Skip to content
Home » Archives for March 2010

March 2010

Wyoming Language, Culture and History Conference

We got so many interesting paper proposals that we have extended the conference for an extra half day so we could fit them all in. The Wyoming Language, Culture and History Conference now runs from Thursday, July to Saturday, July 3. See full blog post for the preliminary program

Accent, Race, and Social Preferences

A piece in Scientific American Mind called “Accents Trump Skin Color” reviews work by Katherine Kinzler and colleagues suggesting that, for young children, accent is as important as visual cues to race, gender, and age in selecting friends. The magazine article was interesting, and led me to look for the research paper it was based on.

Toyota and Japanese orthography

A radio quiz program suggested that Toyota uses a character written with eight strokes, while Toyoda uses one with ten, and that eight is a more auspicious number. This is strange for at least two reasons.

It turns out that BBC News contributor Kathryn Westcott published an article last week addressing the question, “Why is the car giant Toyota not Toyoda?” which does a pretty good job explaining the apparent inconsistency.