Language
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News
More Screen Time Means Less Parent-Child Talk, Study Finds
The News Credit...Jessica Kourkounis for The New York TimesAccording to new research, “technoference” is real. Toddlers who are exposed to more screen time have fewer conversations with their parents or caregivers by an array of measures. They say ...
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Books
How to Speak New York
LANGUAGE CITY: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York, by Ross Perlin “Up on the sixth floor of an old commercial building along the sunless canyon of 18th Street, there is a room where languages from all over the world converge ...
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Newyork
Where Did Our Strange Use of ‘Like’ Come From?
Some months ago, one of my readers sent me an invaluable cache of recordings of family members during therapy sessions in the 1960s. They are ordinary, seemingly educated, white Northeasterners ranging from their late 20s to late middle age speaking ...
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World
Writing in an Endangered Language to Honor, and Challenge, Traditions
In “How to Be a Good Savage,” Mikeas Sánchez’ poems help preserve her language, Zoque, and allow it to commingle with English and Spanish, in an effort that is both global and deeply local.
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World
How Africans Are Changing French — One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time
More than 60 percent of French speakers now live in Africa. Despite growing resentment at France, Africans are contributing to the evolution and spread of the French language.
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Newyork
Hola! This Is Mayor Eric Adams, Making an A.I. Robocall
New York City is embracing artificial intelligence and using it to send robocalls featuring the mayor’s voice in many languages.
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World
A Patois Revival: Jamaica Weighs Language Change as Ties to Britain Fray
A push is underway to make Jamaica’s Patois an official language, on par with English, as the country weighs cutting ties to the British monarchy.
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World
‘Our Language Is Dying’
The struggle to save Gagauz, a Turkic tongue used by dwindling numbers of people in an ethnic enclave of Moldova, reflects the emotional power of language loyalties across the former Soviet Union.
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Newyork
Is ‘Yo’ the Gender-Neutral Pronoun You’ve Been Looking For?
I am in the middle of writing a book on pronouns in English. My focus this time out is on standard English rather than nonstandard English, since one of my recent books was about Black English. However, again and again I am struck that the most ...
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World
A Yiddish Haven Thrives in Australia
Australia has the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors of any country besides Israel. In Melbourne, some of their descendants are leading the way to preserve the Yiddish language.