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Stories for "linguistics"

The linguistic miracle of texting: John McWhorter at TED2013

on Feb 28, 2013

More than 22 million text messages are sent across the world every day … many in truly terrible English. It’s the end of the world as we know it, many decry. The decline and fall of written language means the end for us all, right? Not so fast. Linguist John McWhorter has a great new […]

5 examples of how the languages we speak can affect the way we think

By Jessica Gross

on Feb 19, 2013

Economist Keith Chen starts today’s talk with an observation: to say, “This is my uncle,” in Chinese, you have no choice but to encode more information about said uncle. The language requires that you denote the side the uncle is on, whether he’s related by marriage or birth and, if it’s your father’s brother, whether […]