Language in the News: The Top Stories of 2013
At the end of every month we gather a number of language-related items in the news. Some have significant scholarly implications; others are downright silly. These 11 stories from 2013 continue to stir linguistic interest and debate.
- Babies Begin Learning Language in the Womb
A new study--said to be the first of its kind--reveals that babies begin learning the distinctive sounds of their native language while in utero. Researchers from Pacific Lutheran University in Washington State have found that infants show interest in the vowels of their native language only hours after being born. . . . Read more
("Babies Begin Learning the Distinctive Sounds of Their Native Language While in Utero." Daily News [NYC], January 2, 2013)
- Why Tongue Twisters Are So Tricky
Say the word "rutabaga," and you have just performed a complex dance with many body parts--lips, tongue, jaw and larynx--in a flash of time. Yet little is known about how the brain coordinates these vocal-tract movements to keep even the clumsiest of us from constantly tripping over our own tongues. A study of unprecedented detail now provides a glimpse into the neural codes that control the production of smooth speech. . . . Read more
(Regina Nuzzo, "Why Tongue Twisters Are Hard to Say." Nature, February 20, 2013) - How the Iraq War Transformed English
War leaves indelible marks on our language. How could it be otherwise? Turn on the news anytime in the last 10 years and you were greeted with an alphabet soup of RPGs, UAVs, DHS and the ubiquitous (until we couldn't find them) WMDs. . . . Read more
(Kory Stamper, "WMDs, IEDs, DHS: How the Iraq War Transformed the English Language." The Guardian [UK], March 22, 2013) - Texting Is a Work in Progress
Texting properly isn't writing at all--it's actually more akin to spoken language. And it's a "spoken" language that is getting richer and more complex by the year. . . . Read more
(John McWhorter, "Is Texting Killing the English Language?" Time, April 25, 2013)
- Ancient Words
[A] new statistical approach suggests that peoples from Alaska to Europe may share a linguistic forebear dating as far back as the end of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago.. . . . Read more
(Elizabeth Norton, "English May Have Retained Words From an Ice Age Language." Wired, May 7, 2013) - Kids Like Like
A new study from Cambridge University reveals language is becoming more informal and even royalty and MPs are speaking incorrectly. The average English child is likely to say the word "like" five times as often as his or her grandparents and the word "love" is used more than six times as often as "hate." . . . Read more
(Tara Brady, "Average English Child Says 'Like' Five Times More Than Their Grandparents." Daily Mail [UK], May 18, 2013) - Dialect Maps of the United States
Regional accents are a major part of what makes American English so interesting as a dialect. Joshua Katz, a Ph.D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, just published a group of awesome visualizations of Professor Bert Vaux and Scott Golder's linguistic survey that looked at how Americans pronounce words. . . . Read more
(Walter Hickey, "22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other." Business Insider, June 5, 2013) - Four Ways English Is Changing
These days . . . it is possible to spot subtle linguistic changes by analyzing large digital collections of text or transcribed speech, some of which cover long periods of time. . . . Here are four rather subtle changes happening in English, as determined by looking at the numbers. . . . Read more
(Arika Okrent, "Four Changes to English So Subtle We Hardly Notice They're Happening." The Week, June 27, 2013) - A New Map of Languages in America
The U.S. Census Bureau today released an interactive, online map pinpointing the wide array of languages spoken in homes across the nation, along with a detailed report on rates of English proficiency and the growing number of speakers of other languages. . . . Read more
("New Census Bureau Interactive Map Shows Languages Spoken in America." El Editor, August 6, 2013) - What Is ISIS?
Most linguists call [the] doubled is ISIS, although it also appears in the literature as "Double-is," "Extra-is," "Double-be," and--should you prefer--the "Nonstandard Reduplicative Copula." . . . Read more
(Alyssa Pelish, "Are You a Double-Is-er?" Slate, September 17, 2013) - Because Has Become a Preposition
As the language writer Stan Carey delightfully sums it up: "'Because' has become a preposition, because grammar." . . . [T]he usage of "because-noun" (and of "because-adjective" and "because-gerund") is one of those distinctly of-the-Internet, by-the-Internet movements of language. . . . Read more
(Megan Garber, "English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet." The Atlantic, November 19, 2013)
