Language gives us the power to describe, virtually without limit, the countless entities, actions, properties, and relations that compose our experience, real and imagined. But what is the origin of this power? What gave rise to humankind’s ability to use words to convey meanings? Traditionally, scholars interested in this question have focused on trying to explain language as an arbitrary symbolic code.…
What shape do you think of when you hear the words Bouba and Kiki? Have you ever tried to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language? Exchanging frantic gestures and impossible-to-understand words as you both become more and more frustrated? It usually seems like an impossible situation. However, scientists who are interested to learn how sight and sound…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an explosion of new words and phrases in English (for example, ‘covidiot’) and other languages, e.g. ‘Coronaspeck’ in German (to describe lockdown weight gain) that have helped us make sense of a period defined by social confusion and constant change, as well as global stagnation. The scope of language innovation in relation to…
The Royal Australian Navy needed to recruit 40 Navy Cryptologic Linguists, a priority role whose primary duty is to intercept and translate foreign languages. To generate recruitment buzz, last year they launched a digital campaign that highlighted the need for human translators. Thus they began to enlist the help of Artificial Intelligence, the very technology most job seekers are fearful…
The companies CuriousMinds in Munich, providing strategic and technical management consulting, and AVALON Linguistic, with its offering of integrated professional language services in Europe, have in common that, in addition to their focus on the quality of consultancy, performance, and service, they both also consistently and proactively embrace the challenges of the technological development. This courage to innovate directly benefits…
CuriousMinds in Munich … more than consulting. Today we are pleased to introduce the company CuriousMinds in Munich, Germany, as our new partner in digitalisation, innovation management and management consulting. They are our best recommendation if you want to take your company to the top. The experts from the CuriousMinds team have already helped us highly effectively, and they will certainly…
International Mother Language Day 21 February was announced by the UNESCO in 1999 to celebrate cultural diversity and to commemorate the “language martyr” experienced by students 1952 in Bangladesh. These students are now honoured by the encouragement of multiculturalism and the promotion of protective measures for endangered languages. It is hard to imagine the challenges faced by students who have…
Samuel F. B. Morse invented his eponymous ‘Morse code’ as a way to communicate via a series of dots and dashes. This elegant system revolutionised communications back in the 1800’s. Under the code, every letter in the English language – along with most punctuation marks and each number from zero through nine – was given a unique, corresponding set of…
World Braille Day celebrates every year on 4 January the birth of Louis Braille, inventor of the touch reading and writing system used by millions of blind and partially sighted people all over the globe. Braille is a system of reading and writing for blind persons in which raised dots, in a series of 6 dots paired up in 3…
