for questions about the scientific study of language.
Questions tagged [linguistics]
8 questions
108
votes
8 answers
Could people perceive the color blue in ancient times?
This article claims that no ancient language anywhere in the world had the word for "blue", that for instance Homer described the sea as "wine-dark", and that the color blue has only appeared more recently in languages, more or less at the same time…
o0'.
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22
votes
1 answer
Have coma patients ever gained the ability to speak a foreign language fluently?
I read this article about a Croatian teenager waking from coma, speaking fluent German. She started learning German before the coma. I know of savants and few people showing special mental improvements after accidents damaging their brain, but the…
Hauser
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17
votes
3 answers
Was "their" a singular pronoun in English before the 16th century?
I saw this meme on facebook:
So, was "their" truly a genderless 3rd person singular pronoun prior to some change in the 16th/17th century?
This Wikipedia article indicates that the genderless 3rd person singular pronoun was "it" for early…
Astor Florida
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12
votes
1 answer
Do people lose their accent when they sing?
Several people have claimed that the singers accents are lost or reduced when they sing, or even that they tend to sing in an American accent.
Here are some online discussions of the issue:
Naked Scientists
Stuart Buck
Alberta Stars
Lexiophiles
In…
JoJo
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11
votes
1 answer
Do world's multilingual individuals outnumber monolingual ones?
In the Wikipedia article on multilingualism (the use of more than one language by an individual or community), I read that:
Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population
The link reference was broken but finding…
Tulains Córdova
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9
votes
1 answer
Is the use of X for unknown quantities taken from the Arabic word "shay"?
In this TED Talk, the speaker says that the use of X for unknown quantities was the result of Spanish people taking the Arabic word shay (meaning "thing"), which was used by Arabs to denote unknown quantities, and representing it by the Greek letter…
Daud
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6
votes
0 answers
Did Emil Krebs master 68 languages?
The German polyglot Emil Krebs allegedly mastered 68 languages. Which, frankly, I find unbelievable. Unfortunately, I cannot find any reliable and convincing source.
Is there solid evidence that Emil Krebs mastered 68 languages?
The actual number of…
Mathias Müller
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3
votes
0 answers
Do school spelling tests increase reading or writing performance of students?
Elementary schools across the US often give weekly spelling lists that the students will be tested on at the end of the week.
Clearly schools believe having kids learn to spell these words helps them with reading and/or writing if they keep doing…
dsollen
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