Tag: wow

nestofstraightlines:

ultrafacts:

Nicaraguan Sign Language is a sign language largely spontaneously developed by deaf children in Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it, because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to be the birth of a new language.

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It’s not ‘what they believe to be a new language’, it is a new language. As in that’s not under dispute and it’s not rare for new languages to come into being. It’s not amazing as an exception but as proof of a rule: that humans invent language anew even when isolated from linguistic input, in only two short generational hops (pidgin and creole stages). What’s amazing is how easily and determinedly humans do it. Our brains are hard-wired for language. The NSL case allowed linguists to see this happen in almost lab-like conditions and thus prove the theory of language acquisition because of the children’s isolation from linguistic input, due to their deafness.

So the case of NSL is amazing (and it is pretty heartwarming in its particulars it has to be said) but not because it is exceptional, but because of what it shows us about our universal experience. We all did this. Every child acquiring their first language invents it anew. It’s an extraordinary process, and the thing that makes humans human.

Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view.

And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone.

When you look up the stage directions, it says, ‘Exit Ariel.’

Tom Stoppard, University of Pennsylvania, 1996 (via flameintobeing)

The Associated Press defined ‘alt-right’ and the white supremacists are not going to like it

inqorporeal:

The AP’s standards blog just posted a piece about how to use the term ‘alt-right’ when writing articles. Considering the Associated Press provides the style guidelines for newspapers and magazines nationwide, this clarification is a big deal. Here’s the sweet and succinct “usage” section.

“Alt-right” (quotation marks, hyphen and lower case) may be used in quotes or modified as in the “self-described” or “so-called alt-right” in stories discussing what the movement says about itself.

Avoid using the term generically and without definition, however, because it is not well known and the term may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters’ actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience. In the past we have called such beliefs racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist.

The Associated Press is ready to call a duck a duck and so should you.

The Associated Press defined ‘alt-right’ and the white supremacists are not going to like it