Language Referendum in Latvia

Feb 20, 2012 by

On February 18, 2012 Latvia held a referendum on the issue of Russian as a second official language. A turnout of more than 70 percent underscored the extent that this issue has stirred the public, and the results were overwhelmingly...

read more

Google Translates Gender

Feb 13, 2012 by

Google Translates Gender

[Thanks to David Pesetsky for inspiring this post] The topics of Google Translate and of translating gender have been discussed in this blog before. I have argued that Google Translate fails to understand language (as many...

read more

Making my case

Dec 26, 2011 by

Making my case

In the last couple of posts, I’ve discussed the issue of grammatical complexity and have shown that even if an objective measure of such complexity is absent, languages clearly differ as to which grammatical distinctions they...

read more

Considering the past

Dec 25, 2011 by

Considering the past

In yesterday’s post, I have shown that languages are not equally grammatically complex by considering the renditions of ‘I love you’ in several languages. It is evident that languages differ widely as to which...

read more

I love you!

Dec 24, 2011 by

I love you!

As linguists, we often tell our students — without giving it a second thought — that all languages are equally grammatically complex. As Guy Deutcher puts it in his Through the Language Glass, “equal complexity is...

read more