Questions tagged [language]
The specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication.
92 questions
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Do negative interactions with AI make us worse at interacting with people?
There have been a number of articles from credible sources suggesting that negative interactions with AI change the way that we interact with others. In each of the quotes below, I have added my own ...
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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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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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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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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 ...
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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 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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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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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 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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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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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?
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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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Did the head of the Joint National Committee on language claim Jesus spoke English?
In Bill Bryson's book The Mother Tongue, it is claimed, that Dr. David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Languages once said: "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for ...
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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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Is the "I before E" English spelling rule wrong more than it is right?
There are 923 words that break the "i before e" rule. Only 44 words actually follow that rule.
This is a picture circulating right now, claiming that a huge majority of the words break the "i before ...
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Was French spelling artificially altered for longer words?
There's a widespread belief that says that the reason for French having so many silent letters is that historically the authors were paid by the letter, so they were tempted to write longer words. ...
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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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Is “Your Baby Can Read” effective and helpful?
I have seen these videos advertised online and on TV, and they make some pretty fantastic claims, showing kids as young as 2 reading complicated words. From what I can find online, it uses a ...
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Is “Lord Privy Seal” a technical term in documentary film making?
Richard Dawkins has claimed many times in public speeches, especially in reference to the documentary “Expelled”, that documentary filmmakers use the expression “Lord Privy Seal” in a disparaging ...
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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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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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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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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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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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