I love the idea that some words are so powerful and important to our imaginations and identities that their use could transcend time. via kidsneedscience: While the expression ‘it’s Ancient Greek to me’ is used to mean something incomprehensible, the truth is that Ancient Greek is both accessible and still very much alive in Modern English. Today’s word, star, is a great example. If you were to get in a time machine and travel back to to Ancient Greece you would be able to share many words that are virtually unchanged. You could point to the night sky and say ‘a star’ which is so close to the Ancient Greek aster (αστερ) they would understand it immediately. You could perform this time travel trick over a huge exspanse of land and time with similar results: the Old English steorra, from Proto-Germanic *sterron, *sternon (and for other Proto-Germanic derivatives see also Old Saxon sterro, Old Norse stjarna, Old Frisian stera, Dutch ster, Old High German sterro, German Stern, Gothic stairno), the Proto Indo-European *ster- (see also Sanskrit tar-, Hittite shittar, Latin stella, Breton sterenn, Welsh seren). Some words play such a powerful role on the imagination and and culture that they pass down from generation to generation like valuable treasure. Today star has dozens of metaphorical and poetic uses, from Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers to soccer stars and five star restaurants. We wish upon stars, celebrities are known as stars, and we still treat the word with the highest metaphorical value: a star is distant, beautiful and inspiring. Image courtesy NASA, in the public domain.
View Separately

I love the idea that some words are so powerful and important to our imaginations and identities that their use could transcend time.

via kidsneedscience:

While the expression ‘it’s Ancient Greek to me’ is used to mean something incomprehensible, the truth is that Ancient Greek is both accessible and still very much alive in Modern English. Today’s word, star, is a great example. If you were to get in a time machine and travel back to to Ancient Greece you would be able to share many words that are virtually unchanged. You could point to the night sky and say ‘a star’ which is so close to the Ancient Greek aster (αστερ) they would understand it immediately. You could perform this time travel trick over a huge exspanse of land and time with similar results: the Old English steorra, from Proto-Germanic *sterron, *sternon (and for other Proto-Germanic derivatives see also Old Saxon sterro, Old Norse stjarna, Old Frisian stera, Dutch ster, Old High German sterro, German Stern, Gothic stairno), the Proto Indo-European *ster- (see also Sanskrit tar-, Hittite shittar, Latin stella, Breton sterenn, Welsh seren). Some words play such a powerful role on the imagination and and culture that they pass down from generation to generation like valuable treasure. Today star has dozens of metaphorical and poetic uses, from Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers to soccer stars and five star restaurants. We wish upon stars, celebrities are known as stars, and we still treat the word with the highest metaphorical value: a star is distant, beautiful and inspiring.

Image courtesy NASA, in the public domain.

The Small World of Words Word association is a funny thing. If I say “dog”, you might instantly think of “cat” or “bone” or “furry”. Those links make pretty logical sense, but why, exactly, do those links exist? The psychology and neuroscience of why and how we link certain words together are areas of intense study. Not only can it allow us to unlock parts of a person’s subconscious mind, but it can help explain how language is organized in our brains.  Want to play a little game to help move this research forward? Good! Head over to Small World of Words and you can take a short quiz on word association. You’re given several word prompts and you enter the first three things that come to mind. For instance, for “seeker”, I entered “Harry Potter”, “find” and “quidditch”. It might be the largest word association database on Earth, with more than 60,000 entrants.  Go have a little fun, for science!
Pop-upView Separately

The Small World of Words

Word association is a funny thing. If I say “dog”, you might instantly think of “cat” or “bone” or “furry”. Those links make pretty logical sense, but why, exactly, do those links exist?

The psychology and neuroscience of why and how we link certain words together are areas of intense study. Not only can it allow us to unlock parts of a person’s subconscious mind, but it can help explain how language is organized in our brains. 

Want to play a little game to help move this research forward? Good!

Head over to Small World of Words and you can take a short quiz on word association. You’re given several word prompts and you enter the first three things that come to mind. For instance, for “seeker”, I entered “Harry Potter”, “find” and “quidditch”. It might be the largest word association database on Earth, with more than 60,000 entrants. 

Go have a little fun, for science!

How Words Have Shape V.S. Ramachandran once asked American college students and Tamil speakers in India to each interpret these shapes. He wanted to know which one they thought was “bouba” and which one they thought was “kiki”.  98% of them said that bouba was round and kiki was spiky. Later studies showed that even young children who hadn’t yet learned to read assigned the same names to the shapes. It appears there’s something about the evolution of language that says names for objects are not arbitrary. Check out this TEDx talk about the life of the mind lived through noise. Very cool stuff. (via Science-Based Life)
View Separately

How Words Have Shape

V.S. Ramachandran once asked American college students and Tamil speakers in India to each interpret these shapes. He wanted to know which one they thought was “bouba” and which one they thought was “kiki”. 

