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Por qué lenguas diferentes tienen más o menos palabras para describir los colores.

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Por qué lenguas diferentes tienen más o menos palabras para describir los colores.

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Cuando miramos a las palabras en inglés que son cruciales para la descripción de colores, tenemos once.

Pero cuando miramos a otros lenguas, hay unas que solo tienen cinco, y también hay lenguas con solo dos palabras en referencia a los colores, negro y blanco. Lingüistas han sido cautivado en las razones y diferencias por el mundo, pero por qué existe este fenómeno?

Pensaron antes que la gente describieron las colores más salientes, o sea, lo más evidente. Cómo la mayoría de las lenguas van en orden cómo tengo en mi lista arriba. Empiezan con blanco y negro, y sigue rojo etc. etc. Pero aunque este hipótesis funciona para casi todas las lenguas, hay muchas excepciones, así que buscaban un otro posibilidad.

Encontraron su respuesta en la teoría de comunicación. Los colores claves, y lo más fácil describir y entender sobre las varias lenguas eran cálidos, o sea, rojo, amarillo, etc. Eso es porque las cosas más importantes y evidentes a nosotros normalmente son de colores cálidos como personas, fruta, objetos, etc y las cosas en el fondo son de colores fríos.

Este idea relata a nuestra clase porque hablábamos sobre la percepción, y cómo tiene una relación con el lenguaje. Colores tienen un signo que puede ser arbitraria, pero la importancia a nuestros vidas se ha unido todas bajo una regla mundial.

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People with standard vision can see millions of distinct colors. But human language categorizes these into a small set of words. In an industrialized culture, most people get by with 11 color words: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and gray. That's what we have in American English.

Maybe if you're an artist or an interior designer, you know specific meanings for as many as 50 or 100 different words for colors - like turquoise, amber, indigo or taupe. But this is still a tiny fraction of the colors that we can distinguish.

Interestingly, the ways that languages categorize color vary widely. Nonindustrialized cultures typically have far fewer words for colors than industrialized cultures. So while English has 11 words that everyone knows, the Papua-New Guinean language Berinmo has only five, and the Bolivian Amazonian language Tsimane' has only three words that everyone knows, corresponding to black, white and red.

The goal of our project was to understand why cultures vary so much in their color word usage.

Is it about which colors stand out the most?

The most widely accepted explanation for the differences goes back to two linguists, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. In their early work in the 1960s, they gathered color-naming data from 20 languages. They observed some commonalities among sets of color terms across languages: If a language had only two terms, they were always black and white; if there was a third, it was red; the fourth and fifth were always green and yellow (in either order); the sixth was blue; the seventh was brown; and so on.

Based on this order, Berlin and Kay argued that certain colors were more salient. They suggested that cultures start by naming the most salient colors, bringing in new terms one at a time, in order. So black and white are the most salient, then red, and so on.

While this approach seemed promising, there are several problems with this innate vision-based theory.

Berlin, Kay and their colleagues went on to gather a much larger data set, from 110 nonindustrialized languages. Their original generalization isn't as clear in this larger data set: there are many exceptions, which Kay and his colleagues have tried to explain in a more complicated vision-based theory.

What's more, this nativist theory doesn't address why industrialization, which introduced reliable, stable and standardized colors on a large scale, causes more color words to be introduced. The visual systems of people across cultures are the same: in this model, industrialization should make no difference on color categorization, which was clearly not the case.

How do you describe this color?

Our research groups therefore explored a completely different idea: Perhaps color words are developed for efficient communication. Consider the task of simply naming a color chip from some set of colors. In our study, we used 80 color chips, selected from Munsell colors to be evenly spaced across the color grid. Each pair of neighboring colors is the same distance apart in terms of how different they appear. The speaker's task is to simply label the color with a word ("red," "blue" and so on).

Richard Futrell and Edward Gibson, CC BY

To evaluate the communication-based idea, we need to think of color-naming in simple communication terms, which can be formalized by information theory. Suppose the color I select at random is N4. I choose a word to label the color that I picked. Maybe the word I choose is "blue." If I had picked A3, I would have never said "blue." And if I had picked M3, maybe I would have said "blue," maybe "green" or something else.

Now in this thought experiment, you as a listener are trying to guess which physical color I meant. You can choose a whole set of color chips that you think corresponds to my color "blue." Maybe you pick a set of 12 color chips corresponding to all those in columns M, N and O. I say yes, because my chip is in fact one of those. Then you split your set in half and guess again.

The number of guesses it takes the ideal listener to zero in on my color chip based on the color word I used is a simple score for the chip. We can calculate this score - the number of guesses or "bits" - using some simple math from the way in which many people label the colors in a simple color-labeling task. Using these scores, we can now rank the colors across the grid, in any language.

In English, it turns out that people can convey the warm colors - reds, oranges and yellows - more efficiently (with fewer guesses) than the cool colors - blues and greens. You can see this in the color grid: There are fewer competitors for what might be labeled "red," "orange" or "yellow" than there are colors that would be labeled "blue" or "green." This is true in spite of the fact that the grid itself is perceptually more or less uniform: The colors were selected to completely cover the most saturated colors of the Munsell color space, and each pair of neighboring colors looks equally close, no matter where they are on the grid.

We found that this generalization is true in every language in the entire World Color Survey (110 languages) and in three more that we did detailed experiments on: English, Spanish and Tsimane'.

Richard Futrell, CC BY

It's clear in a visual representation, where each row is an ordering of the color chips for a particular language. The left-to-right ordering is from easiest to communicate (fewest guesses needed to get the right color) to hardest to communicate.

The diagram shows that all languages have roughly the same order, with the warm colors on the left (easy to communicate) and the cool ones on the right (harder to communicate). This generalization occurs in spite of the fact that languages near the bottom of the figure have few terms that people use consistently, while languages near the top (like English and Spanish) have many terms that most people use consistently.

We name the colors of things we want to talk about

In addition to discovering this remarkable universal across languages, we also wanted to find out what causes it. Recall that our idea is that maybe we introduce words into a language when there is something that we want to talk about. So perhaps this effect arises because objects - the things we want to talk about - tend to be warm-colored.

We evaluated this hypothesis in a database of 20,000 photographs of objects that people at Microsoft had decided contained objects, as distinct from backgrounds. ( This data set is available to train and test computer vision systems that are trying to learn to identify objects.) Our colleagues then determined the specific boundaries of the object in each image and where the background was.

We mapped the colors in the images onto our set of 80 colors across the color space. It turned out that indeed objects are more likely to be warm-colored, while backgrounds are cool-colored. If an image's pixel fell within an object, it was more likely to correspond to a color that was easier to communicate. Objects' colors tended to fall further to the left on our ranked ordering of communicative efficiency.

