Before there was the word, there was the meaning of sound.
New research sheds light into how our brains handle metaphors
Whether you break an egg or break into dance, our brain handles the word “break” the same.
A new study estimates English only takes about 1.5 megabytes of your brainspace
That’s about the same size as…. 3 high-resolution memes or one-tenth of a second of video in 1080p.
Ancestral shift in diet may have changed human speech as well
Softer food gave humans an overbite that made it easier to produce “v” and “f” sounds.
Activating a new language is easy — the effort goes in suppressing the old one
Oui oui, tres bien!
From insects to whales, all sorts of animals take turns to communicate
When one utters, the other listens — and such is the case in most animals too.
Australian magpies can understand what other birds are ‘saying’ with surprising clarity
Magpies? Check. Throwing orange balls at magpies? Check. Grated cheese? Check. I love this study.
Nouns slow down speech, which is why we utter a lot of ‘uhs’ and ‘uhms’ before them
We’re far more likely to use slow-down sounds before nouns than verbs.
Monkey ‘vocabulary’ could clue us in on evolution of human speech
An adorable monkey’s ‘ekks’ and ‘tsiks’ might teach how speech evolved.
New study links ancient cave drawings and the origin of language
Human speech may have been born out of cave art.
Languages with large vocabularies have simple grammar, study suggests
Languages with large vocabularies, such as Mandarin or English, are simpler grammatically, as opposed to complex languages which possess reduced lexicon.
Need to improve your foreign language skills? A bit of alcohol will do the trick, researchers find
Booze to the rescue! Just don’t overindulge.
Talking in a foreign language makes our decision more about utility, less about emotion
The language we use really does influence what our brains are doing.
You can still remember a foreign language even if you think it’s forever forgotten
Exposure to a foreign language even at a meager age of six months can stick with you well into adulthood.
Each language you speak in alters your perception of time, study finds
The pen is mightier than the clock too, it seems.
Researchers translate bat language. Turns out, they argue a lot
Turns out they argue. A lot.
That urge to complete other people’s sentences? Turns out the brain has its own Auto Correct
In the hippocampus — which is weird, because we didn’t think it had anything to do with talking.
Colours and language — how the two influence each other
There are as many colours as you can name. In some cultures, like Africa’s Himba tribe, they can only name five colours, for instance.
No matter what your native language is – we all speak the same, study finds
Humans have a surprising tendency to use the same sounds for the same objects — across language barriers.
Both Democrats and Republicans use simpler grammar than 50 years ago. Trump most of all, to good effect
Analysists from Grammarly looked at all the general election debate transcripts since the 1960s word for word and found Presidential candidates have greatly simplified their language since.
