#language biographies

[langbios-blog]

A nice follow up to the Welsh Bio we released last week

[langbios-blog]

LangBios: Welsh

It’s about time we covered a minority language here on LangBios, and as my name is Welsh, I think the language is a good fit! Chapter 1: Birth Welsh is the language of the nation of Wales. Though a…

Welsh Wednesday! Check out the history of the language in this week’s Language Biography. If you’ve got ancestry in the U.K., you might find this interesting!

Which language should we do next? Let us know!

[langbios-blog]

Introductions

So it's been a couple weeks since I got blog going and I thought it would be a good time to introduce it as well as myself for anyone who hasn't explored too much on my site! My name is Dylan, and I've been interested in languages for a few years now. I started following a bunch of langblrs on tumblr about a year ago to get my nerdy linguistics fix, introducing me to the community, and like everyone else here I have a hard time keeping from starting new language learning projects because each new one I learn about seems so captivating and unique to me! This site, LangBios, is an opportunity for me and whoever else is interested to explore the languages of the world as well as the people who speak them. I don't focus so much on language learning here. Rather, my interests in college were always language as it relates to society, history, and culture! Thus, I will strive to delve into new Language Biographies every couple of weeks, providing as much of a background as I can on the histories of different speech communities. Meanwhile I hope to provide updates on different issues of sociopolitics as it relates to language, as well as linguistics topics, because language is all around us and is a part of almost everything we do! I hope you guys enjoy! Look forward to the next LangBio out on Wednesday!

[langbios-blog]

[Language Dynamics] is an approach, previously little explored, to understanding human societies: how language, in all its evolving variety, organizes not just the human mind but also the large groups of human minds that constitute themselves into societies, which communicate and interact, as well as think and act. From this point of view, our focus on large languages has been above all a convenience. All languages have their own histories, but few are well enough documented to reveal very much about them. It is the large and famous languages that typically have the most adequate documentation. This is where we needed to start, to lay down the outlines of this new field. And this we have done. But ultimately language dynamics must encompass the history of human language in all its diversity.

Nicholas Ostler; Empires of the Word

[langbios-blog]

Much the most important thing about language is its capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities. After all, imperial languages are still vernaculars, and this particular vernaculars among many.

Benedict Anderson; Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

[langbios-blog]

Linguistic Basics: Morphology

In my last post about the basics of linguistics I talked about phonetics and phonology, which make up the study of the sounds of a language, and are seen as one of the most micro-level field of lin…

Feeling like learning what’s in a word this Saturday? Take a gander at this week’s LangBios linguistics lesson on basic Morphology!

And stay tuned for Part 2 of the Korean Biography, out later this week!

[langbios-blog]

Hello Hello Hello!

LangBios.com is officially up and running! If you like language as it relates to history, culture, society, etc. check us out! We’ll be updating once or twice a week and keeping in contact in the meantime.

Check out our newest post (about Korean!) here ! 

And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter @langbios if you want more!