The final in our Computing-turns-60-series, to mark the 60th anniversary of the first computer in an Australian university, looks at how intelligent the technology has become. The term “artificial intelligence” (AI) was first used back in 1956 to describe the title of a workshop of scientists at Dartmouth, an Ivy League college in the United States. At that pioneering workshop,…
Will learning piano or violin make you better at French? Music is what penetrates most deeply into the recesses of the soul, according to Plato. Language has been held by thinkers from Locke to Leibniz and Mill to Chomsky as a mirror or a window to the mind. As American psychologist Aniruddh Pattel writes: “Language and music define us…
Should you ever wish to be reminded of those irritating workplace catchphrases, the internet abounds in news features and helpful sites – “26 Annoying Business Clichés You Should Stop Using Immediately”; “The Most Annoying, Pretentious And Useless Business Jargon”, to name just two. There is even ClichéSite.com, which claims to be the largest collection of such linguistic pinpricks. When they…
Avalon is a legendary island featured in the Arthurian legend.
It first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 1136 pseudo-historical account ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ (The History of the Kings of Britain). He describes the magical nature of this mythological paradise: “The island of apples […] gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides.”
The mysticism of this ancient Celtic legend, with Avalon as the magical ‘Island of the Blessed’, once inspired us in chosing name and sound for our brand.
Read more in this article …
This sentence begins the best article you will ever read.
Chances are you thought that last statement might be sarcasm. Sarcasm, as linguist Robert Gibbs noted, includes “words used to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning of a sentence.” A form of irony, it also tends to be directed toward a specific individual.
There are a lot of languages in the world, a whole lot actually. Ethnologue, the biggest authority on languages on the web, estimates that there are over 7,000 spoken languages in the world. Check out this list of the most popular languages worldwide to see which language has the most native speakers. You will also find a bit more context…
Most of us dread dealing with them, but call centres are hard to avoid as an increasingly ubiquitous aspect of modern life. However hard they try, it just seems that they can never quite get the right balance between friendliness and sincerity. My recent study in the Journal of Sociolinguistics sheds light on a key feature of call centre communication:…
Few things are as irritating as the jargon of the modern workplace. But what do our everyday office catchphrases really mean – and where do they come from? Let’s try an essential guide to middle-management-speak here. Between the many common irritating buzz words and phrases, you may well have your personal least favourite bit of biz jargon. After all, there’s…