Beyond Words - Language Blog
Recent Blog Posts
Arbitrary Sounds? Don’t Be Saussure
March 31, 2017
Scientific investigation is a slow process. Rarely are long-established ideas smashed with one individual research paper that causes everyone to turn their heads. The study of sound symbolism (also called phonosemantics) follows suit. One of the founding principles of modern linguistics, as put forward by Saussure, is the idea that […]
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A Linguist’s Introduction to Tone
March 20, 2017
What if I was to tell you that Mandarin is far from alone in being a tonal language? What if I was to tell you that, in fact, most of the world’s languages are tonal, including some entire language families? I suspect you’d either be surprised, confused as to what […]
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Is Machine Translation Ready to Replace Human Translators?
March 10, 2017
Continued improvements in machine translation technology have made a big splash in the news lately. The launch of Skype Translator in 2015, as well as the advent of wearable devices for sign language interpretation, are indicative of an exciting new age in global communication. Some people may think that machines […]
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Holistic Approach to Accent Reduction
February 16, 2017
The United States has long attracted many of the world’s brightest minds – from scientists and engineers to linguists and educators. While the country’s universities and businesses benefit from such a dazzling array of experts, foreign professionals and students often find themselves careening headlong into cultural and linguistic barriers that […]
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Number of Languages Remains A Mystery
February 6, 2017
You’d think that one of the fundamental questions linguists would have sorted out by know is how many languages there are. I thought that too before I studied to become one. Quantifying languages is much more complicated than it initially sounds, with the result that we can never truly count […]
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O Rio? 4 Places in the Americas Named By Mistake
August 17, 2016
Rio de Janeiro’s time in the global spotlight is nearly over. Rio, one of Brazil’s jewels — world heritage site, protected by Christ the Redeemer, so named for its grand river that … wait, what? Yes, its explorers mistook its harbor for a river mouth, and their mistake is now […]
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Shemps, MacGuffins, and Alan Smithee: 10 Movie Terms You’ve Just Got to Read About
August 10, 2016
What happens when you combine lush greenery, a low cost of doing business, and a bevy of targeted tax incentives? You get a booming film industry that made a statewide economic impact of $6 billion in 2015, for one. It’s official: Georgia has become the 3rd-largest U.S. state for making […]
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Linguist Reveals How We Totes Abbreve
August 4, 2016
As a linguist I can attest to how rewarding it is to be the first to research a topic, and how ridic fun it is for my barely-concealed inner nerd to describe internet speech and slang with formal terminology. Lauren Spradlin, a graduate student at CUNY, managed to do both […]
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Brexit Won’t Force English Out of the EU
July 19, 2016
Amid the flurry of activity in the weeks after Brexit, with markets panicking and the major UK political parties facing monumental power changes, it was surprising and refreshing to see a translation and interpretation topic rise briefly to the top of the news cycle. Media outlets all over were wondering: […]
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8 Unique Careers for Translators and Interpreters
June 14, 2016
Over the course of their training and work experience, language professionals amass an almost superhuman array of skills. Translators and interpreters, in particular, learn to apply their bilingual knowledge in a way that makes them invaluable to the healthcare, legal, and government sectors. They serve as translators, simultaneous and consecutive […]
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