Tag: LANGUAGE

A computer scientist at the University of Buffalo has developed a new program capable of taking automated translation beyond the literal. Rohini Srihari began working on her software in the hopes of improving computerized translations of Urdu -- a linguistic blend of Hindi and Persian that is widely spoken in Pakistan, and by many Muslims in India. Urdu is a particularly difficult language ...

Future linguists will have a field day with this one. The Oxford English Dictionary (the "definitive record of the English language," in case you were keeping track) just released its latest update, and "OMG," "LOL" and even "<3" made the cut. These Internet acronyms were included due to their cultural relevance today, but it turns out most have origins pre-dating those pesky tween texters. ...

The already Twitter-savvy U.S. State Department is now tweeting in Arabic. A few days ago, the Department launched a new feed, @USAbilAraby, devoted exclusively to Arabic-speaking audiences. The account describes itself as the "US Department of State Arabic Media Hub," and, as of this morning, has already accumulated over 500 followers. According to the Washington Post, the State Department ...

Just because your young daughter types "CU L8R" when she texts her friends doesn't mean she won't be able to spell real words when she grows up. In fact, one new study claims that, contrary to popular belief, texting will actually improve her spelling skills. The study, conducted by researchers at Coventry University, examined 114 9- and 10-year-old children who did not already use cell phones. ...

'Overshare,' 'w00t,' 'unfriend,' 'tweet': All have been honored, at some point, by an organization as "words of the year." For 2010, the American Dialect Society chose yet another tech term: 'app.' The shorthand for 'application' narrowly beat out the onomatopoeic 'nom, nom, nom,' which we think would have been much more fun to hear a bunch of stuffy linguists have to repeat on news clips. ...

We always thought intimate, human-to-human interaction was a crucial element to learning any foreign language. But officials in the South Korean city of Daegu apparently think that human-to-robot interaction can be just as effective. On Monday, the city unleashed an army of 29 robot English teachers, designed by the Korea Institute of Science of Technology. The 'bots conducted classes across ...

The Cherokee tribe counts about 290,000 members, yet only about 8,000 of those still speaks the nation's tongue. And most of those 8,000 are over the age of 50. Chief Chad Smith wants desperately to preserve the language, and as part of his efforts (which include creating a Cherokee language immersion school) he has convinced Apple to extend support for the language to the iPhone. Joseph Erb, who ...

Google's latest search tool may not be its most widely celebrated, but it could end up having a far greater cultural impact than anything else the company has ever done. The new Google Books Ngram Viewer, which launched last week, collects more than 500 billion words, from over 5.2 million digital books available for free download. Users can search for a specific word or phrase, and the viewer ...

Speaking a foreign language in a foreign land can sometimes be fun, but every now and then, it just gets annoying -- especially when you're tired, hungry, and don't feel like decoding an entire tapas menu, or worrying about whether you should order in the subjunctive. From now on, though, you may never have to, thanks to a new app called 'Word Lens' from QuestVisual As TechCrunch explains, ...

Lately, we've been worried about the mask of anonymity that many Internet users don before they hop onto a comment thread and start spewing vile sentiments at their fellow users. Unlike day-to-day speech, which has its ingrained mores and relative codes of civility, the Internet is a whole new communication mechanism, where you don't need to look someone in the eye as you tell them that future ...

The mad programmers at Google Labs have come up with another bizarre (and possibly sinister) new Web application called Google Scribe. Like Google's auto-suggested search terms that appear as you type, Scribe looks at the language you've used to determine the most likely word to follow. For example, if you type "Google Scribe" into its text field, the app will suggest "is a software" to follow ...

As a child, your writer got his geek on by traipsing down to the local library, where a massive microprint edition of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary was on display. The antique tome required a magnifying glass to read, and exuded some kind of occult authority with its Bible-like, tissue paper pages. But that experience will not be shared by the younger generation, as the Internet is ...

If, like the great Sylvia Plath, you punctiliously plot your prose with a thesaurus, may we entreat you to visit Save the Words? The prim nebbishes over at the Oxford University Press went crazy with Flash to develop the site, which features words that have all but disappeared from standard English usage and also asks users to "adopt" the archaisms in their daily communications. In a tragicomic ...

The big brains at MIT aren't just interested in solar cells, robot desk lamps and gesture interfaces; they're also applying their evolved understanding of tech to decipher ancient languages. The team of Regina Barzilay, an associate professor in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, have created a computer program that successfully deciphered a chunk of Ugaritic, a dead Semitic ...

Researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have been developing a new language that they hope will be easy for both robots and humans to learn. ROILA (Robot Interaction Language) was designed because modern speech-recognition software -- as anyone who has tried to use Voice Control on the iPhone or similar software -- is not refined enough to understand the nuances of ...