News
-
May 18, 2020Letters to Santa
Students want to take American Sign Language (ASL) classes at the University of British Columbia but many have misconceptions about sign language. That's according to a final project in the Living Language: Science and Society course, which conducted research about UBC and other universities'…
-
May 18, 2020Emoji-based apps to aid mental health access for immigrants
How can you easily direct new immigrants to mental health services in Canada when they don't speak English or French? Enter the notOK app. A final project for the Living Language: Science and Society course, notOK aims to communicate via emojis with non-English and non-French speakers seeking…
-
May 17, 2020Puppies versus pupa: how does stress terminology show bias in invertebrate literature?
There's probably a reason there isn't a collection jar for spiderlings at your local coffee shop. And a Living Language: Science and Society final project may have nailed why. Fourth year Land and Food Systems student Mira Macnair, studying for a degree in Applied Animal Biology, had taken a…
-
-
April 23, 2020Rethinking dictionaries as tools for Indigenous language reclamation
Members of the Splatsin Tsm7aksaltn dictionary team record fluent speaker, Emmeline Felix. Image credit: Aaron Leon. For half a year, Mark Turin told strangers in Nepal that he was a water well. Wanting to respond to people’s greetings with ‘I am very well’, Turin, an associate professor in…
-
April 17, 2020Why ‘speaking moistly’ needs to be taken seriously
-
March 2, 2020How a child’s first language includes more than words
Author: Shannon Ward, University of British Columbia. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This International Mother Language Day (Feb. 21), Canadians celebrated their multilingual heritage by recognizing…
-
February 25, 2020When a virus is the cause, racism is often the symptom
-
February 21, 2020‘When languages fade, so does the world's rich tapestry of cultural diversity’ - Celebrating International Mother Language Day
When languages fade, so does the world's rich tapestry of cultural diversity. That’s according to the United Nations, which declared February 21st is International Mother Language Day in 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. Language Sciences spoke with six bi…
-
January 28, 2020Questioning the belief that English is a universal common language
Is English a universal language, proficiency in which guarantees a successful career? Or is this a language myth that needs to be set right? Language Sciences member and Department of Language and Literacy Education Professor Ryuko Kubota and her research team interviewed 50 transnational…