When you think about it, this doesn't seem so surprising after all. Backgrounds are sky, water, grass, trees: all cool-colored. The objects that we want to talk about are warm-colored: people, animals, berries, fruits and so on.

Our hypothesis also easily explains why more color terms come into a language with industrialization. With increases in technology come improved ways of purifying pigments and making new ones, as well as new color displays. So we can make objects that differ based only on color - for instance, the new iPhone comes in "rose gold" and "gold" - which makes color-naming even more useful.

So contrary to the earlier nativist visual salience hypothesis, the communication hypothesis helped identify a true cross-linguistic universal - warm colors are easier to communicate than cool ones - and it easily explains the cross-cultural differences in color terms. It also explains why color words often come into a language not as color words but as object or substance labels. For instance, "orange" comes from the fruit; "red" comes from Sanskrit for blood. In short, we label things that we want to talk about.

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Languages don't all have the same number of terms for colors - scientists have a new theory why

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People with standard vision can see millions of distinct colors. But human language categorizes these into a small set of words. In an industrialized culture, most people get by with 11 color words: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and gray. That's what we have in American English.

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Hemos mirado a dos tipos de afasia, Broca y Wernicke, pero este tipo de afasia es una combinación de los dos. Afasia de conducción ocurre en personas que tienen una separación entre las dos zonas mencionada con las otros tipos de afasia común. Personas que sufren de este tipo tiene comprensión completa, y pueden hablar con más o menos fluidez, pero tienen problemas con la repetición, secuencias (números), y leer textos en voz alta.

Relata a la discusión sobre los varios casos de afasia, y me ayudó con la entendimiento de la significado y efectos de afasia.

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El periodo crítico ha sido algo de mucho interés en las anos recientes. Eso es decir, qué exactamente es? Hay una edad en que completamente separa la diferencia en aprender una lengua y no? Pues, eso es una debate muy grande. Es verdad que hay una diferencia en la rapidez de aprender, y el acento, pero en mi opinión enfocamos en este periodo en una manera negativa. Los seres humanos tienen la capacidad de adquirir lenguas en una manera tan impresionante, y los aprendemos con mucho más prisa que todos de los otros sujetos.

Las lenguas son una manera de comunicar y tener relaciones y conversaciones con el resto del mundo, y debe ser algo divertido, interesante, y constante. Eso es decir que pasamos mucho tiempo pensando en cuando aprendemos y no cómo. Hay mucho más pasando con el aprendizaje de idiomas y estoy muy interesada en cómo continuamos con las maneras de aprender.

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The Myth of Missed Opportunities
A popular misconception regarding second-language learning is that there is a window, or critical period, for learning a second language that shuts down around the onset of puberty. In his article, "Is There a 'Child Advantage' in Learning Foreign Languages?" Brad Marshall points out the harm this misconception can cause. Adults may become doubtful of their ability to learn a new language. Their teachers may become skeptical too, tending to "plod through their classes feeling there is little hope of success." When it comes to learning a foreign language, many believe that the adult brain is in "a state of shutdown" relative to the child's "neurological state of readiness."

Early Foreign Language Instruction is "Not a Magical Tool"
In The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition, David Singleton concedes that in second-language instruction, "younger = better in the long run." But this is a general rule with plenty of exceptions. The exceptions include the 5 percent of adult bilinguals who master a second language even though they begin learning it when they are well into adulthood, long after any critical period has presumably come to a close.

Both research and the informal observations of those who are in daily contact with second-language learners suggest that an early start in a second language is neither a strictly necessary nor a universally sufficient condition for the attainment of native-like proficiency. Given the enormous variation in people's experience of second languages-even (or especially!) in the classroom-this ought to be a truism.

As John T. Bruer, author of The Myth of the First Three Years, states: "One of the dangers of the...emphasis on critical periods, is that it prompts us to pay too much attention to when learning occurs and too little attention to how learning might best occur." Marshall agrees, pointing out that learning a foreign language in elementary school-what most researchers generally agree is the ideal time-is not a "magical tool for creating perfect second-language speakers." Timing, in other words, is not everything.

Many assume that critical learning periods apply not only to second-language learning, but to other school subjects, like math and reading. Such beliefs, writes Bruer, have "raised needless concerns among educators." For instance, once a critical period is over, is "lost academic ground" irrecoverable? Such concerns arise from a simplistic and over-generalized application of critical periods to learning. The extreme view that children must learn a foreign language "early or not at all" grows out of popular images of critical periods as closing abruptly, like windows slamming shut.

Foreign-Language Learning and Critical Periods
The question of whether or not there is a critical period for learning a foreign language is not easily answered. But there is certainly no specific age at which the window of opportunity closes completely. As with the visual system, the language system consists of several features, and is not, as Singleton writes, a "monolith." Certain features of the language system may be more related to distinct critical periods than others. According to Ellen Bialystok and Kenji Hakuta, authors of In Other Words, "The controversy over the optimal age for learning a second language really hinges on the acquisition of a subset of possible linguistic features and functions."

The Grammar-Learning Window Never Completely Closes
Although acquiring the grammar of one's first language does seem to be subject to a critical period which ends around puberty, the issue of whether or not there is also a critical period for second-language grammar acquisition is more complex. In The Myth of the First Three Years, Bruer does not state that there is a critical period for second-language grammar learning; instead, he claims that there "may be some maturational constraints on second-language grammar learning."

Bialystok and Hakuta complicate the response to whether or not there is an optimal age for second-language grammar acquisition even further. They point out that learning some linguistic features, like tense, seems to be affected by age; yet other linguistic structures, like word order, "are resistant to any effect of the learner's age." In their book In Other Words, Bialystok and Hakuta state that syntax "remains accessible throughout life, even though the circumstances of our lives may muddy that access." Overall, "the amazing human ability to learn grammar," they argue, "remains with us as long as we remain human."

Phonological Acquisition Is Age-Sensitive
Unlike grammar learning, second-language phonological acquisition is subject to a sensitive period. The decline in "unaccented learning" of a foreign language is progressive, however, and not characterized by a predictably abrupt change. According to a study by James Flege, similar and not entirely novel sounds are the ones that are affected by age. In other words, new sounds are easier to pronounce with native-like accuracy than sounds that are similar but not identical to those found in one's first language.

According to Bruer, "we know almost nothing about the stages within the critical period for phonological learning...." We do know, Bruer continues, that "the system remains plastic and able to tune itself to a second phonology...until early in the second decade of life."

Vocabulary Learning Has No Critical Period
Of vocabulary acquisition in one's first language, Singleton writes, "there is no point at which vocabulary acquisition can be predicted to cease." There is also, Singleton suggests, no critical period for learning vocabulary in a second language.

