Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagKensy Cooperrider

people-taking-classes-at-language-school-stockpack-adobe-stock
People taking classes at language school

Some Questions and Answers About Language From Recent Research

The hardest language, the best way to learn a language, and peering into the shadowy origin of language

Can there be such a thing as “the hardest language to learn”? At ZME Science, science writer Tibi Puiu dives into the question, starting with the assumption that the learner is an English speaker: After 70 years of experience teaching languages to American diplomats, the U.S. Foreign Service has grouped foreign languages into four categories of difficulty. The easiest language group requires 575-600 hours of study (23-24 weeks of classroom study) for students to achieve sufficient competence to be posted overseas, whereas the hardest group requires at least 2,200 hours of study (88 weeks of full-time classroom study) to achieve the same level of proficiency. In other words, some languages can be 3-4 times harder to master than others. Tibi Read More ›

smiling-multiracial-friends-talk-using-sign-language-stockpack-adobe-stock.jpg
Smiling multiracial friends talk using sign language

Did We Learn Sign Language Before We Learned to Speak?

The idea that humans first communicated by complicated gestures and only later learned to speak is popular among cognitive scientists. Kensy Cooperrider explains

The origin of language is considered one of the hardest problems in science. Like the origin of consciousness, it attracts a great many theories. Cognitive scientist Kensy Cooperrider is a stout defender of the idea that human language started as sign language—a gestural “protolanguage” —hundreds of thousands of years ago. It’s not a new idea. It goes back to Étienne Bonnot de Condillac’s Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746) and remained popular in the 19th century. In the 20th century, it was championed by University of Colorado anthropologist Gordon Hewes (1917–1997), who introduced the idea of studying ape communications in the early Seventies, to gain more insight. In general, apes communicate more by gesture than by voice. An Read More ›