Questions tagged [language]
The specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication.
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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 ...
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Did Kyiv National Linguistic University publish a map showing that only a few Ukrainians (in the West of the country) speak Ukrainian at home?
Various Russian & other sources give this map (also on P.SE, but probably the most notable of these might be https://www.opendemocracy.net/ru/kto-boretsya-s-kem-v-ukraine-i-pochemu/)
Was that ...
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In American Sign Language, does 2022 loosely translate to "bird go peace-peace"?
This Tweet is doing the rounds:
Hearing people are like joke-panicking about the fact that 2022 is pronounced “2020, too”. But like in ASL, 2022 loosely translates to “BIRD go PEACE-PEACE” and that’s ...
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Is "Mu" a more common last name than "Xi" in China?
Is "Mu", which has a coronavirus variant named after it by the World Health Organization, a more common last name than "Xi", which the WHO has avoided naming a variant after?
...
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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 ...
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Are the ingredients listed in "Macbeth" common plants?
It is easy to find dozens of sites claiming, generally without attribution, that the ingredients in the famously gruesome witches' brew from Shakespeare's play Macbeth are herbalist jargon for common ...
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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 ...
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Is Japanese language "cleaner" than English in terms of spreading coronavirus?
I was watching a video from Abroad In Japan channel where Chris Broad, the creator of that channel talks about a TV show in which "experts" discussed about the reasons why number of cases of ...
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In Sumerian and Akkadian, is the same word used for both ‘priest’ and ‘accountant’?
Johan Norberg in Open: The Story of Human Progress (2020) claims:
In Sumerian and Akkadian the same word is used both for ‘priest’ and ‘accountant’.
Is this true?
user55016
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Did Burmese typewriters contain an upside-down character, which subsequently became proper typewriter style?
I was reading about the Internet Archive's work to archive the materials of a famous New York City typewriter family:
http://blog.archive.org/2020/08/26/an-archive-of-a-different-type/
I was ...
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Does learning a language improve memory and concentration skills?
When using the language learning app Duo Lingo messages often popup when the lessons are loading. One of those messages that pop up is the claim
Learning a language improves memory and ...
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Are North American children adopting British accents because of Peppa Pig?
Several news items have surfaced today which report that North American children are adopting British accents at a very young age due to watching Peppa Pig episodes. The only source quoted is Romper ...
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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 ...
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Does requesting a bilingual trial often result in dismissal?
Life hack sites like to claim that requesting a bilingual trial will cause minor cases to be dismissed. I have seen this on multiple sites, but it seems they have a tendency to shut down after a year ...
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Did Wario say a swear? [closed]
Ok, this would have been in like 2004-5 or so. I had some disk for gamecube with a set of bonus features including trailers, and there was one for WarioWorld, and I remember clearly hearing him say "...
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In ritualistic use, did "virgin blood" originally mean "unused blood"?
I recently saw the following tumblr meme on Facebook:
This strikes me more as a fanciful reinterpretation than an actual etymology (a la the more recent interpretation of "blood is thicker than water"...
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Has Richard Dawkins never learnt a language other than English? [closed]
From a tweet quoted by The Independent in Richard Dawkins accused of Islamophobia after comparing 'lovely church bells' to 'aggressive-sounding Allahu Akhbar'
As a Christian from a mixed Christian-...
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Can Rambo, the German shepherd, follow written commands?
An article on The Laughing Squid shows a German shepherd seemingly following written commands.
An impressively intelligent German shepherd named Rambo, who’s learning how to read with the help of ...
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Can people "wake up" with a new accent? (Foreign Accent Syndrome)
This MSN article from 2018-02-13 claims that an American woman fell asleep with a bad headache, and woke up with a British accent.
This has been widely reported, including by The Washington Post ...
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Was this Harry-Potter themed text written solely by a computer program?
A YouTube video caught my eye with the title, "A Robot Wrote A Chapter To A Harry Potter Book, And It's Absolutely Insane." The video claims that a software algorithm created by Botnik Studios was ...
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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 ...
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Does drinking alcohol improve foreign language skills?
An article in UK online newspaper The Independent has the following headline:
Alcohol can help foreign language skills
The article reports:
Dr Inge Kersbergen, from the University of Liverpool's ...
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Is Arabic the 4th most common language used on internet?
The Wikipedia page, Languages user on the Internet provides two different ways of ranking the most popular languages on the Internet.
By content:
Estimated percentages of the top 10 million ...
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Does the F-word constitute a third of all swearing on the internet?
This youtube video (created as part of a series of short programmes for the UK's Channel Four television called Susie Dent's guide to Swearing) claims (around 3:08 in) that the word "fuck" makes up ...
