After watching “Arrival” last night, I’m fixated on the idea of nonlinear memory. It must be disorienting, and incredibly strange to remember your entire life when you haven’t fully lived it yet.
I've spoken with hundreds of learners over the past few years, and over 80% start learning Hebrew with Duolingo. Every single person reports that despite months of effort, they are unable to form even a basic Hebrew sentence! Sound familiar?
I understand the appeal—Duolingo is accessible, budget-friendly, and feels like a game. But let's talk about the real cost when you expect these apps to teach you Hebrew: You're investing your most precious resources! Your time, motivation, and hope in a learning tool that - in all my discussions -
Not one student has said, “Thanks to Duolingo, I'm now speaking Hebrew”, or “I understand Hebrew because of Duolingo”. Not a single person, and I've talked to so many...
🌟 Ready to speak and understand Hebrew? Comment “SPEAK” and start this journey that will transform your Hebrew forever.
How the Brain Processes Different Components of Language - Moving beyond neural localization of language. Posted May 28, 2024
"...This is in line with recent ideas about a "cortical mosaic" architecture for linguistic structure within overlapping portions of posterior temporal and inferior frontal cortices for processing demands that bias syntactic and semantic computations, whereby, for example, effects of composition can be found within a narrow strip of tissue within the broader lexicality-sensitive cortical sites (a spatial mosaic), or where different demands of sentence-level inferential semantics can be detected over closely overlapping temporal windows within a small area of cortex (a spatiotemporal mosaic)..."
@shekinahcancook Dr. Suess' phonics is not allowed in mandated schemes which have to be "Synthetic Phonics" strict sound by sound-no rhyme patterns allowed. Interestingly (to me anyway) almost every method of teaching reading works for almost every kid. Just none work 100%. I learnt in the 60s by Look and Say- now banned everywhere as Wrong. But most of my generation learnt to read that way.
The problems occur are 1) when the ideologically fixated believe there is One True Method and 2) when the method becomes more important than the outcome- i.e. the kids actually wanting to read. When in some places in the 80s phonics was an anathema as a specialist teacher I taught phonics where appropriate. And where Synthetic Phonics the current Shibboleth was taught I'd use the other (Dr. Suess compatible) type where appropriate. And a range of other techniques too, for kids having reading problems.
The letter 'T' continues to disappear. Language is evolving before our ears.
Just hearing an #NPR news reader now talking about the verdict released yesterday in "Manha - un" and then she moved on to an update on the "Affordable Care ack."
This must've been what it was like living through the "Great Vowel Shift" in the English language during the 15th/16th century.
Of course, their Internet radio channel selection was much poorer back then.
Amaze your friends with tidbits from my interview with Paul Anthony Jones as we talk about his new book "Why Is This a Question?"
If you think it's hard learning the gender of nouns when you're studying Spanish, German, or French, consider the language with more than 300 genders that Paul describes in this clip.
Check out the whole interview for more fun language facts!
Why Do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?
Blame Tolkien and time - by Eric Grundhauser December 7, 2016
"...Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures & histories to speak them... In the case of the ever-present Elvish in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men & hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.
For the dwarves, who were meant to have evolved from an entirely separate lineage, he took inspiration from Semitic languages for their speech, resulting in dwarven place names like Khazad-dûm & Moria.
“When dwarves actually talk, they don’t sound Scottish at all,” says Olsen. “They sound like Arabic or Hebrew.”...As radio & film adaptations of Tolkien’s works were released in later decades, you can see the slow evolution of the dwarven accent..."
Yeah, I know. My father's family was Scottish (Clan Crawford) and the men were not very tall, low to average height. My husband is 6'4" and his family was Welsh, and the Elves were supposed to be tall, so I thought that was interesting.
If you watched the Banshee of Inisherin or Netflix's Bodkin and wondered if they really say "that" pretty much every other word in small Irish towns, apparently the answer is yes.