Is "linguistic relativism" always about language?

Jan 20, 2011 by

As mentioned in yesterday’s posting, linguistic relativism (that is, the view that the language one speaks affects how one thinks) is gaining popularity in both scientific quarters and among the general public. But some...

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The invisible minority of Europe

Jan 7, 2011 by

To stay with the theme of languages of India, let’s look at the “invisible minority” of Europe: the Roma people, also known as the Gypsies, and their language, Romani. First of all, although the majority of the Roma...

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Translating from Hindi to Urdu

Jan 7, 2011 by

There is an insider joke among my translator-friends: we refer to boring, non-creative and sometimes pointless translation assignments as “translating from Hindi to Urdu”. Of course, the joke is that Hindi and Urdu are...

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Language vs. orthography

Jun 28, 2010 by

In his comment to my postings about drawing a boundary between language and dialect, Alexander Francis correctly pointed out that another factor that affects people’s perception of whether they share the same language or speak...

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