According to the results of a study by Helen Neville using brain recordings, semantic information seems to be processed in the same way by both speakers of English as a second language and native English speakers throughout life. In The Myth of the First Three Years, Bruer relates this consistency in how we acquire vocabulary throughout life to brain maturation: "how we process vocabulary does not change with brain maturation, as one would expect it would if it were a form of time-limited, experience-expectant learning. It seems instead that the neural circuitry we need to process semantic information and learn vocabulary comes on-line early in development and does not change as we mature."

Conclusion: "Younger = Better in the Long Run"
It may be that the image of a window slamming shut as an analogy for the effect of age on one's ability to acquire a foreign language should be replaced by Bruer's analogy of a reservoir that "gradually evaporates." This analogy suggests a progressive rather than abrupt decline in ability over time. Regarding critical periods in second-language acquisition, Bialystok and Hakuta suggest that the difference between child and adult learners is more quantitative (or a matter of degree) than qualitative: "Overall...the evidence of a critical period for acquiring a second language is, at best, confusing." Although the evidence, argue Bialystok and Hakuta, indicates that the learning process is the same for both adults and children, and that second-language learning is not necessarily subject to biological critical periods, they do state that "on average, there is a continuous decline in ability with age."

Older beginners often show an initial advantage over younger beginners in learning a new language; however, over time the younger beginners usually overtake the older beginners. There seems then to be, according to Bialystok and Hakuta, a "tortoise-and-the-hare effect"; or as Singleton has put it, "younger = better in the long run." For this reason, we should by no means discount the importance of learning a second language early. As Bruer states, "The brain and early childhood literature is correct to emphasize that second-language learning is increasingly important and that often American schools provide too little language instruction too late."

What should be questioned or re-evaluated are the underlying assumptions that side-step the issue of how best to teach foreign languages. The "age at which one first encounters a second language," explains Singleton, "is only one of the many determinants of the ultimate level of proficiency attained in that language." We must not neglect other considerations, including what neuroscience is now telling us about how second languages might best be taught and learned.

References
Bialystok, Ellen, and Hakuta, Kenji. In Other Words. BasicBooks, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994.

Bruer, John T. The Myth of the First Three Years. The Free Press, A Division of Simon and Schuster Inc., 1999.

Marshall, Brad. April 16, 2000. Is there a 'child advantage' in learning foreign languages? Education Week. Vol. 19, number 22, pages 39, 41.

Singleton, David, and Lengyel, Zsolt. The Age Factor in Second Language Acquisition. Multilingual Matters Ltd., 1995.

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Is There a Critical Period for Learning a Foreign Language? - Brain Connection

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The Myth of Missed Opportunities A popular misconception regarding second-language learning is that there is a window, or critical period, for learning a second language that shuts down around the onset of puberty. In his article, "Is There a 'Child... Continue Reading →

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Las diferencias en fonemas entre inglés y cantonés

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Las diferencias en fonemas entre inglés y cantonés

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Como hemos visto en nuestro estudio de fonemas en español, cada lengua tiene su propia número de fonemas. Ese fenómeno está especialmente obvio en el estudio de cantonés y inglés. Hay catorce fonemas que ocurre en inglés pero no existe en cantonés, y son: /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /r/, /w/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /ð/, and /θ/. Por eso, las personas aprendiendo inglés en esta situación tienen dificultades con la pronunciación de palabras como “she”, “that”, and “ring”.

Es importante para recordar cómo la primer lengua afecta la segunda por qué, cómo una maestra de inglés, una conocimiento de cómo formar las sonidos y por qué son tan difíciles puede ayudar mis estudiantes. También tiene una conexión a las diferencias entre inglés y español porque hablábamos sobre las dos tipos de ‘r’s y las diferentes vocales.

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Part1. Consonants 1. Consonant sounds
According to Table 1, phonemes in English that are not found in Cantonese include the following 14 consonants: /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /r/, /w/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /ð/, and /θ/, but as /b/, /d/, /g/, /s/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/and /w/ have similar counterparts in Cantonese, they do not cause too much trouble for Cantonese speakers.
Table 2 English consonants that do not exist in Cantonese
The following seven English consonants which DO NOT exist in Cantonese and DO NOT have similar counterparts in Cantonese, therefore, present some problems for Cantonese ESL learners.

The English /tʃ/ & /dʒ/ are similar to the Cantonese sounds [ts] & [dz]. The English /tʃ/ & /dʒ/ are palato-alveolar, the former is voiceless and the latter is voiced. But the Cantonese [ts] & [dz] are alveolar (i.e. the place of articulation is more fronted), and both are voiceless. Cantonese ESL learners tend to replace /tʃ/ & /dʒ/ by [ts] & [dz] respectively, for example:

/ŋ/ exists in both English and Cantonese. In Cantonese the sound can occur at both the initial or final position of a word, but in English the sound can only occur at the final position of a syllable.

/ŋ/ at the final position e.g. 行 [haŋ]

/n/ also exists in both English and Cantonese. However, many Cantonese speakers tend to replace /n/ with /l/ e.g. there is often an unclear distinction between:

This unclear distinction between /n/ & /l/ can also be found when Cantonese ESL learners speak English, for example: I'm sorry, I don't low (I don't 撈??) // vs ow / /

In English, the consonants /b; d; g/ are voiced. These sounds also exist in Cantonese but they are not voiced. In English, the main distinctions between /p/ & /b/ are voicing and aspiration, but in Cantonese, [p] & [b] mainly differ in aspiration, both sounds are voiceless. This difference leads to a tendency in many Cantonese ESL learners to have weak voicing for voiced English consonants, for example:

There are 6 final consonants in Cantonese -給 [p]; 別 [t]; 陸 [k]; 心 [m]; 陳 [n]; 張 [ŋ]

It is important to note that in Cantonese, final plosives [p]; [t]; [d] are NOT RELEASED. For example, to say the word給 [kap], the lips are closed at the end, ready to produce the final plosive [p], but the lips are not opened again and there is no release of air, as in the case of English plosives. Similarly, to say the words別 [bit] and 陸 [luk], there is no release of air when [t] and [k] are produced.

Many Cantonese ESL learners tend to carry this habit to their pronunciation of English words, and the final consonants are often deleted. However, this loss of final consonants in English can cause misunderstandings. For example, the following words will have the same sounds if the final consonants are deleted.