98% of them said that bouba was round and kiki was spiky. Later studies showed that even young children who hadn’t yet learned to read assigned the same names to the shapes.

It appears there’s something about the evolution of language that says names for objects are not arbitrary.

Check out this TEDx talk about the life of the mind lived through noise. Very cool stuff.

(via Science-Based Life)

Source: sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com

  • 18,086 Plays
  • I'm a whale, who talksNOC

The Whale With a Human Voice

NOC is the name of a beluga whale who’s been all over the news lately. He has a particular talent: he tries to the mimic human voice. In the audio above, you hear him communicating not via a whale’s normal nasal squeaks and whistles, but by vibrations of the larynx, just like us.

Sure, it’s unintelligible. But researchers think that it’s unmistakably a copy of the human voices he’s heard while in captivity at San Diego’s National Marine Mammal Foundation. He vocalizes randomly for the most part, sometimes to himself, and sometimes when human handlers are around … but never to other whales. Once, a diver got out of the water after hearing the sounds, thinking a fellow handler had ordered him out!

NOC was actually able to learn a new way of making sound, using a whale’s version of vocal muscles and a completely new way of moving air through his throat. Not only that, it’s at frequencies lower than this species normally uses.

Belugas and other social whale species like dolphins probably use “vocal learning” abilities like this to communicate with members of their species from different groups, and we’ve seen blue whales that can teach mating calls to members of other pods. But this sort of trans-species learning might be unprecedented. 

Simply remarkable. Cetaceans never cease to amaze.

(Ed Yong has a great post with more)

Differing points of hue Another great color feature from the BBC: Future site, which also brought you the feature earlier today about whether we all see the same colors. This latest piece asks where the names for colors come from. Unlike so many other language-based classifications (like having dozens of words that describe snow, or not having a word for “war”), colors are thought to be arise from a natural need to classify a sensory input. In other words, the spectrum is the spectrum and we all see it … every language should have to fill in the names, right? Wrong. Not only do some cultures just not recognize certain colors (like the fact that blue and green are often not differentiated in Vietnamese), but pre-literate languages seem to adopt colors into their lexicon in a very particular order! Looks like you can’t get a word for “green” without several other steps happening first (like black, white and red). A fascinating look at where the cultural and neurological aspects of language intersect. (↬ BBC - Future)
Pop-upView Separately

Differing points of hue

Another great color feature from the BBC: Future site, which also brought you the feature earlier today about whether we all see the same colors. This latest piece asks where the names for colors come from.

Unlike so many other language-based classifications (like having dozens of words that describe snow, or not having a word for “war”), colors are thought to be arise from a natural need to classify a sensory input. In other words, the spectrum is the spectrum and we all see it … every language should have to fill in the names, right?

Wrong. Not only do some cultures just not recognize certain colors (like the fact that blue and green are often not differentiated in Vietnamese), but pre-literate languages seem to adopt colors into their lexicon in a very particular order! Looks like you can’t get a word for “green” without several other steps happening first (like black, white and red).

A fascinating look at where the cultural and neurological aspects of language intersect.

(↬ BBC - Future)

Source: bbc.com

Do Dolphins Speak Whale in Their Sleep? Captive dolphins have picked up some new vocabulary. Not from each other, but rather from a “sounds of the sea” tape played during their performances. When their handlers noted strange sounds coming from the tanks at night, they compared them to known calls and discovered they were mimicking and practicing whale calls they had heard on tape. When the researchers used a computer program to compare auditory recordings of the whale calls with the mysterious nighttime noises, it showed that the two sounds were very similar. And because the dolphins had been captive their entire lives, they couldn’t have picked them up from real whales. To get a second opinion, the team asked 20 human volunteers to listen to humpback whale sounds and wild dolphin sounds. Then the researchers played the nighttime vocalizations and asked the volunteers whether the sounds came from a whale or a dolphin. About 76% of the time, the volunteers classified the imitations as sounds from real whales The dolphins were last reported to be working on whale disguises, surely as part of their world domination plan. (via ScienceNOW)
View Separately

Do Dolphins Speak Whale in Their Sleep?

Captive dolphins have picked up some new vocabulary. Not from each other, but rather from a “sounds of the sea” tape played during their performances.

When their handlers noted strange sounds coming from the tanks at night, they compared them to known calls and discovered they were mimicking and practicing whale calls they had heard on tape.

When the researchers used a computer program to compare auditory recordings of the whale calls with the mysterious nighttime noises, it showed that the two sounds were very similar. And because the dolphins had been captive their entire lives, they couldn’t have picked them up from real whales.

To get a second opinion, the team asked 20 human volunteers to listen to humpback whale sounds and wild dolphin sounds. Then the researchers played the nighttime vocalizations and asked the volunteers whether the sounds came from a whale or a dolphin. About 76% of the time, the volunteers classified the imitations as sounds from real whales

The dolphins were last reported to be working on whale disguises, surely as part of their world domination plan.

(via ScienceNOW)

Source: news.sciencemag.org