Philosophy
Have you ever tried to make sense of the English language? If you've taken courses on linguistics, logic or philosophy of language, you've learned that grammar is supposed to give us a formal understanding of the structure underlying any particular language. To a surprisingly large extent, the rules of grammar do a pretty good job of organizing this formal structure, especially for languages like Latin or its romance derivations.
But the English language is kind of an unruly child, partly because it is, more so than many other languages, an amalgamation of disparate historical and geographic linguistic influences (Anglo-Saxon, Latin, German, French, Norse, etc.), as the following funny and educational 10-minute animation makes clear:
- Silent Letters
The English language is an odd mishmash of German, Dutch, Norse, French, Celtic, and Latin. So many pieces that don't fit together so well have resulted in a language that is really odd. Consider how many words in English have utterly irrelevant letter...
- Spanish, Ebonics, And Bushisms: English As Whose National Language?
So we've got another case of conservatives trying to crack down on that creeping menace...the Spanish language. Public libraries in suburban Atlanta will no longer acquire adult fiction in Spanish because immigrants reading John Grisham is a threat...
- Steven Pinker - Linguistics As A Window To Understand The Brain
One of the things I first enjoyed when I was introduced to philosophy was its recursive nature: we could use thought to investigate the nature, the rules, the structure and the limits of thought itself (and what that could tell us about the human mind)....
- Making Sense Of Spelling
If you're a bibliophile and a lover of the beauty and sensuousness of the spoken and written word (like Stephen Fry in this fantastic animated essay), then you probably already know about the sophistication, the richness, and the history (animated,...
- Ai And Indus Valley Civilization
Oh my, the following looks like a scene from Numb3rs...Charlie is standing in front of a transparent chalkboard loaded with impressive mathematical symbols and algorithms falling out of his pockets. Pretty pictures into grammar into no meaning... "Artificial...
Philosophy
History of the English Language, Animated
But the English language is kind of an unruly child, partly because it is, more so than many other languages, an amalgamation of disparate historical and geographic linguistic influences (Anglo-Saxon, Latin, German, French, Norse, etc.), as the following funny and educational 10-minute animation makes clear:
- Silent Letters
The English language is an odd mishmash of German, Dutch, Norse, French, Celtic, and Latin. So many pieces that don't fit together so well have resulted in a language that is really odd. Consider how many words in English have utterly irrelevant letter...
- Spanish, Ebonics, And Bushisms: English As Whose National Language?
So we've got another case of conservatives trying to crack down on that creeping menace...the Spanish language. Public libraries in suburban Atlanta will no longer acquire adult fiction in Spanish because immigrants reading John Grisham is a threat...
- Steven Pinker - Linguistics As A Window To Understand The Brain
One of the things I first enjoyed when I was introduced to philosophy was its recursive nature: we could use thought to investigate the nature, the rules, the structure and the limits of thought itself (and what that could tell us about the human mind)....
- Making Sense Of Spelling
If you're a bibliophile and a lover of the beauty and sensuousness of the spoken and written word (like Stephen Fry in this fantastic animated essay), then you probably already know about the sophistication, the richness, and the history (animated,...
- Ai And Indus Valley Civilization
Oh my, the following looks like a scene from Numb3rs...Charlie is standing in front of a transparent chalkboard loaded with impressive mathematical symbols and algorithms falling out of his pockets. Pretty pictures into grammar into no meaning... "Artificial...