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Blobrana


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Linguists identify 15,000-year-old 'ultraconserved words'

A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen "ultraconserved words" that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: "mother," "not," "what," "to hear" and "man." It also contains surprises: "to flow," "ashes" and "worm."
The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a "proto-Eurasiatic" language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world's people.
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Blobrana


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For the March 2011 release of OED Online, we have selected for publication a number of noteworthy initialisms - abbreviations consisting of the initial letters of a name or expression. Some of these - such as OMG  [OMG int. (and n.) and adj.]: 'Oh my God' (or sometimes 'gosh', 'goodness', etc.) and LOL  [LOL int. and n./2]: 'laughing out loud' - are strongly associated with the language of electronic communications (email, texting, social networks, blogs, and so on). They join other entries of this sort: IMHO ('in my humble opinion') [IMHO at I n./1], TMI ('too much information')  [TMI at T n.], and BFF ('best friends forever') [BFF at B n.], among others.
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Blobrana


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There was a time when LOL - "laughing out loud" - was so simple.
If I thought something in a casual online conversation was funny, I typed it. If I wanted to let someone know I was kidding in an e-mail or an instant message, same.
I might've even felt a little cool, using inside lingo that, at one time, was exclusive to the online world. (You know I'm not the only one who thought so.)
Today, though, I'm sensing a shift, even in my own thoughts about LOL.
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Ed ~ \o/

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Blobrana


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France's Canute-like efforts to prevent the French language from being invaded by modern English terminology entered a new phase yesterday. The government announced the results of its first open competition, among schoolchildren and students, to identify French-sounding terms for 21st-century phenomena.
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The last speaker of an ancient language in India's Andaman Islands has died at the age of about 85, a leading linguist has told the BBC.
Professor Anvita Abbi said that the death of Boa Sr was highly significant because one of the world's oldest languages - Bo - had come to an end.
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Blobrana


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People are able to recognise negative sounds, like expressions of disgust, across cultures, say scientists.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tested understanding between two groups.
Westerners were compared to semi-nomadic people from a remote area of Namibia in southern Africa.
The researchers found sounds indicating negative emotions were widely understood by both groups but positive emotions were mainly culture-specific.
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Blobrana


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Cornell linguist studies how the way we speak affects meaning

How would you analyse the contents of a million books? Or a million podcasts? Mats Rooth, Cornell professor of linguistics and computing and information sciences, will do it by using software to search for word patterns in text transcriptions of audio and video files.
Rooth is one of eight winners of an international competition, Digging into Data, that challenged scholars to devise innovative humanities and social science research projects using large-scale data analysis. His project, Harvesting Speech Datasets for Linguistic Research on the Web, is based on a pilot project Rooth conducted with graduate student Jonathan Howell. It will look at distinctions of prosody (rhythm, stress and intonation) in spoken language.

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Rare words 'author's fingerprint'

Analyses of classic authors' works provide a way to "linguistically fingerprint" them, researchers say.
The relationship between the number of words an author uses only once and the length of a work forms an identifier for them, they argue.
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Blobrana


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Top Words of the Decade (2000-2009)

The Global Language Monitor has announced the Top Words of the Decade, as part of its annual global survey of the English language. The Top Words were 'Global Warming', 9/11, and Obama followed by Bailout, Evacuee, and Derivative; Google, Surge, Chinglish, and Tsunami followed. "Climate Change" was the top phrase, while "Heroes" was the top name; bin-Laden was No. 2.
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Blobrana


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Around 5,000 new words have been officially added to the German language - many of them from the English-speaking world.
The newcomers appear in the latest edition of the respected German dictionary, Duden.
Germans can now go to "eine After-Show-Party", as long as it is not "eine No-Go Area", and meet "das It Girl" - if she does not have "der Babyblues".

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