Sociolinguo

"The researchers used psycholinguistic analysis tools and artificial intelligence models on 500 million comments posted in more than 20 large Reddit communities. The aim was to verify whether it was possible to distinguish users active in the r/conspiracy community from other users on the platform, observing only their language in mainstream contexts.

The results show that these users display recognizable linguistic signals with an average accuracy of 87%, even years before their explicit participation in conspiracy communities. Among the most recurring linguistic elements are a greater presence of anger, anxiety, and references to conflict, illness and death, as well as more frequent use of aggressive or emotionally charged language.

"One of the clearest demonstrations of this reconstructive process is the Ganong effect, first described by psychologist William Ganong. (Ganong, 1980)

In experiments, participants hear speech sounds that fall between two sounds. For example, something ambiguous between a “g” and a “k” sound. Crucially, the sound is placed in different word contexts. When the ambiguous sound precedes “-ift,” listeners tend to hear gift rather than the non-word kift. But when the same sound precedes “-iss,” they tend to hear kiss rather than giss.

"Singlish combines Singapore’s four official languages – English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil – as well as dialects such as Teochew, Hokkien and Cantonese.

The language, which has its own grammatical structure and distinctive pronunciation, does away with most prepositions, verb conjugations and plural forms. For example, “Why are you behaving like this?” is translated to “Why you liddat?” in Singlish.

"In a recent paper we looked at the distribution and teaching of languages at South African universities.

We found that English and Afrikaans remain interprovincial languages and are offered across South African universities. African languages still primarily determine the university and province in which prospective African language students can study.

"Ogham is Ireland’s oldest known writing system, dating back more than 1,500 years. If you have ever seen strange lines carved along the edge of an old stone, you may have been looking at ogham.

But what did those marks mean? Who carved them? Were they gravestones, boundary markers, family claims to lands or something else entirely?

"Smith grew up in New Mexico on the east side of the Navajo Nation reservation with his family, learning both English and Diné Bizaad.

“I’ve been working here in Salt Lake and not able to be home on the reservation that much,” Smith said. “It kind of refreshes my mind, my memory.”

"Therapy-speak is the imprecise and superficial integration of psychotherapy language into everyday communication, especially by privileged or wealthy people. Despite the advantages of normalizing psychotherapy language, such as resisting epistemic injustice and enhancing awareness of mental health issues, therapy-speak raises important concerns.

"To understand “lowkenuinely,” you first need to understand the word “low-key.” According to Merriam-Webster, this term is an adjective that means “of low intensity.” 

“Low-key” is often used in reference to casual gatherings or relationships; a wedding that has just a few people and friends might be described as “low-key,” for example.

"For many deaf people, lip-reading plays a major role in verbal communication. However, lip reading is inherently ambiguous and does not allow for a complete understanding of speech. The consequences of these limitations are significant, potentially impeding language, cognitive, and social development. Cued speech (CS) was developed to eliminate this ambiguity by supplementing lip-reading with hand gestures, giving access to the entire phonological content of speech through the visual modality alone. Despite its documented efficacy in enhancing linguistic and communicative abilities, the mechanisms of CS perception remain largely unknown. The present study is the first to examine eye movements during CS perception, with a sample of deaf CS users, hearing CS users, and hearing naive controls.

"Known as the Borg cipher, the 408-page-long manuscript is mostly incomprehensible – coded using 34 obscure symbols with a few Roman letters and a front page written in Arabic. There was no known key to reveal what was encrypted. Some of the pages are also damaged due to their age, making the code even more challenging to read.