In the misty mountains of the Canary island La Gomera (next to Tenerife) sounds the whistle of a particularly curious bird: humans. On this island, farmers have been communicating by whistling melodies to one another for as long as they can remember.
When facing unexpected world changes, as in the case of the current pandemic, the language system adapts to the challenge to express a new reality. How? By forging new words! Let’s find out how this happens by looking at one of the most powerful engines we can count on: our brain.
Sounds are the basic ingredients of spoken language, and the human voice can produce an infinity of different sounds. However, we have only a limited number of possibilities for speech sounds, like consonants and vowels. How do we transform infinity in an alphabet? Let’s dive into categorical perception.
Dr. Eirini Zormpa was a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. She defended her thesis entitled ‘Memory for speaking and listening’ on December 18 2020.
With online group classes, self-paced mobile apps and dedicated Youtube channels, learning a new language never seemed easier. The opportunities seem endless—perhaps even overwhelmingly so. Although, learning a new language is more than just learning new words for the same things. Sometimes, there are also new meanings to be learned.