Another common problem is just the opposite - instead of dropping the final consonants, some speakers may over-emphasise the final consonant, resulting in addition of unnecessary sounds ( epenthesis), for example:

However, in Cantonese there are no consonant clusters. Some people may take the initial sounds of 國; 果 [gw] and 葵; 誇 [kw] as initial consonant clusters. But most people will regard them as consonant digraphs rather than consonant clusters.
Part 2. Vowels and Diphthongs
Because of this lack of consonant clusters in Cantonese, many Cantonese ESL learners find pronunciation of English consonant clusters to be a great challenge. They tend to simplify the consonant clusters by dropping a consonant sound in the cluster, for example:

Since there are no distinctive length contrasts in Cantonese words, e.g. 別 [bit]; 活 [wut]; 落 [lk], many Cantonese learners fail to distinguish between the following long and short vowel pairs in English:

There are also some cases of confusion of when the vowel digraph "oo" is /ʊ/, and when it is /u:/, e.g. good /gʊd/ vs food /fu:d/, foot /fʊt/ vs boot /bu:t/.

Many Cantonese learners find it difficult to distinguish between /æ/ and /e/. Many tend to substitute /e/ for /æ/, e.g.

Some Cantonese learners may confuse /ɜː/ with /ɔː/. The following are two authentic examples that had caused misunderstanding:

Probably due to the influence of the Chinese words耳/醫 [ji], many Cantonese learners tend to insert /j/ before words that start with the vowels /ɪ/ and /i:/, e.g.

Cantonese learners tend to replace the diphthong /ɔɪ/ with a similar shorter vowel /ɔɪ/, e.g.

Cantonese learners often have problems with the diphthong /eI/, especially when it is followed by a nasal /m/, /n/ or a lateral /l/, e.g.

English diphthongs /aʊ/, /aʊ/, /aʊ/ exist in Cantonese but tend to be pronounced with quicker and smaller lip and jaw movements. Influenced by their L1 (first language), many Cantonese learners tend to have problems with the following words:

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Comparison of English and Cantonese (Segmentals)

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Part1. Consonants 1. Consonant sounds According to Table 1, phonemes in English that are not found in Cantonese include the following 14 consonants: /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /r/, /w/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /ð/, and /θ/, but as /b/, /d/, /g/, /s/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/and /w/ have similar counterparts in Cantonese, they do not cause too much trouble for Cantonese speakers.

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Hablamos mucho sobre las dificultades de inglés, pero hay muchas partes del español que no son fáciles de adquirir. Primera sería las fonemas, y el video habla de la “r”. Es un sonido que toma mucha práctica, y si no sabes cómo y cuándo usarlo es muy obvio que no hablas español como una lengua nativa. También, cuándo vemos la resilabificación de frases y la velocidad de la lengua podemos ver la cosas pequeños e importantes. Cómo dice la video, toma mucho tiempo y paciencia para la lengua, pero el estudio del lenguaje en la lingüística ayuda mucho.

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POR QUÉ EL ESPAÑOL ES DIFICIL PARA LOS GRINGOS

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Un alófono qué no no he pasado mucho tiempo pensando sería la ‘t’, que tiene cuatro variaciones en inglés, y uno es un oclusión glotal como en “kitten”. Es muy interesante aprender la ciencia más profundo sobre una lengua por qué cambia cómo pienso en mi uso diario del lenguaje. Hablábamos mucho sobre las variaciones de las nasales y laterales y me hace pensar en cuántos tenemos en inglés qué no realizo.

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When /t/ sounds like /d/ or a glottal stop /ʔ/ - Pronuncian: American English Pronunciation

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The /t/ has 4 different pronunciations: 1) a regular /t/ (take), 2) /t̬/ (like a 'd,' as in water), 3) glottal stop /ʔ/ (kitten) 4) become silent (winter).

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Cuándo aprendemos una lengua necesitamos memorizar las varias partes qué son arbitrarias. Eso incluye morfemas. Formamos listas mentales qué componen todo de nuestro conocimiento qué aprendemos por tiempo. El Wug Test enfoque en cómo usamos nuestros listas mentales con palabras qué nunca hemos oído, en ese caso “wug”. Niños entienden qué para formar el plural del nuevo sustantivo “wug” solo necesitan agregar “s” al fin. Esa prueba nos muestra la importancia de las listas mentales y cómo funcionan con la formación de nuevas palabras.

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What do we have to memorize for our language? How can we know if kids learn the same things as adults? In this week's episode, we talk about the wug test: why it's important, how it works, and what it shows us. This is Topic #21! This week's tag language: Sesotho!

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Español es una lengua muy de acuerdo con género, y recientemente ha sido un problema. Hay mucha gente qué no conforman a un sexo y qué no quieren un género en sus palabras. Por eso han formados palabras cómo “latinx” para no tener un género. Estos palabras no han sido muy popular con la gente prescriptivistas por qué están cambiando una lengua historial.

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The word "Latinx" (pronounced "La-teen-ex") has been used more and more lately. And, yet, while many people are using the term and identifying as Latinx, there are still others who may look at the word with skepticism and confusion.

In recent months, HuffPost Latino Voices has incorporated usage of Latinx into some of our articles to reflect this change, to which some readers have responded by saying:

"You misspelled 'Latino.'"

"I keep seeing Latinx... what does it mean?"

No, it's not a typo. Yes, Latinx is, in fact, a word ― one many people identify with for various reasons. And if you've been online in the last couple of years, you've likely noticed the word popping up in your social media news feeds and in various articles in lieu of such identifiers as Latino, Latina or Latin@. There's a reason for that ― allow us to explain.

Latinx is the gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. Used by scholars, and an increasing number of journalists , Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public. I t's part of a "Latin American descendants . In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Latinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid. linguistic revolution " that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of

"In Spanish, the masculinized version of words is considered gender neutral. But that obviously doesn't work for some of us because I don't think it's appropriate to assign masculinity as gender neutral when it isn't," explains queer, non-binary femme writer Jack Qu'emi Gutiérrezin an interview with PRI. "The 'x,' in a lot of ways, is a way of rejecting the gendering of words to begin with, especially since Spanish is such a gendered language."

Latinx is also, as pointed out by writer Gabe Gonzalez, a way to reclaim identity , a form of rebellion against "the language and legacy of European traditions that were imposed on the Americas."

Here's why people are using the term "Latinx:"

Languages change in order to accommodate the times in which it's used, and in a year where discussions about trans and non-binary identity are at the forefront, it makes sense for "Latino" to evolve.

Though it is understood that many people may not identify as Latinx for various reasons, we feel it is important that we respect others who do and who want to be referred to as such. For what it's worth, using Latinx in general is a way to be more inclusive of identities that go beyond the every day gender and racial norms that are rapidly shifting and being redefined in today's culture. It's not a perfect term, but for many people out there, it's the beginning of a linguistic revolution. "[Latinx] is just one word," explains Gutiérrez. "We adapt to survive in this kind of environment, you know, we also adapt our language. It's vital to just expressing who we are and being able to explain to others in our own community, 'Hey, we're here. This is how you can be respectful of us. Acknowledge us.'"

