Home » Posts tagged "language"

A Parenting Story

Adelaide is 18 months old and is at the stage where she wants to know what everything is called. This is what it’s like.
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Well that was quick

All of a sudden my daughter just started using lots of signs and real words and everything. It’s bizarre. Like shit just got real.

There’s a little human in there, making her will known.

Man, I’ve gotta stop saying things like “shit just got real”; both because she might repeat it, and because people who are allowed to use lingo like that don’t use semicolons in sentences. Nor the word “lingo”.

Man Down

I’ve been meaning to write a post about general gender issues for a long time now, but I’ve never gotten around to it. This is not that post, but it contains something that’s bothered me awhile now, and I’d like to address it. I’m not sure why it bothered me enough today in particular, but strike while the iron is hot, right?

Part of this is attempting to analyze and deconstruct what I think is happening. Don’t treat this as canon — Your Mileage May Vary.

I guess to hedge my bets I could just say, “Maybe this only happens to me.”

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You Are What You Speak

I’m sitting here looking at various language videos online, perusing the resources available to me in a 1st world magic-land. There are quite a few free resources if you’re willing to do a bit of searching. I’m very fortunate to have access to so many learning opportunities. It’s too bad that it’s all structured wrong.

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The Name of the Beast

My daughter is slowly climbing her way up the language hill. It’s really neat to see her acquire words. Each time she we recognize that she’s trying to say a particular term for something, such as “kitty” or “milk”, it’s kind of amazing.

But she can’t say the words very well, so as we see her applying labels to things it’s really evident that she’s grasped the concept or idea of a thing. But it also illustrates to me how words largely serve to make us unhappy.

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Washing machine carries its own beat

Washing machine carries its own beat:

This is great, I have noticed this stuff before.

Also, the reason it sounds like a beat is explained (or at least described) in this Radiolab episode about language and music (the “sometimes behaves so strangely” episode).

WNYC – Radiolab » Words

WNYC – Radiolab » Words:

Radiolab has a new hour-long episode out, this time it’s on words. It seems like more people are doing more and more research on how language works and how it interfaces with cognition. This pleases me greatly!