Innehållsförteckning för Issue 70 från Silly Linguistics

I was at an otherwise fairly benign family gathering. Suddenly in the middle of warm and engaging, but fairly predictable banter, our resident one-year-old spoke volumes. I happened to look in her direction and caught her hands gesticulating flawlessly. Tiny, but slightly pudgy and ungainly hands, hands still learning to negotiate “spork”-like cutlery and plastic sippy cups…were waving and signaling expertly. These hands were at once flowing like a stream and on point and precise as a sentry. They were simultaneously exuberant and technical. Her hands were speaking a language in order to accept, acknowledge, relay and provide information. I know I was all in for the duration. I had to see just how it turned out! In reality, though what would seem to be an alarming amount of the…

This is the third in a series of four articles, where author MJ Buckman explores language used about and within the LGBT+ community. The series is based on extracts from her book, "Bent is not broken.” For the book, MJ (Em) interviewed 24 LGBT+ adults of all ages and combines their stories with her own memoir and an in-depth exploration of LGBT+ culture. She looks at how society has represented LGBT+ people throughout history, in particular focussing on the language that has been used, and how this changes depending on society's attitudes. Em's book is available in eBook and paperback: www.books2read.com/BentIsNotBroken This article is based on an extract from MJ’s book, Bent Is Not Broken, available now in eBook and paperback. To find out more about the book, including purchase…

Do you remember the Episode of „Star Trek – The next generation“ where we get to meet a civilization completely isolated due to their weird language? Does the most emotional phrase „Shaka when the walls fell“ ring a bell? Yes? Great! In the following, I want to take that Episode apart. As a former linguistic student, I love it when science-fiction takes inspiration in linguistic problems. I can also have a lot of fun when things go a bit wrong. And this case, I think that is what happened. But first, let‘s take a look at the Episode itself. In the second Episode of season 5, the enterprise meets a ship of a species called the Tamarians. Never before thas the known civilization made meaningful contact with this species, because…

Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world's largest island country and the 14th-largest country by area. With over 279 million people, Indonesia is the world's fourth-most populous country. Java, the world's most populous island, is home to more than half of the country's population. Talking about Indonesia, we will talk about its languages also. There are around 700 living languages in this archipelago. One of them is Indonesian, the official and national language. It is a standardized variety of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. You will find a lot…