“Fortunately I can also speak Nepali, but I feel very sad for not being able to speak my own language with people from my own community,” she said.

It is not known how many Kusunda people remain at this time; at the time of the 2001 Nepal census, there were 164 Kusundas living in Nepal, however many are thought to have either moved away or died.

Kusunda is considered a language isolate, meaning it has no discernible ties or relationships to any other known living language. No children within the indigenous group are learning the language, and all known Kusunda speakers have married into other tribes.

Whilst Nepal’s Ministry of Culture has no plans to preserve the language, linguistic students are seeking the help of Gyani Maiya Sen to document and learn Kusunda, in the hope of preventing it from dying out completely.

Source: BBC News

Experts are now set to examine the names in further detail to discover if the letters bear any resemblance to existing known Assyrian languages such as Shubrian, which was previously thought to never have been written down.

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that this tablet has potential to unlock more pieces in the historical puzzle.

One experiment tested native English speakers learning Japanese. 121 students were given a hypothetical choice as to whether they would save a set number of people, or take the risk of saving more people with a higher failure rate. Dr Boaz Keysar’s study asked the students if they would choose to develop a medicine that would definitely save 200,000 out of 600,000 people, or a medicine that had a 33.3 % chance of saving all 600,000 people with a 66.6 % chance of saving none of those people.

The first time the students were asked the question, in English, nearly 80% of the students chose the first option. The second time they were asked, in Japanese, only 40% chose the more “safe” option. The role of instinct here appeared to be reduced. The conclusion to this experiment was that these results were due to loss aversion.

Two experiments were hypothetical gambling based questions. A group of 144 native Korean students were presented with several low loss, high gain bets. When offered these bets in Korean, 57% of the students took them. When offered the bets in English, 67% of the students took them. To back up the conclusion that people deliberate more in a different language, 54 native English students with Spanish as a second language were presented with a similar gambling based dilemma. 54% of these students took the bets in English, yet the percentage of students taking the bets when presented to them in Spanish rose to 71%. The researchers came to the conclusion that when thinking in a different language, decisions are made more logically.

The study proposes that decision making in a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does.

Source: Psychological Science

To translate a message manually, you can click on Translate Message in the header at the top of the message. If you want things to happen automatically, select Always translate. If you don’t need translation for a specific language, you can select Turn off and messages in that particular language won’t be translated for you. Further instructions can be found in the official Google Blog post.

This will save lots of time and copy and pasting to Google Translate!

Joan Morrison, of the Western Isles Tour Guide Association, said:

“We are pretty desperate and really need people fluent in Finnish, Swedish, Spanish or Italian, and willing to undergo training. We need people as soon as possible within the next couple of weeks so we can start training.”

Gaelic remains the main language spoken by inhabitants of the islands.

Source: STV

Google Translate launched in 2006 offering Chinese and Arabic translation, and now offers translation in 64 different languages.

Google Research Scientist Franz Och said in an official blog post:

In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you’d find in 1 million books. To put it another way: what all the professional human translators in the world produce in a year, our system translates in roughly a single day. By this estimate, most of the translation on the planet is now done by Google Translate.

Whilst the translation system isn’t as precise as a human translator, there’s no denying it’s popularity and usefulness.

Source: Google

During the next 6 weeks, the Globe Theatre in London is showing 37 of Shakespeare’s works in 37 different languages. The festival kicked off today with Troilus and Cressida in Maori, which has already been performed in Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand to standing ovations.

Director Rachel House advises audiences to “relax and enjoy it and not panic about the fact they don’t understand the language.”

She added, “there are tones and expressions and emotions that are easily identifiable because they are so universal.”

You can still book tickets to some shows here.

Source: BBC News

It has been widely reported that there are some errors in the sign language used, most notably, that both actors use the sign for ‘tampon’ rather than ‘appear,’ and ‘enemy’ instead of ‘Valentine.’ Whilst in British Sign Language, the sign is for ‘tampon,’ it’s important to note that the actors are using American Sign Language, for which the signs for some words differ slightly. Therefore, the sign they used to signify ‘appear’ is correct. There are actually two ASL signs for the word ‘appear;’ one means ‘to show up’ and the other is ‘to seem.’ Natalie Portman used the correct sign.

It’s a shame that Johnny Depp remained expressionless throughout the video, as all sign language relies on facial expressions to bring the language to life. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see sign language brought to the spotlight!

You can view a Johnny Depp solo video, a Natalie Portman solo video, AND the video featuring both actors on Paul McCartney’s YouTube channel.

The researchers examined hospital records of patients diagnosed with a variety of different types of dementia, and found that those who were bilingual were diagnosed with dementia three to four years later than patients who were only able to speak one language.

Dr Ellen Bialystok, respected psychologist and leader of the study, said

“Our conclusion is that lifelong experience in managing attention to two languages reorganizes specific brain networks, creating a more effective basis for executive control and sustaining better cognitive performance throughout the lifespan.

‘It should not be surprising that intense and sustained experience leaves its mark on our minds and brains, and it is now clear that the bilingual brain has been uniquely shaped by experience.”

Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences Journal

Last summer, 154,221 pupils took French. This is in contrast to the 350,027 pupils who sat the exam in 1995. 60,887 students took the German GCSE last year, compared with 129,386 in 1995.

Director General of the BCC, John Longworth, said:

“A renewed focus on language skills at school, as well as helping companies forge new connections overseas, could help ensure that current and future business owners are pre-disposed to thinking internationally.

We are already the sixth largest trading nation on earth, and the third largest service exporter, but to really secure our future as a leading exporter we need to help companies take advantage of new markets.

Giving businesses the opportunity to forge links with international firms, develop employees’ language skills, and providing compulsory education in languages for young people will transform many of the great businesses we have in the UK into success stories overseas.”

The business network also called for tax breaks for small companies which offer foreign language training to staff.

The National Curriculum is currently under Government review, with changes expected to be announced in 2013.

Source: Channel 4 News