Where did the term originate?

Latinx first began to emerge within queer communities on the internet in 2004, and saw a rise in popularity in late 2014, according to Complex. By 2015, Google searches for the term began to increase (see the graph below) and Latinx became a widely-used identifier both on social media platforms like Tumblr and in scholarly work. Many scholars and activists praise the term's ability to better include many groups of people while challenging cultural and norms.

Why not everyone is on board

Despite the growing popularity of the term, Latinx has been faced with criticism. Many opponents of the term have suggested that using an un-gendered noun like Latinx is disrespectful to the Spanish language and some have even called the term " a blatant form of linguistic imperialism." However, in defense of the term, Brooklyn College professors María R. Scharrón-del Río and Alan A. Aja argue that the Spanish language itself is a form of linguistic imperialism for Latin Americans.

"Are we not aware that upon the arrival of the conquistadores and subsequent acts of genocide, a few thousand indigenous languages existed in the Americas, and a few resilient hundred continue to be spoken today?" they explain in a piece on LatinoRebels.com. "Not to mention the attempted erasure of African languages via the violence of slavery and colonialism."

They go on to point out that many of the indigenous languages throughout Latin America and the world range from genderless to multi-gendered.

However, writer "They're blanket terms that were invented to group us all under one common colonized identity," she writes in Monse Arce argues that Latinx is just as problematic as Latino and Latina. Affinity Magazine.

Then, there are individuals who say they have chosen not to adopt the term because "Latinx doesn't roll off the tongue when you're speaking Spanish."

As Complex points out, "'Latinx' is not the perfect identifying term, so it shouldn't be treated as the answer in the ongoing quest to develop a cohesive postcolonial identity." But its usage has been gaining traction, and people are taking notice.

It's with this in mind that Latino Voices is incorporating the term Latinx into our coverage. We believe every individual's identity is complicated and nuanced ― and deserves to be acknowledged and respected.

Does the term Latinx resonate with you? Let us know, why or why not in the comment section below.
Want to learn more? Below are links to several people breaking down their own Latinx identity:

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The word "Latinx" (pronounced "La-teen-ex") has been used more and more lately. And, yet, while many people are using the term and identifying as Latinx, there are still others who may look at the word with skepticism and confusion.

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Idiomas siempre están formando y cambiando, especialmente el inglés. Recientemente hemos tomado una morfema sufijo y hecho en una palabra propia. El morfema “ish”. Normalmente refiere a un estado de ser “casi”, pero ahora usamos sin otro raiz. Ahora “ish” puede ser su propia raíz, y creo qué ese está importante porque enfoque en cómo lenguas crecen con tiempo.

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The canonical use of - ish is as a suffix meaning "approximately," as in bluish, tallish, sixish, or even hungry-ish. This is the definition-the only definition-that you'll find in Merriam-Webster, which notes that - ish derives from the Old English -, of Germanic origin, which in turn is related to similar such suffixes in Dutch (- isch) and Greek (- iskos).

For centuries now, -ish has been rather promiscuous in English, attaching to a wide variety of words and even phrases. Take the following architectural observation, cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, from an 1894 article in The Daily News, a now-defunct London newspaper (of which Charles Dickens was briefly the editor!):

Some huge pile of building, generally much more Queen Anne-ish than the houses of Queen Anne's own time.

As a word by itself-which is to say, not as a suffix- ish means more or less the same thing: kind of, thereabouts, in a way. And imagining how it broke free to become syntactically stand-alone isn't hard. The word "hungry-ish," say-as in, I guess I could eat. I'm hungry-ish. -often comes out more like "hungry [brief pause] ish." From there it's a short leap to:

Are you hungry?
Yeah, ish.

But while it's quite common for new words to be formed by adding prefixes or suffixes (editorialize from editor, anti-nuclear from nuclear), or even by re-casting a portion of a word that hadn't before been thought of as an affix (snowmageddon based on armageddon, chocoholic based on alcoholic), it's exceedingly uncommon to form a new word by keeping the suffix and discarding the rest. But that's exactly what ish did, a process that Mr. Verb, a blogger who writes about language and linguistics, calls degrammaticalization.

In fact, ish is atypical even among its uncommon cohorts, such as ism and ology, which both refer to a general class to which the more specific exemplars belong. In other words, nationalism and communism are kinds of isms. Zoology and biology are kinds of ologies. But are hungry-ish and tired-ish kinds of ishes? Not exactly.

Instead, as described by the linguist Stefanie Kuzmack, ish refers back to a particular idea, often in the form of an adjective, that was previously mentioned. You could repeat the idea, but you don't have to:

Would you say that movie had a happy ending? Yeah, ish. [happy-ish]
Is everyone excited? I am-ish. [excited-ish]
Will the weather be nice tomorrow? I think so, ish. [nice-ish]

And ish doesn't even need to be near the word that it refers to. For example, in the following sentence ish modifies "hobbies," not "skating":

My hobbies include painting, photography, documentary film, and skating(ish). [meaning skating is hobby-ish]

This freestanding ish feels relatively new, but is it really new, or only new-ish?

The earliest citation in the OED is from a 1986 review of So Long on Lonely Street, by the American playwright Sandra Deer, which John Peter-then chief drama critic of The Sunday Times in England-called, "... one of those neatly crafted middle-brow plays which, because they have a pleasantly happy ending (well, ish), might make people think that they've been handed a soft option. Not at all."

In the 1990s, ish makes an appearance in several novels by English and Irish-born writers, including Cycle of Violence by Colin Bateman, who employs ish as a single-word answer to a question in a bit of dialogue:

'Davie Morrow. Trust Davie Morrow.'
'You know him?'
'Ish. He's a regular across the road. Thick as shite, like, but as liable to give you a hidin' as look at you.'

There aren't any examples on this side of the pond until 2002, when the New York Times quoted Jeremy Langmead-a Brit!-who had just been named editor of the "obsessively stylish London-based magazine Wallpaper":

And so it is fair to ask: Does he have a Wallpaper apartment?

Mr. Langmead, speaking by telephone from London, hesitated. 'Ish,' he said, employing the international shorthand for slight hedge. His East London home, then, is obsessive-ish.

Note that the Times seemed to believe back then that the word required an explanation, probably because it did. In fact, it was shortly after, in 2003, that ish began to really take off. That's the year it pops up for the first time on Urban Dictionary.

