Sprognyheder

Mandarin is slowly becoming the second language of business, according to not one, not two, but three articles in The New York Times over the weekend...

København vil have kinesisk i skolen SPROG: Københavns Kommune har sat en halv mio. kr. af til at undersøge behovet for kinesisk i de københavnske skoler. Hvis København skal konkurrere med andre europæiske storbyer, skal det være muligt at få undervisning i kinesisk, mener LA.

As the world becomes more integrated and China emerges as an economic powerhouse, Stafford Primary, the Stafford Primary School in Texas is ambitious to envisage its pupils a brighter future by teaching them Chinese language.

A pro-Taiwanese independence group of language professors expressed concern Sunday that a new language database shared by Taiwan and China is part of an effort by President Ma Ying-jeou to push for unification with China, and called for more attention to the languages spoken in Taiwan.

Most of us have no problem coping with a foreign language as long as it uses the familiar Roman alphabet. But replace it with Chinese characters and people start clamouring for government intervention. Such is the case in Richmond, where Kerry Starchuk is seeking a c

More than 80 percent of the people quizzed in a new survey said they saw a decline in Chinese people's use of the Chinese language, according to results released on Tuesday.

Sproget er meget overset, selv om vi bruger det hele tiden - ikke kun til at kommunikere med, men samtidig som et spejl på den verden som omgiver os og som brillerne vi har på, når vi ser på den. Bogen giver interessante eksempler på hvordan kultur og mentalitet hænger intimt sammen med sproget. Sprogets mange forbindelseslinjer til genstande, situationer, perception, kognition, kommunikation og semiotik er ikke det samme på alle sprog. Sprog deler sig i tre supertyper kaldet virkeligheds-, afsender- og modtager-orienterede sprog. Bogen handler altså om hvordan sproget fungerer, dvs. materien midt imellem gramatikken og litteraturen.

Jeg stødte for nylig på dette kinesiske digt som består af 96 stavelser, som er identiske bortset fra de fire forskellige betydningsadskillende toner man har

If you are an American or European, chances are you've never heard about shengren, minzhu and wenming. If one day you promote them, you might even be accused of cultural treason. That's because they are Chinese concepts.

Teaching of Chinese language and culture in Kenya is currently restricted to institutions of higher learning, with the main center being the University of Nairobi that is currently hosting about 500 Chinese-learning students.

As noted in a number of previous postings (see here and here), recently more and more non-linguists come out with research involving language. And very often, whether it's biologists, physicists or economists that make claims about language, they lack the background to understand the linguistic issues they comment or rely on. Speaking of economists making claims about language, here's one recent example.

A new study from a Yale University economist concludes that people save more or less according to the language they speak. Behavioral Economist Keith Chen is interested in how people make financial decisions. Last year, he started wondering if people whose native languages make fewer distinctions between the future and present might think differently about the future.