
News sources or other subtitled media in Traditional Chinese?
So I recently got back from a very comforting trip to my motherland in Taiwan. I always joke that when I get back from Asia my Chinese gets better by a lot. One thing I kinda wish I was better at...
So I recently got back from a very comforting trip to my motherland in Taiwan. I always joke that when I get back from Asia my Chinese gets better by a lot.
One thing I kinda wish I was better at was reading Traditional Chinese, since it's one of the barriers I have for fully communicating with my family and dimishes my confidence when navigating Taiwan.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fluent in speaking, I've had full on conversations with native Taiwanese and they're always surprised that I'm from America.
At the same time I feel like I should be keeping up with the news and general day to day life in Taiwan, since I plan on visiting more often because my grandparents are getting older and I really miss the country a lot.
I know we have a couple of people who are in East Asian countries/Taiwanese/Taiwanese-adjacent, I was wondering if y'all had any suggestions on things like news channels on YouTube or day in the life content that I can follow along with and match characters to practice my reading a bit. I can read at maybe a kindergarten level if that helps LOL.
15 votes -
A brief history of the United States’ accents and dialects
12 votes -
Recommendations for a grammar checker?
I'm looking for a French grammar checker. I think I'm in that intermediate-level plateau where I just need to keep talking / chatting in French but I want to eventually get to a point where I have...
I'm looking for a French grammar checker. I think I'm in that intermediate-level plateau where I just need to keep talking / chatting in French but I want to eventually get to a point where I have correct grammar, maybe even some suggestions for idioms.
Some info for my use-case:
- I don't expect to go past 100 "consultations" a month.
- Would be nice if there was an extension that helps for email / Messenger / Telegram / WhatsApp.
- Would be nice if it did help with idioms.
I did my homework and found out that:
- Grammarly does offer this but only in English.
- Language Tool exists but it's 20 euros monthly or 60 euros per year, which are both steep prices for just trying it out.
- Asking ChatGPT works most of the time, but it's a bit annoying to load up that website every time and ask. I'm open to coding something based on the API if that would be the most cost-effective option.
Thanks in advance for all your suggestions!
10 votes -
There's a better English alphabet
8 votes -
Why Indian universities are ditching English-only education
17 votes -
I've got my IELTS speaking test in a few hours. Is there anyone here who has taken the test and has some tips to share?
It's my first time appearing for the test and I could use some tips. Thanks.
15 votes -
Thunderplump: Ten weird and wonderful words with Susie Dent
5 votes -
Sawing off the branch you’re sitting on: removing disfluencies in natural language processing
7 votes -
The mysterious case of the "lost positive"
8 votes -
Does the language you speak change how you think?
42 votes -
Thirty-nine volumes of the Swedish Academy Dictionary stand as Sweden's answer to the Oxford English Dictionary. And it's just been sent to the printers after 140 years.
18 votes -
The surprisingly subtle ways Microsoft Word has changed the way we use language
38 votes -
Have you learned a foreign language as an adult? What did you find effective?
I would love to know of your experiences. I do speak multiple languages, but was lucky to learn them through immersion as a child. I would be super interested to know how people learn languages...
I would love to know of your experiences. I do speak multiple languages, but was lucky to learn them through immersion as a child.
I would be super interested to know how people learn languages (with a goal to speak them fluently) as an adult. What techniques worked? What techniques didn't? Do you have any funny stories (perhaps miscommunication anecdotes)? Was it worth it? Or your things generally in relation to language-learning!
31 votes