But ish isn't universally acknowledged yet. Merriam-Webster, Random House, and whatever dictionary Google is drawing on contain only the suffix version, and my spellcheck is still underlining it in red. Of course, even when a word is a decade or two old, it can be slow to take root in the reference books, some of which are notoriously reluctant to add what sounds like slang. But there's no doubt that what may have originated as a Britishism is now firmly fixed in American English too. To not include it in our dictionaries is to pretend that it's not a word. Which means that, with respect to ish at least, we're so early '80s. Ish.

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The canonical use of - ish is as a suffix meaning "approximately," as in bluish, tallish, sixish, or even hungry-ish. This is the definition-the only definition-that you'll find in Merriam-Webster, which notes that - ish derives from the Old English -, of Germanic origin, which in turn is related to similar such suffixes in Dutch (- isch) and Greek (- iskos).

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Hace muchos años un lingüístico pensaba de creer una lengua qué puede unir el mundo. Está lengua se llama Esperanto. Creado para ser una segunda lengua para ayudar la gente de diferente culturas y vidas comunicar. Esperanto es muy diferente de las otras porque es mucho más flexible con su sintaxis. Digo eso porque no hay muchas reglas sobre el orden de palabras, así qué cada oración puede reflejar su primer lengua. Me gusta la idea de una lengua inventada para la gente, y creo qué sería mucho más fácil de entender y aprender.

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1. There is no indefinite ARTICLE [English a, an]; there is only a definite article la, alike for all genders, cases and numbers [English the].
Author's note: The use of the article is as in other languages. People for whom use of the article offers difficulties [ e.g. speakers of Russian, Chinese, etc.]may at first elect not to use it at all.

EXAMPLElibro = book, a bookla libro = the book

      The main difference between the use of the definite article in
      Esperanto and in English is that in Esperanto the article, with
      a singular noun, may be used to indicate an entire class.

EXAMPLEla leono estas danĝera besto = lions are dangerous animals
4. The basic NUMERALS (not declined) are: unu, du, tri, kvar, kvin, ses, sep, ok, naŭ, dek, cent, mil [English one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hundred, thousand]. Tens and hundreds are formed by simple juxtaposition of the numerals. To show ordinal numbers we add the adjective ending; for multiples, the suffix-obl; for fractions [actually, reciprocals],-on; for collectives,-op; for divisionals, the word [particle] po. Noun and adverb numerals can also be used.

EXAMPLESMil naŭcent naŭdek kvin = 1995.La kvina trono = The fifth throne.Duobla eraro = A double error.Tri kvaronoj = Three quarters.Duopo = A pair.Mi donis al ili po tri pomojn = I gave them three apples each.

      The particlepo causes many problems for beginning speakers of Esperanto, particularly those whose native language is English. First, there is a tendency to put it in the wrong place:EXAMPLE*Mi rapidis cent kilometrojn po horo =I was speeding along at a hundred kilometers an hour. is wrong.po means at the rate of and, like the '@' sign in English, should be placed as follows:EXAMPLEMi rapidis po cent kilometrojn en horo = I was speeding along at a hundred kilometers an hour. Second, since the objects of prepositions generally don't take the-n ending in Esperanto, there's a tendency to assume that in a sentence like the example above the-n on the object shouldn't be there:EXAMPLE*Mi donis al ili po tri pomoj =I gave them three apples each. Remember thatpo always takes as its object a numeral; any associated noun takes whatever it would have if thepo weren't there at all.
5. Personal PRONOUNS: mi, vi, li, ŝi, ĝi (for an object or animal), si, ni, vi, ili, oni [English I, you, he, she, it, oneself, we, you, they, they-one-people]; the possessive pronouns are formed by addition of the adjective ending. Declension is as for nouns.

EXAMPLESMi amas vin = I love you.Mia hundo amas vian katon = My dog loves your cat.Mi razas min kaj vi razas vin = I shave myself and you shave yourself.Sed la hispana barbisto razas sin = But the Spanish barber shaves himself.Oni diras, ke li amas ŝin = It is said (people say) that he loves her.

      Zamenhof also proposed a second-person-singular pronounci [Englishthou]. It is occasionally used in poetry for effect, and in the wordcidiri -- to speak to someone in an intimate fashion. Some Esperanto speakers feel the need for a non-gender-specific singular pronoun to refer in the third person to human beings. Zamenhof recommended that the wordĝi simply be used for this. A few Esperanto speakers, however, primarily native speakers of English, feel uncomfortable with this usage and have come up with a new pronounri ("he/she"). It is rarely used and you are not likely to encounter it.liŝi, ŝili and ŝli have also been used experimentally in this way. You won't encounter them, either. Some other Esperanto speakers would prefer to have a specifically female third-person plural pronoun. The wordiŝi has been used for this. Again, you very likely will never encounter it.
6. The VERB does not change for person or number. Forms of the verb: present time takes the ending -as; past time, -is; future time, -os; conditional mood, -us; command mood, -u; infinitive mood, -i. Participles (with adjectival or adverbial meaning): present active, -ant; past active, -int; future active, -ont; present passive, -at; past passive, -it; future passive, -ot. All forms of the passive are formed with the aid of the corresponding form of the verb esti [English to be] and the passive participle of the required verb; the preposition with the passive is de [English by].

EXAMPLESMi amas vin = I love you.Mi amis vin = I loved you (but don't any longer, or it's irrelevant to what's happening now).Mi amos vin = I shall love you (but haven't started yet, or it's irrelevant to what's happening now).Se vi gajnus la loterion, mi amus vin = If you were to win the lottery, I would love you (but that's not likely).Mi deziras, ke vi amu min; do amu min! = I want you to love me; so love me!Koni lin estas ami lin = To know him is to love him.

      It's probably worth noting that the Esperanto time-sense is
      slightly different from that of English. If something as shown
      in the present tense (-as), it is assumed to be happening, and of interest, at the moment the sentence is expressed; if it is shown in the past tense (-is), it is assumed to be either completed or no longer of interest. If it is shown in the future (-os), it is assumed to be either not yet begun or not yet of interest. (This view of time and completion carries over into the participles as well.) So in a few cases when in English something might be expressed as having happened in the past, in Esperanto it would be shown in the present, assuming that it is still going on and still of interest.EXAMPLEMi loĝas ĉi-tie jam kvin jarojn = I have been living here for five years already.

      For examples of how participles are formed, see theaffixes page. Participles are more accurately adjectives formed from action roots than parts of the verb -- a situation somewwhat different from that in English.

      I use the term "command mood" instead of the more common
      "imperative mood" to translate Zamenhof'smodo ordona, since -u covers a much wider range of uses than the traditional Western imperative; in fact, it takes on many of the jobs ordinarily done by the subjunctive (which does not exist as a separate entity in Esperanto -- for which generations of Latin students may give thanks!). Kalocsay and Waringhien refer to this form, in thePlena Analiza Gramatiko, as the "volitive mood."