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Did Native Americans call European people "pale-face"?
In lots of American Indian novels you can read that the native peoples of North America called European people "pale-face" or "pale-faced":
“Young Randolph! war-chief among the ...
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Do eskimos have large numbers of words for snow?
The oscar-winning movie Arrival has prompted some new interest the the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language constrains or enables certain abstract concepts. The idea that an alien language can rewire ...
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Is Melania Trump barely able to speak English?
Chelsea Handler has claimed that Melania Trump can barely speak English. From The Sun
Handler, 41, was asked in a filmed interview if she would have Mrs
Trump on her Netflix show Chelsea.
"...
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Can speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre navigate much better than Western speakers inside unfamiliar buildings?
Lera Boroditsky writes in the Edge article How does our language shape the way we think?:
Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying ...
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Is Coober Pedy derived from an Aboriginal phrase for "White man in a hole"?
Coober Pedy is an opal mining town in the middle of nowhere in Australia. It's very hot, and lots of people live underground. I've frequently heard that it means "White man in a hole" in a local ...
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Is the Greek/French macaronic phrase written by an ancient author?
From Wikipedia article:
Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic. One particularly famed piece of schoolyard Greek in France is Xenophon's line "they did not take the city; but in fact ...
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Do Rohingyas speak in a Bengali dialect?
This page says they do.
Rohingyas are not Burmese. They called themselves as Rohingya. There
are no such people in Burmese history and census.
Rohingyas are in fact Bengali who speaks ...
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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 ...
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Do the English eat "pork" instead of "pig" because they were servants of the French?
Many online sources make the claim that the strange quirk in the English language of having French-derived terms (pork, beef, veal, mutton) for the meat of the animal, and having German-derived terms (...
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Is the origin of the phrase "suck it up" referring to WWII pilots?
I was reading this New Statesman article and was surprised to read this:
The origin of the phrase “suck it up” is quite gross. Allegedly, it’s what WWII pilots were instructed to do if they vomited ...
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Did Francois Valentijn say that Malay language in 16th century was understood by even people living in Persia and beyond?
Utusan Malaysia, a mainstream newspaper publisher in Malaysia, published an article ( in Malay language) that claims that Malay language was a dominant and international language in 16th century. ...
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Do 22% of Muslim women in the UK speak little or no English?
According to the BBC, the UK government claims:
22% of Muslim women living in England speak little or no English.
It also quotes a former Superintendent of the Metro Police as disputing this ...
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Is a child raised bilingually more likely to have a language delay?
I remember reading that long ago the American Psychological associations were wary of advising a child to be raised bilingually because it can cause a delay in language learning for the child. As I ...
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Are people who love inspirational quotes less intelligent?
An article in the Daily Beast claims the following:
A new study finds that people who love bullshit inspirational quotes have lower intelligence and more "conspiratorial ideations".
Life ...
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Was the phrase "hello" popularized because of the name of Alexander Graham Bell's wife/girlfriend "Margaret Hello"?
This is a popular explanation of the etymology of the word hello, seen in many email forwards:
When you lift the phone, you say "Hello".
Do you know what is the real meaning of "Hello" It is ...
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Does Burmese lack a word for "vagina"?
From Myanmar: women's fight against verbal taboo symbolises wider rights battle
In Myanmar there are no vaginas. Linguistically, at least, that part of the female body does not exist in Burmese – a ...
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Does Arabic graffiti in "Homeland" criticise the show?
There are multiple reports that the show "Homeland" has Arabic graffiti that amongst other things criticise the show as racist.
The news reports cite the graffiti artists commissioned by the show, ...
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Was the term "goosebumps" ever used to refer to venereal sores?
This Cracked.com article claims that "goosebumps" used to refer to venereal sores:
Well, it's thought that "Goosey" is referencing an old slang term
"goose" which was a nice but roundabout way of ...
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Was the word 'racist' coined by Trotsky in 1927?
According to the image below, "racist is a made up word by Leon Trotsky in 1927."
I searched in the Online Etymology Dictionary and found that
racist (n.)
1932 [as a noun], 1938 as an ...
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Is this how to say Steph Curry in American sign language
This tweet (retweeted over 2300 times) makes a claim about how to say "Steph Curry" in American sign language:
Is that claim true?
user16797
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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 ...
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Does reading what you listen parallely improve your ability to speak English?
I can write English well, and can also understand it well (provided someone speaks i a known accent.)
For improving my spoken English I have got audio books. I can understand what I am being told by ...
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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, ...
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Does bilingualism prevent Alzheimer's?
I have read a few articles that claim that being able to speak second a language has various benefits to the mind, including preventing or delaying Alzheimer's disease,
Is this really true?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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