kids don't classify world in words

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111227142537.htm

"But for children, words are just another feature among many to consider when they're trying to classify an object."
For example, suppose that someone you trust shows you an object that looks like a pen and says that it is a tape recorder, Sloutsky said.
Your first reaction might be to look at the pen to see where the microphone would be hidden, and how you could turn it on or off.
"You might think it was some kind of spy tool, but you would not have a hard time understanding it as a tape recorder even though it looks like a pen," Sloutsky said. "Adults believe words do have a unique power to classify things, but young children don't think the same way."
The results suggest that even after children learn language, it doesn't govern their thinking as much as scientists believed.

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D- maybe has to do with when they develop linear historical memory?

a dissenting view- the anglosphere. a book.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/the-anglosphere-yet-reigns-supreme/article2274566/

Author of the 2010 best-selling The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, Mr. Kotkin is singularly optimistic in his latest assessment of a world in which the anglosphere appears to be in truculent decline. The U.S. and Britain, after all, are experiencing serious crises of confidence. Now, in The New World Order, a study published in November by the London-based Legatum Institute, Mr. Kotkin and nine academic associates conclude that the anglosphere will remain the ascendant player on the world stage for a long time to come.

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D - there will be a time lag between when the BRIC group achieves parity the USA / UK and when English gets dislodged as the lingua franca of our time.
But Latin and French both went the way of the dodo, so there is no reason to believe that eventually English will retain its pre-eminence.

Though I'd point out that English is widely used in India to bypass partisan local language agendas.

Listening to the radio, I have been noticing a trend toward a more regular 'international' English, even within my English speaking Canada. This mostly entails the use of more regular plural nouns and past tense verbs.

I was thinking about how we structure questions. Do- (et al). Whereas we don't say I DO (et al), except for emphasis. E.g. Do I close the door? I close the door.
Whereas in the future and past forms, the interrogative is more obvious.
I did close the door. Did I close the door?
I will close the door. Will I close the door?
Ultimately, the accomodations to English to make it more accessible to foreigners has been pretty superficial.

In Canada, we have this problem that we import highly qualified immigrants, but then refuse to provide them with the 1 year work experience in their field required for them to recertify here. This is an inane policy and one that greatly upsets new immigrants.

http://www.bluelikeyou.com/2011/09/07/big-problems-with-mcguintys-10000-job-subsidy-for-immigrants/
D - this is the typical knee-jerk uninformed reaction from red-necks.

I volunteered for improv "Coming to Canada" skits with new young immigrants, and this complaint was frequently heard. Having said that, well, English IS a job skill and being able to communicate clearly IS a prerequisite of most jobs. Sadly English is devilishly tricky in the details. I suspect the first nation (or region or whatever) that adopts a well designed IAL will end up with a strong competitive edge. Note that I said well designed...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/growth/productivity-woes-aggravated-by-failure-to-hire-new-immigrants/article2220379/

“We’re losing out,” said Jane Allen, partner and chief diversity officer at Deloitte. “We’re making our productivity situation worse by not capitalizing on the skills that new immigrants are bringing.”

Canada’s labour productivity – a measure of what the economy produces in each hour of work – is often criticized for lagging that of other industrialized countries. It has increased by an average annual rate of 0.5 per cent since early 2005 versus 2.1 per cent in the United States.

While some professional associations have started streamlining the recognition of foreign credentials, much work lies ahead since there are more than 440 regulatory bodies in Canada. As a result, Deloitte found there is a growing fear among progressive companies that Canada is going to lose workers to other countries if these systemic problems are not corrected.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada

Currently, Canada is known as a country with a broad immigration policy which is reflected in Canada's ethnic diversity. According to the 2001 census by Statistics Canada, Canada has 34 ethnic groups with at least one hundred thousand members each, of which 10 have over 1,000,000 people and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. 16.2% of the population belonged to visible minorities: most numerous among these are South Asian (4.0% of the population), Chinese (3.9%)...