      The Bulgarian Esperantologist Atanas Atanasov denies the existence
      of passive verb forms in Esperanto -- and I find myself agreeing
      with him. Use of the participial suffixes may be better understood
      if you consider them as means of transforming verbs into
      adjectives, not as parts of speech in themselves. The Western
      passive voice is shown, as Zamenhof says, by coupling the verb
esti = "to be" with the "passive participles"; but these are not really compound verb forms, merely the copula linked with an adjective.EXAMPLESLa sandviĉo estis manĝata = The sandwich was (in a state of being) eaten.La sandviĉo estas manĝita = The sandwich is (in a state of having been) eaten.La sandviĉo estis manĝita = The sandwich was (in a state of having been) eaten.La sandviĉo estos manĝota = The sandwich will be (in a state of) going to be eaten. Use of such forms is rare in Esperanto -- even rarer than it is in English, where Strunk & White advise against them. Ordinary passives can easily be converted into ordinary active sentences in Esperanto, sometimes with the inversion that the-n ending permits, and the pronounoni makes translation of even agentless passives as active very easy. William Auld, in his 100-page epic poemLa Infana Raso, doesn't use the passive once. Bureaucratese is rare in Esperanto.EXAMPLESLa katon persekutis la hundo = The cat was chased by the dog.Oni pafis la hundon = The dog was shot.
8. All PREPOSITIONS take the nominative.

EXAMPLESLa libroj de la knabo = The boy's books (the books of the boy).Mi faris tion por vi = I did that for you.Floroj kreskas ĉirkaŭ mia domo = Flowers grow around my house.

      Prepositions of location may also take objects with the-n ending to show motion to that location; this follows fromrule 13.EXAMPLESLa muso kuris sub la tablo = The mouse ran (around) under the table.La muso kuris sub la tablon = The mouse ran (to) under the table.

      While the particlesanstataŭ (instead of) and krom (besides, in addition to) are generally classified (by analogy with their equivalents in Western languages) as prepositions, their behavior is more like that ofcoördinating conjunctions such as kiel. So many Esperanto speakers will add the-n ending to the objects of these "prepositions" when they coordinate with another word that has an-n ending.EXAMPLESMi amis ŝin anstataŭ li = It was I, not he, who loved her.Mi amis ŝin anstataŭ lin = I loved her, not him.

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1. There is no indefinite ARTICLE [English a, an]; there is only a definite article la, alike for all genders, cases and numbers [English the].Author's note: The use of the article is as in other languages. People for whom use of the article offers difficulties [ e.g.

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Como muchos otros lenguas, inglés tiene la habilidad de tener muchos sentidos para la misma palabra, eso es muy interesante porque crea la oportunidad de tener frases qué no hace sentido o que pueden tener muchos diferentes significados. Se llaman el “garden path” porque puede dirigirse un la dirección incorrecta. Estos frases ambiguos pueden tomar lugar en español también, y por eso necesitamos tener cuidado con nuestros frases.

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Try reading the following sentences. They are called garden path sentences because they are easily misunderstood (they lead you down the garden path) even though they are all grammatical! Don't worry if some of these sentences seem like nonsense at first (you have been garden pathed); they will be explained below.

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ASL es muy diferente de la mayoría de lenguas de la boca. Eso es porque es flexible en algunas maneras en qué lenguas orales no pueden ser. En general, ASL es un poco menos específico por qué no creo qué conjugan sus verbos. No solo no conjugan, pero algunas no tienen signos cómo “ser” palabras. En vez de tener un signo, usa una moción de la cabeza para asentir o negar la frase. También, tiene mucho más posibilidades de crear sus frases porque el orden de palabras es mucho más libre para interpretación y estilo. Usan SVO, OVS, y SOV.

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A discussion regarding American Sign Language (ASL) syntax. Information and resources.

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Sabemos que la mayoría de las palabras en español viene de latín, y podemos ver casi cada palabra y como viene de latín. Pero, hay unas palabras que representa algo que viene de muy lejos, como el té. Viene de un región en el este, y por eso, también viene la palabra. Es una mezcla de palabras en mandarín. “Cha” que significa césped, y “tu” que significa árbol. Ese situación es muy interesante para la clase porque representa como la lengua cambia sobre tiempo.

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El nombre del té - ¿cuál es el origen de la palabra té?

Nos pregunta Cristina, en uno de sus muchos mails, ¿Cuál es el origen de la palabra té? ¿Porqué le llamamos así a esta bebida milenaria? En Teterum queremos que todos los amantes del té vayan aprendiendo poco a poco las maravillas de esta bebida milenaria - esta bebida con alma con el propósito de encontrar sus favoritos entre las miles de sabores que el té nos ofrece. Por eso, os pasamos un trozo de historia para que Cristina, y otros amantes del té, construyan su propio mundo "teterumiano".

El origen de la palabra té

El té "ha ido pasando" por varias partes del mundo, dependiendo de país, cultura y aplicación, la palabra ha ido evolucionando. Igualmente, siempre encontraremos sus orígenes en la China. Lu Yu (733-804) escribió un libro sobre el té el Libro sagrado del té (Cha Ching), en el que nos explica que el símbolo de la palabra té viene de la palabra hierba ( chá) o de árbol ( tú) y la combinación de los dos. La palabra té se asocia con la provincia Fujian (China) donde se pronuncia "tay" y es allí donde los holandeses, importadores de té en Europa, aprendieron a pronunciarla. A la misma vez, los portugueses compraban té en Macao, donde se hablaba mandarina y cantonesa. Allí la palabra se pronunciaba cha. Pero las palabras evolucionan, y con los años, el " tay" se convirtió en:

Té en España

Tee para los alemanes

Thé para los franceses

Tay para los ingleses e irlandeses que con los años acaba en Tea

Esta tarde, te invitamos a beber un té de sus orígenes. Elige tu favorito, disfruta del momento y deja que tu té con alma te llene de bienestar.

¿Quieres saber más sobre el mundo del té? Aquí estamos para atender todas tus dudas.

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El origen de la palabra té ¿De dónde viene la palabra té?

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Nos pregunta Cristina , en uno de sus muchos mails, ¿Cuál es el origen de la palabra té? ¿Porqué le llamamos así a esta bebida milenaria? En Teterum queremos que todos los amantes del té vayan aprendiendo poco a poco las maravillas de esta bebida milenaria - esta bebida con alma con el propósito de encontrar sus favoritos entre las miles de sabores que el té nos ofrece.

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Hace mucho tiempo cuando todos los libros y documentos estaban escritos en papel. Pero era mucho de escribir, y sobre tiempo empezaron a quitar unas letras para salvar espacio, y ponen el acento del ñ para mostrar que la palabra es más corto. Este situación es muy muy interesante para mi porque muestra como la lengua ha cambiado solamente porque hay unas cosas tan simples.

