Language and words in the news – 18th March, 2011

This post contains a selection of links related to recent 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

Knowing one language not enough in this age
As a Malaysian, I am proud of our national language – Bahasa Melayu – a language I use daily in communicating … However, we must also accept the reality that knowledge of one language is insufficient in this modern and technological age.

Mind your language: German linguists oppose influx of English words
What’s the German for marketing? Das Marketing! No wonder some purists fear anglicisms could make German a peripheral language.

Language change and slang

Little Big Words
In the world of new media, “you” and “i” are more than just pronouns.

No reason to be mardy about Americanisms
British pronunciation is diverging from American, according to a project capturing spoken English across the world.

Improve your English

33 Terms Every True Grammar Geek Should Know
As with every passion, linguistics comes with its own unique vocabulary challenging fans to memorize them all. Hundreds more exist beyond these 33, but they certainly make for an amusing start!

Punctuation rules to master: Question marks, semicolons and more
In the course of editing, I come across punctuation applications that are as creative and diverse — and as maddening — as the vehicular maneuvers perpetrated in the parking lots of northwest Chicagoland.
So, buckle your seatbelts; we’re going on a punctuation tour.

Language teaching and resources

The English Language Teacher’s Guide To Twitter, tech tip #11
Twitter is a conversation that happens at the speed your fingertips can type. For educators, it’s a community, a place to meet and form global relationships with other like-minded professionals in a … virtual staffroom.

Books, words, science and the history of language

New Research Demonstrates Language Learners’ Creativity
New research … shows that language learning goes well beyond simple imitation, and in fact that language learners are quite creative and remarkably smart.

Language technology – video

The birth of a word
MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language – so he wired up his house with video cameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son’s life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch “gaaaa” slowly turn into “water.”