Letters from a Co-founder: Anatomy of a Fall and Language in Action
With all of the chatter about how AI is going to make learning a second language obsolete, while watching Anatomy of a Fall, a fantastic film BTW, one of the things that struck me was the fluidness of language in the relationships between the characters. She is German. He is French. They met in England. […]
Gobble, gobble, gobbledygook?
How do you say “turkey” in Turkish? The answer? Hindi. What?! Now I’m confused. So what does a turkey have to do with Turkey and why do Turks think my Thanksgiving dinner is from Bollywood? The bird is, in fact, native to North America but looks suspiciously like the African guinea hen. Back in the […]
Why is there a Stuffed Gorilla in the Reception Area?
Meet Koko. Koko was a real Gorilla (July 4, 1971- June 19, 2018). Koko was taught sign language by her instructor and caregiver, Francine Patterson. By the end of her life, she is said to have had a vocabulary of 1000 ASL signs and was able to understand 2000 words of spoken English. Were her […]
LANGUAGE, DIALECT, REGIONALISM… WHAT’S THE DIFF?
LANGUAGE? DIALECT? REGIONALISM? ACCENT? PIDGIN? PATOIS? CREOLE? WHAT’S THE DIFF? This is a question that came up during one of our daily staff lunches and we had a good ol’ time geeking out on getting to the bottom of this question. So what is the difference exactly? Dialect/Accent /Patois/Regionalism: We all have a dialect. Our […]
Is it Fall or Autumn?
Today it’s a matter of regional usage (e.g. North America vs Great Britain) but how did we get here? Pre-16th century, the season was known as “hærf-est”, basically “harvest”. Interesting to note that this root is still in play in modern Germanic languages (Dutch herfst, German Herbst and Scottish hairst). The word “autumn” is thought to have come from the […]
April – The Month of Opening
Like so many words in our native language, we generally don’t think about where they come from and what their meaning and, perhaps, true spirit is. Take a look at the words for “to open” and “April” in a couple of romance languages: aprire/aprile (Italian), abrir/abril (Spanish/Portuguese). Notice that the letters p and b are a similar mouth movement. […]
Happy Birthday Nelson Mandela!
July is a month of filled with independence celebrations. Rather than going for the usual suspects (Bastille Day! 4th of July!), in honor of Nelson Mandela’s birthday on July 18 (he would have been 99), we thought we would take a moment to shine a spotlight on the linguistic richness of Mr. Mandela’s home country, South Africa. First […]