Bird or Fish?
August 24th, 2009 | No Comments
Two weeks ago, I read an article in the New York Times about nomenclature. The author argues that there is something inherent about the way we name things, particularly animals, that lets us separate them into categories. Brent Berlin, an ethnobiologist at the University of Georgia conducted a study asking students to listen to a pair of 50 names read aloud. Each pair contained the name of a fish and the name of a bird. To combat bias, he chose names from the Huambisa language, spoken by people of the same name in Peru.
Students were able to correctly identify the bird and the fish 58% of the time, suggesting that they subconsiously picked up on linguistic cues. Somehow, the names gave a sense of “bird-ness” or “fish-ness”.
American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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Korean-American girl who blogs under a Spanish pseudonym because being culturally confusing is fun. Native speakers say that she has outstanding Spanish (which is a definite compliment) and outstanding German (which is most assuredly not).
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American-born, Taiwanese guy who took five semesters worth of German and ended up with a major in Linguistics.
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