Linguist claims 90% of languages will be extinct in 100 years due to migration

Posted by Terry Chrysopoulos / News

By 2115 about 90% of the languages in the world will be extinct, according to the prediction of a linguist from an American university. This means that what would remain will be about 600 languages. The reasons given for the possible situation are the inability of parents to teach their native languages to their children and because of globalization, as cultures tend to be fragmented when people migrate to new lands. The prediction was revealed by Dr. John McWhorter, who is a music, philosophy and American studies expert at Columbia University.

Origins of the specious – Patricia T. O’Conner

Posted by 40dots / Books

Do you cringe when a talking head pronounces “niche” as NITCH? Do you get bent out of shape when your teenager begins a sentence with “and,” or says “octopuses” instead of “octopi”?

Do you think British spellings are more “civilised” than the American versions? Would you bet the bank that “jeep” got its start as a military term and “SOS” as an abbreviation for “Save Our Ship”?

The author take us wherever myths lurk, from the Queen’s English to street slang, from Miss Grundy’s admonitions to four-letter unmentionables. This eye-opening romp will be the toast of grammarphiles and the salvation of grammarphobes.

language books Patricia T. O'Conner

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Jan

What is data?

Posted by 40dots / News

Whenever the topic of data comes up at meetings or informal conversations it doesn’t take long for people’s eyes to glaze over. The subject is usually considered so complex and esoteric that only a few technically-minded geeks find value in the details. This easy dismissal of data is a real problem in the modern business world because so much of what we know about customers and products is codified as information and stored in corporate databases. Without a high level of data literacy this information sits idle and unused.

Data is simply something you want to remember (a concept I borrowed from an article by Rob Karel). Examples might include:

Your home address
Your mom’s birthday
Your computer password
A friend’s phone number
Your daughter’s favorite color

Evolution of language takes unexpected turn

Posted by 40dots / News

It’s widely thought that human language evolved in universally similar ways, following trajectories common across place and culture, and possibly reflecting common linguistic structures in our brains. But a massive, millennium-spanning analysis of humanity’s major language families suggests otherwise.

Instead, language seems to have evolved along varied, complicated paths, guided less by neurological settings than cultural circumstance. If our minds do shape the evolution of language, it’s likely at levels deeper and more nuanced than many researchers anticipated…