The sign of the SoLIT Café in Montreal, Quebec

Two Canadian provinces - Alberta and Quebec - may hold secession referenda in the near future. The issues at stake have broader implications for the morality of secession and other matters.

The writer and artist’s 1972 installation “Terminal Piece” shows us the failure of language in the face of violence.

You can, of course, learn the Greek language as it’s spoken today. You can also learn Greek as it was spoken in antiquity — and as it was, until fairly recently in historical time, taught to students in the modern West. But it’s a fairly different endeavor again to learn Greek as Homer spoke it. […]

I’ve interacted with many entertaining language-learning resources in various classes—from miniseries in Spanish to comic books in French—all geared toward making the unfamiliar language relevant to daily life. Learning counterintuitive pronunciations, parsing a new system of grammar, or memorizing the genders of word after word can be laborious and intimidating in the classroom. Doing so in […]

A new study challenges the widely accepted idea that word meanings are organized around emotion. After analyzing billions of words, scientists found that language may be shaped by something more basic: the need for safety. Researchers at the University of Vermont have found a new way to understand language, challenging a major assumption in psychology, [...]

Scientists have discovered that the brain’s sensory systems play a much larger role in speech learning than previously believed. New research suggests that learning to speak a new language, or recovering speech after injury, relies more heavily on the brain’s sensory systems than on regions responsible for controlling movement. The findings, from researchers at McGill [...]

Latino Books Month celebrates the history, culture, and contributions of the Latino community. To mark the occasion, the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) Bookstore is highlighting a curated collection of unique publications for and about Hispanics. Here are a few standout titles available from the GPO Bookstore’s Hispanics Collection that you should check out this […]

A new puppet show teaching the endangered Nakoda language is hitting screens in the coming year, with the crew saying nothing like this has ever been done to preserve the language.

Researchers have identified tiny genetic “switches” that appear to play a surprisingly large role in human language ability. Researchers at University of Iowa Health Care have identified specific genetic sequences that play an unusually large role in human language ability. These sequences developed before humans and Neanderthals split from a common ancestor. Jacob Michaelson, PhD, [...]

Pacific island Nauru said it will hold a referendum to change its official name, described as a colonial relic from a time when “foreign tongues” mangled the native language. Nauru would change its name to “Naoero” to “more faithfully honour our nation’s heritage, our language, and our identity”, President David Adeang said in a statement […]

The post Pacific nation Nauru to change name in break…

Do parrots actually use names the way humans do? A new study analyzing hundreds of captive parrots reveals surprisingly complex social communication. Like many animals, parrots produce calls that can sound as though they are communicating with one another, perhaps even addressing a particular bird. But whether they use names in anything like the human [...]

AI is advancing yet its capabilities remain limited, we need to avoid imparting human characteristics upon AI.

The post Think AI ‘knows’ what it’s doing? Well, think again appeared first on Digital Journal.

In 1978, Britain marked its first official early May bank holiday, a move intended to align the country with international labour traditions associated with May Day. Yet what might have been a straightforward calendar reform quickly became a cultural and political flashpoint. The reaction exposed not just ideological divides but also how quickly charged and […]

The post On This Day in 1978 the…

Challenging common myths shows that language learning is more accessible, engaging, and beneficial than many people think. Although many people assume learning a new language is difficult or out of reach, adults can succeed by focusing on communication, culture, and personal motivation rather than fear or perfection. Common myths—such as needing to avoid mistakes, learn [...]

Since macOS Mojave, macOS has had deep support for natural languages beyond English. Although Nalaprop demonstrates some of its features, it could do much more now. Should it?

In the world of international education, the English Teaching Forum remains one of the most trusted resources for language professionals. Published quarterly by the U.S. Department of State and available through the Government Publishing Office U.S. Government Bookstore, this journal is a staple for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) educators worldwide. With English Language […]

The article examines the Pahari-speaking communities of Chenab Valley through the Lokur Committee’s criteria for Scheduled Tribe recognition, highlighting geographical isolation, distinct cultural identity, and persistent socio-economic disadvantages shaped by mountainous terrain. It argues that a contemporary interpretation of these indicators presents a strong, evidence-based case for careful…

American Kalani has shared the one common word that left him baffled when he first moved over to the UK, as the word can have very different meanings here, depending on how you say it

Donald Trump is no stranger to provocative language. But his threat to wipe out Iranian civilization and other recent menacing comments have prompted critics to question the US president’s mental health. The oldest elected president in American history has ramped up his apocalyptic rhetoric as his frustration grows with Tehran’s refusal to make a deal […]

The post Trump branded ‘crazy’ over…

The deeper work of neurodiversity-affirming practice is to dismantle systemic barriers, centre lived experience, and create cultures of genuine belonging. This is not just about survival, it is about cultivating spaces where we can thrive together. As bell hooks reminds us in All About Love (1999), “rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” The…

Researchers from Cornell University have developed what they call "the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale," a tool designed to measure how impressed people are by business school-style jargon that sounds strategic but says very little.

The findings, described in a recent study, suggest that employees who rate this sort of language as insightful are more likely to struggle with analytical…

Finally, to knowledge. It's ridiculous that I should try to dispatch the complexity of what "knowledge" is in three sentences, which is about the length of a paragraph that people are willing to stick with on a screen. I will simply say here that equating words pressed on to paper with knowledge both restricts what knowledge itself is and the vast number of channels by which humanity has…

Our findings show that moral decision-making cannot be reduced to the language we use. Popular claims, such as the idea that thinking in a foreign language automatically leads to more utilitarian choices, overlook the role of individual cognitive differences and the broader language experiences of bilingual speakers.

Our study suggests that moral reasoning depends less on emotional…

Iran’s focus: closing the Strait

The Islamic Republic will continue its efforts to block the Strait of Hormuz, according to a statement this morning attributed to new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. The statement highlights Tehran’s strategy: identify easier targets (the Strait is narrow) that have maximum impact. Speaking of which, Iraq suspended its oil operations after two…

There's always a song to sing, but first a silence must be created for the song to be born in. — Yoko Tawada , Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel

The best argument I can make for why I like reading fiction in translation is because it facilitates the psychedelic experience of encountering someone else's subjectivity twice over. The translator must act as a prismatic filter,…

An international team proposes replacing Hockett’s feature checklist with a model of language as a dynamic, multimodal, and socially evolving system. For more than sixty years, Charles Hockett’s ‘design features’ have been widely used as a framework for defining what distinguishes human language from other forms of communication. These features were long treated as a [...]

Ancient carvings once thought decorative may actually be early attempts to record information. Their statistical complexity matches that of proto-cuneiform, pushing the origins of writing-like systems back over 40,000 years. More than 40,000 years ago, early humans were already engraving marks onto tools, figurines, and other objects. A new study by linguist Christian Bentz of [...]

A new study finds that one-third of proposed grammatical “universals” hold up under rigorous testing. Although the world’s languages differ enormously in sound systems, vocabulary, and structure, researchers have long observed that certain grammatical patterns appear repeatedly across cultures. A new study finds that many of these recurring features may be more than a coincidence. [...]

Wherever Janelle Nitsiza goes, her pocket-sized copy of the Tłı̨chǫ Constitution goes with her. Though...

The post Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì speakers in N.W.T. understand the importance of keeping their language alive appeared first on APTN News.