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

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“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!

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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 … ↪

A dybtgoing study af nisse-engelsk

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Fra today, you can gense ‘The Julekalender’ on TV2 Charlie! So we bringer an indlæg about the nissers fictive sprog, which is a blanding of engelsk and Danish!

Margaret J. Blake skrev en article i 2007 om nisse-engelsk, som never blev publiceret. She kaldte her study, which she skrev in English, Just what I skut til to say! A description and analysis of NisseEngelsk, a Danish-English Mixed Language. Det er et meget scholarly værk, which toke her three kvart year to skrive.

She læste ikke mindre end sixty articles and bøgs. Manuskriptet is on 125 sider. Og de whole teksts of the three speakers Hansi, Gynter og Frits er analyseret. Optagelserne er from 1991, og of good kvalitet. … ↪

Deborah Cameron on the impact of feminist linguistic research

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Deborah Cameron has studied language and gender for around 40 years. She has written numerous books on this topic, including The Myth of Mars and Venus (2007) and Language and Sexuality (2003). She is currently a Rupert Murdoch professor of Language and Communication at Worchester College, Oxford University. Apart from her academic work, she also engages in public communication about linguistic research and feminism.

Lingoblog.dk sent me out as their reporter to ask Deborah about her work, her thoughts about political science, and the impact of linguistic, feminist research. Hopefully her reflections can inspire our readers and provide new perspectives on how and why we do research.


Can you tell me something about how and why you engage in popularised … ↪

The Story of Speech Synthesis: From Talking Tubes to Neural Networks, Part 1/3

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What would we do without the helpful voices in our GPS systems guiding us to our destinations? How would we look up esoteric facts without the silky voices of the virtual assistants on our phones? And how would we remember our belongings as we leave the train without a considerate voice reminding us to do so? Artificial voices suffuse our day-to-day worlds and fulfill practical functions, but where do these voices come from, and how do you ‘synthesise’ speech?

    The first stones of the story of speech synthesis were laid over 200 years ago where mechanical devices produced speech sounds by emulating the complex structure of the human articulatory system. Technological innovations in the early 20th century then allowed for … ↪

Can sounds have meaning? The peculiar case of West-Flemish tj and dj

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As linguists, we investigate all sorts of building bocks of language, such as sentences, predicates, prefixes and suffixes, and even individual sounds like p and z. Most of these building blocks have some kind of meaning. For example, a sentence like The cat sat on the mat means something, a predicate like is crazy in John is crazy means something, and even prefixes and suffixes mean something, such as pre- in pre-heated, which means something like ‘done in advance’, so that pre-heated means ‘heated in advance’. But, you may ask, do sounds like p and z also have meaning?

We know that sounds may distinguish meaning, but it is not so obvious that they have meaning. For example, … ↪

When Rihanna ‘mumbles’ in her native language

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You probably noticed that you can’t understand what Rihanna is singing in the chorus of her song “Work”. What most people don’t know, is that she isn’t singing in English. The language she is singing in is the creole language ‘Bajan’.

A creole language is a type of language that can arise under certain circumstances, where people who don’t have any language in common need to communicate. Bajan arose several hundred years ago among West African slaves who were transported to the Caribbean island of Barbados and bought by plantation owners. The slaves needed to communicate with each other, but since they came from many different places in Africa, they didn’t have one language in common. However, when people need … ↪