Questions tagged [language]
The specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication.
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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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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 ...
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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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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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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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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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 Polish the hardest language to learn?
I've recently been to Poland and I've heard the claim that Polish is the hardest language to learn. I've found this claim repeated again today, for example on this blog post:
The hardest language to ...
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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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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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Is a large percentage of human communication non-verbal?
The claim that 60, or 80, or 90 or 93 percent of all communication is non-verbal is endlessly repeated, not only in pop culture but in the professional worlds of education, business, and in some less ...
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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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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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Is passive listening useless when learning a language?
In an article on the blog Fluent in Three Months is a claim that listening to hours of a foreign language without really concentrating on it is "barely better than nothing".
The shocking truth is ...
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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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Churchill's quote: "This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
Did Winston Churchill say, as some on the 'net claim, in response to being told he should not end a sentence with a preposition, something like "This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will ...
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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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Was there ever a universal human language or mother-tongue?
In "Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from 'single prehistoric African mother tongue'" from the UK Daily Mail:
Every language in the world - from English to Mandarin - ...
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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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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 websites ...
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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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