This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular.
Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include, or just add a comment to the post, with the link(s) you’d like to share.
Global English
Google’s List of Banned Words for Android Includes Uterus and Lactation
Google recently released a new version of its keyboard for Android, and it comes along with a list of 1,400 words “that Google has quietly deemed inappropriate for Android users.”
Language change and slang
A Handy Visual Guide To Twitter Lingo
Are you tweeting a RLRT that’s NSFW and a MT? Did that sentence look like total nonsense? Do you hate acronyms? Me too!
Improve your English
Vice Versa and Vis-à-Vis
This article explains the differences between two similar-sounding but completely unrelated expressions.
Infographic
A Visual Guide To The Languages Of The World
For their 50th anniversary, Pimsleur Language programs conducted a survey in which they asked Americans about their perceptions and realities with language. This handy infographic details some of their findings.
Books, science, dictionaries, words and languages
Men and women’s brains are ‘wired differently’
A US team at the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of nearly 1,000 men, women, boys and girls and found striking differences…
Male and female brains: the REAL differences
…But not everyone’s convinced: “The study itself has been taken apart by the neuroscience community like a juicy lamb shank thrown to a tank of rarely-fed piranhas.”
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone voted UK’s favourite children’s book
Poll conducted by Booktrust shows JK Rowling’s wizard still has nation’s young readers bewitched.
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