New CBB

Bringing these two over from the old CBB.


Former minister Chris Bryant: French is a useless language

Chris Bryant, who served under Gordon Brown, made the claim in the Commons of the waning value of the French language, which has traditionally been the first foreign language taught to British schoolchildren. He said young people should be pointed towards languages that were more useful for business. According to Bryant the most significant languages to speak now, aside from English, were Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... guage.html


Ancient language mystery deepens
A linguistic mystery has arisen surrounding symbol-inscribed stones in Scotland that predate the formation of the country itself. It is believed that the stone carvings belong to the Picts.

A research team has examined the symbols of more than 200 stones using a mathematical method to quantify patterns in an effort to find out if they mean.

The research team is led by Professor Rob Lee from Exeter University in the UK, he explained the method: "I[f] I told you the first letter of a word in English was 'Q' and asked you to predict the next letter, you would probably say 'U' and you would probably be right," he explained. "But if I told you the first letter was 'T' you would probably take many more guesses to get it right - that's a measure of uncertainty."

Read the rest here:
BBC News

Linguists uncover 'hidden' language in north India

Two linguists have discovered a language new to science, spoken by only about 1,000 people in the foothills of the Himalayas. Koro, as it has been named, was found among residents in a remote area of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Instead of being a dialect of the dominant local language as long thought, it contains unique grammatical and syntactical features and thus could provide insights into the mechanics of language itself.

Read more: latimes.com - Koro

National Geographic's Enduring Voices video on Koro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QjXGsUMD8U

A good swede once told me that there have been some discussions in the linguistic Stockholm and Oslo that the Swedish, Norweigan and Danish languages are due to fuse into dialects of Scandinavian.

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Svo hvernig get ég annað en glott á þig dauðlega?

Um. Sounds like a misunderstanding to me. It's not that the languages are "due to fuse", it's that they already are dialects of a single language, or at least parts of the same dialect continuum. By purely linguistic criteria, that is; obviously they're considered different languages from a political point of view.

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The link is broken...
Also, it might helpful to at least put a title of what you are linking.

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Ikasmu ati'uki nai uraiur.
Hinai nimuśim naimi nai sasamiur urukani. Śi'ama nai huhumiur na ni'amuśim nai sasamiur.
Pumaki nimuśim śima'a na ami nimuśim ara'a. Hini nihrasum i'aku tumra urukani na nihrasum sanik hraspir.