Babbel On: December 2018 Language News Roundup
The supreme effectiveness of sign language, the politeness of Canadian tweets and more from the world of language this past month.
Sign language may be a more effective way to communicate
While sign language is often thought of as an aberration from spoken language, it is worth much greater consideration than that. In fact, sign language may even be the better method of communication. One new study published in Theoretical Linguistics says that sign language is better at conveying certain ideas to the listener. The study, led by linguist Philippe Schlenker, was done over a period of eight years and looked at both American and French sign languages.
Take, for example, sentences that have a lexical ambiguity: Michael told Richard that he was a good guy. In this sentence, who is the good guy? It could technically be Michael or Richard, as the “he” is very vague. There’s other research into exactly how the brain processes this in spoken language (it involves silent variables that assign nouns to pronouns), but in sign language, this ambiguity isn’t necessary. Instead, depending on how the sentence is signed, it can assign the “he” to Michael or Richard by adjusting how “he” is spatially represented.
Another example in the study is that intensity is built into sign languages. You can make the sign for “grow” with really broad strokes to show that the growth is a large growth rather than a small one. In spoken language you could, of course, just say “growing very quickly,” but sign language can pack this information in more efficiently. Because of this, Schlenker has even called them “super languages.” Whether sign languages do have an advantage is still arguable, but this new research does provide plenty of material for linguists to debate about.
How old are we when we stop liking language change?
Young people are the drivers of language change. They invent new terms, and they’re far more accepting of lexical weirdness. Studies have shown that as people go from their 20s to their 30s and on, they become more linguistically conservative. Young people will always use slang old people hate.
A new (albeit informal) study from The Chronicle of Higher Education tells a slightly different story, however. Author Rose Jacobs wanted to see if people became less tolerant of language change as they got older, and did so by asking over 200 people how much they disapproved of certain phrases. The phrases chosen were representative of various decades:
- “I slept through the reveal.” (reveal as a noun — 1950s)
- “Could you please xerox this?” (brand name Xerox as a verb — 1960s)
- “The results will impact our decision.” (impact as a verb — 1970s)
- “I’m trying to develop my skillset.” (compound noun skillset — 1980s)
- “My omelet morphed into a scramble.” (morph as a verb outside the context of computer animation — 1990s)
- “Did he medal?” (medal as a verb — 2000s)
- “I’m lowkey annoyed by her response.” (lowkey/low-key as an adverb — 2010s)
Jacobs’ hypothesis was that the younger someone was, the more they would approve of the phrases that were being used. If people really grew more conservative with language, they would be more annoyed by the phrases that entered the lexicon after they were in their 20s. This is not what happened, however. The only phrase that showed a clear direct correlation between age and disapproval was the 2010s lowkey phrase. In fact, none of the other phrases raised much ire at all.
So do people not become more linguistically conservative as they get older? That would go against previous research, and also, it’s probably not true. Because of the limitations of this study, we can’t read too much into it, but there are a couple possible takeaways. One is that the specific examples chosen have an effect on how annoyed people are (maybe xerox as a verb is just less annoying than lowkey as an adverb). To check that, however, we would need to study a lot more phrases, and so that’s likely one of the next steps in this field.
Canadians really are all that polite (On Twitter)
National stereotypes — saying all Germans are “organized” or all English people drink tea, for example — are overall not very accurate. Researchers from McMaster University, however, have shown that one national stereotype could be true (fortunately it’s a somewhat positive one): Canadians really are more polite. On Twitter, at least. The researchers looked at 40 million English tweets from Canada and the United States. Here are representative terms from each country, though the study got rid of a number of racialized or country-specific terms that would be giveaways as to which country the Tweet’s author was from:
Without even digging into the data, you can probably see the Canadian terms on the left are generally more positive than the American ones. Also, Canadians tend to use a lot fewer emoji in tweets. From this, you could argue that the stereotypes are undoubtedly true and thus Canadians are on the whole are nicer than Americans. Don’t jump to that conclusion just yet, though.
The study’s lead author Bryor Snefjella is very careful when pointing out what this means. The researchers do not conclude that Canadians are actually nicer than Americans (and other studies have proven this stereotype false). What it does show is that in the language Canadians and Americans use, the stereotype checks out. Snefjella tells Quartz: “We are not saying ‘Canadians talk nice because they are nice’ or ‘Americans talk rudely because they’re rude.’ It seems rather than there being a Canadian or American ‘essence,’ being Canadian or American is something we do, and we seem to do it through our language choices as nations.”
Babbel Bites
The Babbel staff’s favorite language articles from the last month.
The Incredible Multilingualism Of South Goulburn Island
The Atlantic wrote about a small island off the coast of Australia where around 500 people communicate using 10 different languages. It’s a phenomenon called “receptive multilingualism,” and while people differ in how well they know each language, it demonstrates a complicated ecosystem of language that we don’t fully understand.
Will We Ever Speak To Animals?
Humans have wanted to speak to animals for a long time, and there have been reports of animals that seem to be able to understand language: Koko the Gorilla, Clever Hans the Horse, Alex the Parrot and others have all made the news for their supposed language ability. Babbel Magazine looked at these examples to see which creature we’re most likely to actually speak to first.
Language During A Crisis Can Cause Major Problems
The Economist looked at language in the Rohingya Muslim crisis. The issue, the article points out, is that in a medical situation, cultural differences in language can be important, especially when Rohingya women avoid words for “menstruation,” “rape” and “diarrhea” because of the cultural taboo around them. When someone needs immediate attention, understanding how people talk about their bodies is crucial.
A Guide To Gender-Neutral Pronouns Around The World
Gender-neutral language has managed to gain quite a foothold in English, but its popularity varies from country to country. In any case, Babbel Magazine compiled a guide to some of the pronouns that are being used in other languages.
Keeping Your Mother Tongue In A New Country
It can be hard to continue speaking your native language when you move to a new country. Second-generation immigrants almost always speak their mother tongue less than their parents do. Voices of New York highlights how one group — the Nepalese people living in Queens—keep their language from vanishing.
Is The Future Monolingual?
English has become the lingua franca of the world, and small languages are dying out every day. It can sometimes seem like we might all end up speaking the same language someday. Babbel Magazine looked at what the experts have to say about the possibilities of a monolingual future (hint: don’t give up on learning other languages just yet).
The Importance Of Multilingual Ballots
For the first time, a county in Idaho offered Spanish-language ballots. Gabes Osterhout of The Conversation took a look at how this would impact voter turnout. Oddly, this didn’t seem to affect the numbers very much, but that may just be because 2018 was a weird year for voter turnout. There was a huge increase in voters pretty much everywhere, regardless of what languages individual counties offered.
AI Won’t Be Replacing Songwriters Any Time Soon
The MIT Technology Review looked at a study done by Google researchers, where they tried to create an algorithm that will create lyrics. They did so by trying to mash together existing lyrics with other vocabulary. Needless to say, we won’t be jamming to music like this any time soon:
i’m your big and brave and handsome romeo
you know my secret secret
you have my second estate
you suit your high origin
you have my cursed youth
you have my life
