Humans Who Read Grammars

People love languages; there are many game shows on TV which are language-based.  Most language quiz shows test contestants on their knowledge of the broadcasting language itself. For instance, English-language channels testing contestants on their knowledge of the English language and English literature: Wheel of Fortune ; e.g. CBS News Have you seen quiz shows on TV where they quiz contestants on languages other than the broadcasting language (or some major international language)? Wouldn't it be cool if there are quiz shows on TV where they test contestants on languages that are rarely or never broadcasted?  Here I will talk about the "dialect quiz shows" in China, which I think can be emulated in many other parts of the world. These shows are entertaining for the general audience (if done right), and can help raise the interest in regional languages. (In this blogpost, there are many pics/gifs of people struggling and failing. They are not suggesting that...

Seán Roberts, Lars Yencken and I have just published a paper on confusion of languages with data from The Great Language Game.  Alongside, we also created a new game:  LingQuest ! The Great Language Game is quite simple, players hear a short audio clip of people speaking and then they have to guess what language it is that they heard from some given alternatives. Very often people guess correctly, in our study we found that 70% of the time people guess correctly. But, what about those other times? What's happening there? What languages are players confusing for which? In this paper, we explore this question and test some different ideas for what it may be that is going on. The paper is getting some media coverage, and I thought we'd answer some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). So, please post your questions to us and we'll answer them! Cheese pic of me listening to sounds with a Great Language Game-t-shirt that Lars sent me One thing that I'm really happy ab...

PLAY FISH COMMUNICATION GAME! Some mates of mine are doing an experiment involving a very short online task where you learn fish songs. You need android or Firefox if you're on a desktop computer to play. Play it and spread the word! For other games advancing science, check the "games" tag.

There are more and more exciting new tools cropping up for scientist to gather data, and in linguistics one new tool such is gaming! We just had a talk here at CoEDL at ANU from a researcher working on mutual intelligibility of closely related european languages - Charlotte Gooskens  - where they've been using games to investigate this question. Apropos that, I thought I'd let you all know about some games you can play that can further our understanding of language! Go play games, for science! Mutual understanding between closely related languages-game As a speaker of a major european language, how good are you at understanding your neighbours? Really... :)? Link to game. Link to science behind (don't look before playing!) LingQuest! How good are you at correctly identifying which language you're hearing? Test yourself on over 30 European languages and other languages from all over the world. Included are many languages currently under study in the DOBES-...