Writing and language in ancient Mesopotamia

by
meso1

Ancient Mesopotamia is often referred to as “the cradle of civilization”, a label that actually carries a certain level of truth to it. Here, along the banks of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, mankind founded the world’s first major cities 6000 years ago and invented the world’s first writing system: cuneiform. These two innovations – the urban revolution and the invention of writing – have proved to be crucial to the way we humans have settled on Earth.

meso2

It is called cuneiform because cuneus in Latin means “wedge”, and each symbol is formed from small triangles (wedges), which are assembled in different ways and at different angles (the composition of wedges for a single symbol can vary from just one … ↪

Island languages

by
Unknown 21 1

Why do so many linguists undertake research on islands and study the languages of islands? For some researchers, it is appealing from a common sense perspective: Islands are often socially and geographically isolated, the cultural traditions that thrive on such islands are often unique due to the relative isolation of the community, and researchers make the logical leap that this uniqueness could also characterize the island community’s speech. Despite these facts, islands as specific research sites in their own right have been given little direct attention by linguists. The physical segregation, distinctness, and isolation of islands from mainland and continental environments may provide scholars of language with distinct and robust sets of singular and combined case studies for examining the … ↪

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL LINGUISTIC CHRISTMAS

by
now thats

It’s Chistmas-time again – and what would this time of year be without Christmas music? A lot of us start counting the days ’till Christmas from the moment “Last Christmas” surprises us in a shopping center sometime around November 20th. With the ongoing corona pandemic, the Danish Health Authorities recommend that people don’t sing on Christmas Eve as is otherwise customary – a recommendation that has received continuing media coverage since the end of November. In other words: We can’t get enough of Christmas songs!

Or maybe Christmas music just isn’t your thing. Is it really possible to listen to ”All I Want for Christmas is You” throughout December without losing your mind, you might be thinking. I … ↪

Revolution in Yiddish teaching: The New Yiddish Textbook In eynem

by
InEynemCover copy jpeg

It was nothing less than a revolution that hit the world of Yiddish teaching this summer, when the multimedia Yiddish textbook In eynem (White Goat Press, 2020) was published. For many years, Yiddish students have been studying the language with Uriel Weinreich’s College Yiddish from 1949, or with Selva Zucker’s Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture from 1995.

Now, Yiddish students and teachers have a more up-to-date alternative. In eynem is a monumental textbook, counting 800 pages (split up in two volumes), with beautifully illustrated dialogues, word explanations, exercises and texts about Jewish culture. It features a goldmine of material for the first two years of Yiddish studies. A dedicated website offers even more teaching material, e.g. … ↪

The mobile phone effect in linguistics

by
Unknown 29

Today, most Europeans own a mobile phone and communicate over vast geographical distances. In his Telsure project, Labov showed how useful this fact is for sociolinguistic data gathering, when he used landline telephones to collect his speech samples. But, it was not addressed how the telephone transmission could affect speech.  This has been investigated especially in forensic phonetics and this has been coined the telephone effect. The telephone effect might ring a bell for most linguists and to some even its acoustic implications are not unfamiliar. However, technology has evolved, and landline telephones have been replaced by digital, non-physically connected mobile phones. So, can we then assume that the mobile phone effect has the same implications for speech as … ↪

Does he say he twice as often as she? Women, men and language

by
hvem sagde hvad 435087

“Hvem sa hva? Kvinner, menn og språk” (English translation of the title: ”Who said what? Women, men and language”) by Helene Uri was published in Norway in 2018 and won the prestigious Brage Prize the same year. The book is about gender differences in language and language use, but it is just as much about the differential treatment and outright discrimination of primarily women, which most of the gender differences are a result of. The book is a mixed bag of observations, but still represents one of the best Scandinavian books on the topic.

Helene Uri (b. 1964) is a Norwegian linguist and author. In her 2008 novel “De besste blant os” (English translation of the … ↪

The first ever Twitter-conference on linguistics is taking place this Saturday!

by

twitterconf

Would you like to go to a free, online linguistics conference this Saturday? Well, good news:

On Saturday, December 5th, you can follow the presentations of the first ever Twitter-conference on linguistics, Linguistweets! The concept is very simple: Research presentations will be delivered via a series of no more than 6 tweets, presented during a 15 min time slot, under the hashtag #linguistweets. All you have to do is search for the hashtag on Twitter, and you’re good to go! You can find the full conference program her.

The organizers of the event is the Brazilian Linguistics Association (Abralin). On the conference website, the organizers write:

”Besides removing the hassle of travelling, especially during the pandemic, Twitter … ↪