Susan DiGiacomo on Catalan
Reposted comment by Susan M. DiGiacomo John Tagliabue’s New York Times article on the new Catalan law mandating the dubbing and/or subtitling of 50% of… Read More »Susan DiGiacomo on Catalan
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Language Diversity
John McWhorter on Talk of the Nation
Yesterday John McWhorter discussed the recent call by the DEA to hire “Ebonics translators” on Talk of the Nation. He did a good job describing his positions on translation and education, but his parting remarks on the nature of language variation were cut short. I presume to expand the description.
Whorf and invented languages
Nice interview with Arika Okrent on her new book “In the Land of Invented Languages” including a good description of the Whorf Hypothesis and an in depth discussion of a variety of invented languages.
Linguistic Relativity, Whorf, Linguistic Anthropology
Kathryn Woolard, SLA President The question of linguistic relativity is the topic of an August 29, 2010 New York Times magazine article, “You Are What… Read More »Linguistic Relativity, Whorf, Linguistic Anthropology
Michel DeGraff on Haitian Kreyòl
Comments by Michel DeGraff on responses to his petition on Haitian Kreyòl As it turns out, these responses echo age-old arguments about the (mis)use of… Read More »Michel DeGraff on Haitian Kreyòl
Whorf gets a makeover
A lengthy excerpt from Guy Deutscher’s new book examines current evidence for linguistic relativity: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?src=me&ref=homepage
DEA and Ebonics
Repost of an article by H. Samy Alim and Imani Perry originally written for the The Grio blog: http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/why-the-deas-embrace-of-ebonics-is-lost-in-translation.php When the headlines appeared this week… Read More »DEA and Ebonics
Haitian Kreyòl and Catalan
Reposted from Celso Alvarez Cáccamo 2010/08/24 at 3:13 am Catalonia’s educational system is one of immersion in Catalan. Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children alike (as well… Read More »Haitian Kreyòl and Catalan
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #12
Many things happening with SLA members…
More on Haitian Kreyòl and the education system
Some interesting comments on the education system in general in a New York Times Editorial on Haitian Education These comments were posted in response to… Read More »More on Haitian Kreyòl and the education system
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #10
Rounding Up the Web It seems to be common practice among bloggers, at least among academic ones, to summarize interesting items from recent online texts.… Read More »Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #10
South African languages
About the vuvuzela term: first, the suffix -ela is an “applicative” extension in isiZulu. The suffix “ela” means “an action… performed for, on behalf of, or in the direction of something or someone” (Mbeje 2005:229). Second, there are a large number of ideophones in isiZulu (in fact, the term was first invented as a grammatical category for the linguistic analysis of isiZulu). An ideophone is basically type of onomatopoeia. Thus the term “vuvuzela” can be understood as ‘the thing with which you make the vuvu sound for someone or something’.
Linguistic Anthropology Roundup #5
Fifth linguistic anthropology roundup, by Leila Monaghan
Linguistic Diversity
Linguistic diversity has been in the news in the last few weeks in a couple of different guises.
First, there was an article about the many languages of New York City (particularly Queens)
Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages
The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago.
Just starting are Twitter adventures: Twitter.com
As you have only 140 characters per tweet, twittering has some very arcane ins and outs.
A quick overview of sign languages
Basic Background:
Sign languages are different from both spoken languages and from each other. There is no universal sign language. Because Deaf people can’t hear the spoken language of the country, a sign language like American Sign Language has a different grammar from spoken language. It is also different from other sign languages—even British Sign Language—because of the separate histories of American and British Deaf communities. Sign languages are also not spelled out words, although fingerspelling can be used if you want to translate a written words like the name of an unfamiliar town into sign language.
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