D - whoever implements a well-planned IAL policy first should manage a great increase in workplace productivity.

BRIC to surpass the First World nations

http://www.ndtv.com/article/business/china-set-to-beat-us-as-no-1-economy-by-2030-44912









God I hate you Google. Your blog interface is broken.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/02/rise_of_the_timbis?page=full

D - image is economic growth in Billions.

Brazil, China and India trade places with the various Western powers.
Collectively their clout will match the "First World" by 2030.
That means I need to focus on Urdu, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese... and Portuguese.
And English.

I'm reading a book called "The Rise and Fall of Empires" by Kennedy right now.
Very illuminating. It does make me think Canada needs to focus on productivity and economic growth more than it is presently.

Dothraki language designer from Game of Thrones

http://gizmodo.com/5867312/heres-how-game-of-thrones-dothraki-language-came-to-be

Next, Mr. Peterson tried to establish words that would be native and basic (meaning they are not derived from another Dothraki word), toying with letter combinations and sounds he liked. His favorite sound is "JH" as in "genre," so he made the word for man in Dothraki mahrazh.

[...]

After he amassed a small vocabulary, Mr. Peterson tested out basic grammar. He adored the 18 noun classes in Swahili and the negative verb forms in Estonian, both influences in his created languages. He scribbled sample sentences and added suffixes and prefixes to expand the vocabulary.

He aims to eventually expand Dothraki to around 10,000 words - or about the equivalent of college-level foreign language proficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones

10 words you did not know were ono(mutter)

http://www.cracked.com/article_19568_10-common-words-you-had-no-idea-were-onomatopoeias.html

Cliche. (alt-0233 for accent)

What it means:

A trite and overused phrase. Like "A dark and stormy night" or "Time heals all wounds" or "Did you drink all my nail polisher remover?"

What the hell is it supposed to sound like?

The forging of a metal printing press plate.

Read more: 10 Common Words You Had No Idea Were Onomatopoeias | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_19568_10-common-words-you-had-no-idea-were-onomatopoeias.html#ixzz1fIg1Fwaj

chomsky's language organ - also pathways

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111128171220.htm

Two brain areas called Broca's region and Wernicke's region serve as the main computing hubs underlying language processing, with dense bundles of nerve fibers linking the two, much like fiber optic cables connecting computer servers. But while it was known that Broca's and Wernicke's region are connected by upper and a lower white matter pathways, most research had focused on the nerve cells clustered inside the two language-processing regions themselves.

Working with patients suffering from language impairments because of a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, Wilsons' team used brain imaging and language tests to disentangle the roles played by the two pathways. Their findings are published in a recent issue of the scientific journal Neuron.

"If you have damage to the lower pathway, you have damage to the lexicon and semantics," Wilson said. "You forget the name of things, you forget the meaning of words. But surprisingly, you're extremely good at constructing sentences."

"With damage to the upper pathway, the opposite is true; patients name things quite well, they know the words, they can understand them, they can remember them, but when it comes to figuring out the meaning of a complex sentence, they are going to fail."

the languages of modern Greece

http://www.therecord.com/opinion/columns/article/629772--modern-greece-is-built-on-a-myth

Growing up in Greece in the 1970s, I had to learn not one but three Greek languages. First was the demotic parlance of everyday life. But at school, we were taught something different: “katharevousa” (“cleansed”), a language designed by 19th-century intellectuals to purify demotic from the cornucopia of borrowed Turkish, Slavic and Latin words. Finally, we had to study ancient Greek, the language of our classical ancestors, the heroes of Marathon and Thermopylae. Most of us managed to learn none of the three, ending up mixing them in one grammatically anarchic jargon that communicated the confusion of our age.

George Zarkadakis is the author of the novel The Island Survival Guide. (Washington Post)

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In Canada, instead we (fail to) learn Parisian French and are exposed to a mishmash of British and American spelling. You could say we are a confused colony with 2 Imperial masters.