The specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication.
Questions tagged [language]
89 questions
134
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Do the Finnish have a word for getting drunk alone in your underwear?
Urban dictionary (and many other articles on the internet) claim that the Finnish word "kalsarikännit" means:
to drink by yourself at your house in your underwear with no intention of going out
I couldn't find any Finnish source supporting this…
Common Guy
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Do people think in a language?
I was discussing some things with a psychology major, and he insisted that people always use a language to think. This is quite opposed to my own experience.
I agree that I am capable of formulating my own thoughts in a kind of internal monologue,…
rumtscho
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65
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Can Chinese people read the literature of 2,500 years ago as easily as yesterday's newspapers
Bill Bryson in his book The Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way, on page 110, writes:
An equally useful advantage of written Chinese is that people can read the literature of 2,500 years ago as easly as yesterday's newspapers, even…
Carlo Alterego
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57
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Is Stanford's "Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative" real?
The Wall Street Journal claims that this document is a legitimate initiative of Stanford University.
It recommends, for example, that the term "blind study", widely used in experimental trials to avoid bias, should be replaced by "masked study"…
matt_black
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49
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Are there 20,000 English words in the average adult's vocabulary?
Is there any consensus as to how many words are in the average adult's vocabulary? Over the years, I've come across various factoids and blurbs online and in magazine articles that have made statements like, "The average adult has a vocabulary of…
Scott Mitchell
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41
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Did Parker Pens release an advertisement in Spanish that accidentally implied their pens would prevent pregnancy?
I've heard some variation of this story a handful of times: an advertisement for a pen was meant to claim that it wouldn't leak in your pocket and embarass you, but in Spanish, they used the word embarazada, which means…
Cody
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40
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Is it against the law to mispronounce Arkansas?
There are many sources that claim that it is illegal to pronounce Arkansas incorrectly and you can be fined for doing so.
My favorite law is one designed to get Northerners into trouble. That's right folks, if you mispronounce Arkansas (Ar-kan-saw)…
ermanen
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39
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Are LDS missionaries taught languages to a level of fluency in under three months which takes other schools years?
In How do Mormon missionaries learn foreign languages so quickly? it is claimed that LDS (Mormon) missionaries spend only up to ten weeks in languge learning, and that most are "fluent" within one year. These missionaries receive this training…
curiousdannii
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39
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Is xenoglossy a scientifically verified phenomenon?
It has often been said that people can speak in languages that were not formerly known to them. Arguably the most often recited example of this is in the context of demonic possession. For example, those supposedly possessed by malevolent spirits…
Brian M. Hunt
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Are Americans more likely to be monolingual?
From a comment on English Language & Usage, also mentioned in Wikipedia, and Chad Fowler's book The Passionate Programmer (Related blog post by the author: How Learning a Second Language Changed My Life, where he describes it as a joke he heard in…
Andrew Grimm
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28
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Can toddlers learn sign language?
The other day came across a commercial of a 'course for sign language' for infants and toddlers.
I was a bit sceptical from the start and my suspicions only rose, then I discovered that there is what seems to me to be a multinational MLM scheme…
Mchl
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27
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Did Germans receive corn instead of wheat and rye after WW2 due to a translation error?
After World War II, the U.S. army sent food supplies to Germany. There is a widespread legend that they delivered maize instead of wheat and rye because the Germans demanded "Korn" which means grain but was ambiguously translated to corn.
This is a…
Arminius
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26
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Did Shakespeare introduce over 1700 new words to the English language?
I was cruising the JREF forums, and while I am very familiar with many of the phrases he coined and popularized in the English language, a post makes the claim.
Shakespeare coined about two thousand words. Most English speaking people quote…
Larian LeQuella
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25
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Are there more English speaking people in China than in the USA?
I have heard there are more Chinese who speak English than there are Americans who speak English. Is this true?
Mark
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Is profanity correlated with trustworthiness and honesty?
This image can be found on 9GAG and Facebook:
Profanity is defined by Merriam-Webster as "an offensive word" or "offensive language". It is also called bad language, strong language, coarse language, foul language, bad words, vulgar language, lewd…
George Chalhoub
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