Author: 101translations

Until 1956, when American Andrew Foster introduced American Sign Language (ASL) to Africa, the only deaf schools in Africa were in Egypt and South Africa. Foster worked for three decades, until his death in 1986, to promulgate the use of sign language across the continent. Local variations emerged, including Ghanaian Sign Language and Nigerian Sign Language, both dialects of ASL. This still-developing field is sure to throw up many more fascinating dialectal differences, as the education of the deaf continues to improve in Africa. 

Photo Source: 

https://www.zikoko.com/life/sign-language-is-important-and-heres-why-you-should-learn-it/

Recent work on DNA has revealed that early humans and Neanderthals not only met but had children together, begging the question as to whether they even recognised one another as separate species. Despite being very similar, there were significant differences in their facial and skeletal structures that would have made them look different. Modern humans’ facial development ceases earlier in the process of growing up, leaving us with features that would probably have looked juvenile to Neanderthals, whose facial features tended to be larger. The changes in skeletal structure may also have meant that the Neanderthal people had somewhat different ranges of sound, implying that their languages would have been quite different too. Perhaps some early translators helped the two groups to communicate, and stone-age love to blossom.

Photo Source : 

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dujs/2021/03/07/were-we-smarter-than-neanderthals/

The road to linguistic hell is often paved with good intentions.

In an effort to create a more gender-neutral language, the term ‘Latinx’ was coined, in US English, to refer to people of both sexes from Latin America.

While some adopted the term, it outraged many native Spanish-speakers, who pointed out that ‘Latinx’ is often difficult for them to pronounce, while some of them were using their own gender-neutral ‘Latine’ anyway. Others further pointed out that they see the very term ‘Latino/a/e/x’ as tricky in general, as it lumps together people of Spanish, Indigenous, and mixed descent, treating them as a single cultural and linguistic entity.

Image Source: 

https://www.dictionary.com/e/latine-vs-latinx/

The life quality of people with intellectual disability depends to a great extent on their ability to communicate. Research shows that children with intellectual disabilities like Down Syndrome don’t just acquire language more slowly than other kids, but also in a different way. 

Often their speech development is slower than their cognitive development, and they may be good at using body-language such as eye contact and gestures to communicate their feelings and needs. Educators working with young people with these conditions focus on helping them to translate gestures into the sort of spoken language that will make it easier for them to live independent lives.

The Olmec people were the earliest known major Mesoamerican civilization, reaching their peak during the period 1500-400 BCE. It is well-known that the cultures that succeeded them, such as the Maya, had sophisticated writing systems, but although the Olmec people inscribed hieroglyphs, scholars have not reached a consensus as to whether these represent language, or are even an early example of writing.

“X marks the spot”. Even though, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, just 366 mostly rather obscure words begin with the letter X, it’s widely considered the most powerful, exciting letter in the alphabet. What would have become of Malcolm X if he’d been just plain old ‘Malcolm’? Would the B-files have sounded as thrilling as the X-files? And so on. Millions of products and businesses have been given the ‘instant cool’ effect through the prominent use of the letter X. X is more than just a letter, but a symbol that people have been making for thousands of years; it’s one of the earliest symbols found in cave art, and a highly recognisable symbol of algebra. Somehow, the mystique of X has never worn off. 

Wife-carrying races are thought to have been part of Finnish culture for many generations and they’ve been practiced as a sport in the community of Sonkajärvi since 1992. 

The concept is simple: men race while carrying a female partner over the age of seventeen in a piggyback, over the shoulder, or upside-down with her legs over the runner’s neck and shoulders. The winner receives a prize of the wife’s weight in beer. 

The sport has become so popular that now it’s held in various locations around the world. Competitors are generally required to buy their own health insurance!

Star Trek nerds make a big deal about making utterances in Klingon, but did you know that there are at least twenty-seven known languages in the Star Trek universe? The ‘Federation Standard’ is (conveniently) American English, but others speak languages including: Tamarian, which relies heavily on metaphor and allegory; Vulcan, whose writing system resembles musical notations on earth, and Ferengi, from the wet, humid planet of Ferenginar, in which there are said to be 178 words for rain. 

The baby-jumping festival takes place in Sasamón in the Spanish province of Burgos, where it’s been celebrated since the early 1600s. Babies born over the previous twelve months are lain on mattresses in the street, and men dressed as devils and carrying whips and castanets jump over them. According to tradition, the ‘devils’ carry away the babies’ original sin. 

While nobody takes the festival very seriously, Pope Benedict XVI instructed Spanish priests to distance themselves from the tradition, citing the Church’s teaching that original sin is cleansed by baptism.

You’re probably familiar with the fictional Smurf community invented by Belgian cartoonist Pejo in the 1950s and the subject of many filmed adaptations, but perhaps you are unaware of a raging linguistic debate between two rival camps of the mostly-male, all-blue society. 

Smurf language is characterised by the use of the word ‘smurf’ in place of many common nouns and verbs. For example, one smurf might say to another: ‘Let’s go smurfing in the smurf,’ and the other will, apparently, understand. Context means everything. 

However, in what might or might not be a parody of tensions between French- and Flemish-speaking communities in Belgium, a 1972 publication, Smurf Versus Smurf, revealed that residents in the north of the village and those in the south frequently argue over precisely how the term ‘smurf’ should be used in language, claiming not to understand one another’s usage. 

Linguistics is truly everywhere!