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How Spanish got its ñ - the story behind that "n with a tilde"

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Cuando culturas y personas pasan tiempo juntos, la culturas y todo empieza a mezclar. Eso pasó con la cultura de los judíos y los españoles, y por eso la español y hebreo se mezclaron. Es un tema muy interesante por que no hay mucho información sobre el número de hablantes o exactamente es formado.

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Like Yiddish, Ladino is viewed as a personal language of the Jewish people. It's sometimes called " el espanol muestro "-"our Spanish"-and everything about it is tied to the ideas of home and identity. When Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, they carried "their" Spanish with them, and so the Judeo-Spanish language moved throughout the Ottoman Empire, binding Sephardic Jews to their heritage and their original home in Spain.

In time, Judeo-Spanish sponged up some of the vocabulary of the new home countries of Spanish Jews, with Turkish, Greek, and Hebrew making their way into the language. That's why today, there are many different dialects within Ladino, with each area of the world putting its own stamp on the language.

As the language changed addresses, what it was called changed, too. In Turkey and the Balkans, Judeo-Spanish was called "Ladino," derived from the word Latin, so no one would confuse it with Turkish. In Morocco it was called " Haquitiya," and sometimes spoken Ladino is called " Djudesmo."

Ladino's History

Ladino has always been the language of the multilingual. "Ladino," or latinus in Latin, refers to a person who could speak a few languages in addition to his mother tongue, which was the case for most Ladino speakers. Ladino has its roots in the Latin spoken by the Romans who occupied the Iberian Peninsula from 200 B.C.E. to 425 B.C.E., but today's Ladino is closer to modern Spanish plus a mix of whatever other languages Ladino speakers knew.

Just as Yiddish became the cultural underpinning of the entire European-Jewish, or Ashkenazi world, with its own folklore, music, and literature, so Ladino has a rich tradition of literature, theater, folk tales and music. Ladino stories even have their own recurring character, Jocha, or Ejoha, who is alternately a fool, a wise fool, and a wily trickster, just as the Yiddish stories have the recurring foolish men of Chelm and the hapless Herschel.

The Ladino World

How many people speak Ladino? That's a controversial issue, because the definition of "Ladino speaker" varies depending on whom you ask. Most estimates say that between 160,000 and 300,000 Sephardim (Jews of Middle Eastern or Spanish origin) worldwide have some knowledge of Ladino. In Israel, many estimate that 50,000 to 80,000 people are somewhat familiar with Ladino. A few scholars are working on surveys of Ladino speakers and other efforts to get a solid number. If a recent flurry of conferences, study centers, book-collection efforts and teacher-training programs are any indication, Ladino may be in for a revival.

"I definitely think interest in Ladino is growing," says Trudy Balch, a translator of Ladino, who has worked on many Ladino folk tales. For the past seven years, Balch has been part of a theater group in New York called "The Ladino Players," which puts on plays in Ladino. "One year we did three one-acts, one a translation of a one-act play by Sholom Aleichem," she says. She's seen both Sephardic Jews and non-Jews attend performances, and she's observed some interest in Ladino from non-Jewish Latinos who happen to live in New York.

Where to Learn Ladino

For those who are intrigued by Ladino, classes are available at a few universities, and some Sephardi synagogues offer adult-education Ladino. The Spanish-Portuguese synagogue in New York has been offering Ladino classes for years, and The Center for Jewish History in New York offers Ladino as well.

Many local Sephardic federations offer courses in Ladino. In Israel, Spain, and Paris, Ladino programs are readily available. The online discussion group Ladinokomunita has correspondents from all over the world, and is a great resource for more Ladino information; the catch is that you must write in Ladino.

Ladino Treasures

The rewards for the student of Ladino include the ability to read the classic Me'am Loez in the original. Me'am Loez, the 18th- and 19th-century commentary on the Bible, is the major work of Ladino writing. The Ladino reader can also enjoy the many collections of proverbs and folk tales that are wise, funny, and very Jewish. Efforts to collect these treasures are making them more widely available than ever, and English translations are also being prepared.

Apart from Me'am Loez, there was a flowering of newspaper writing, translation, and pamphlets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There were several Ladino newspapers in Istanbul, Turkey, and Salonika, Greece.

For centuries, Ladino was written in Hebrew characters, using either the special alphabet employed by the medieval commentator Rashi or a cursive script called solitreo. Most Ladino literature is written in the Rashi alphabet. Today, Ladino is written in Latin alphabet, but in phonetic transcription instead of the spelling system of today's Spanish. Ladino speakers emphasize that they are not writing incorrect Spanish, but rather phonetic Ladino.

Today, a few dozen American, Israeli, and European universities offer courses in Ladino. In Istanbul, a Ladino newspaper is published, but it's the only Ladino newspaper in the world. There is an all-Ladino journal called Aki Yerushalayim, published in Jerusalem, and a Ladino-French journal called La Lettre Sepharade is published in France. Israel Radio still broadcasts in Ladino, and Radio Exterior de Espana in Spain also has a Ladino broadcast.

Ladino's Revival

The Israeli government and private foundations are making efforts to rescue and promote Ladino. Israel has declared both Yiddish and Ladino to be endangered languages, and it has established the National Authority for Ladino and its culture. Israeli government programs include training for dozens of high-school teachers in Ladino.

Private groups have begun to move, too. The Ma'ale Adumim Institute for Ladino, located a short drive from Jerusalem, is trying to collect and catalog all Ladino books in order to preserve Judeo-Spanish heritage. It has added 300 volumes over the past three years, and its director is actively trying to locate more Ladino books. In 2002, the United Nations got involved. UNESCO, or the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization sponsored an international conference on Judeo-Spanish language and culture, held in Paris in June 2002.

Although Yiddish suffered greatly in the Holocaust, the blow to Ladino was even stronger, says Balch, the Ladino translator. The communities of Salonika and other centers of Ladino were completely destroyed, and since there have always been fewer Ladino speakers than Yiddish speakers, the surviving Ladino-speaker pool was much smaller.

Ladino scholars and activists are passionate about preserving the music and humor of Ladino language and literature, and as the Israeli government puts its muscle into language preservation, there is renewed hope that "our Spanish" will indeed remain ours.

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Like Yiddish, Ladino is viewed as a personal language of the Jewish people. It's sometimes called " el espanol muestro "-"our Spanish"-and everything about it is tied to the ideas of home and identity.

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Durante esta sección hablábamos sobre la variación en la lengua español, pero no sobre el español chileno. Siempre he oído que chileno es lo más difícil variación de español de entender. Eso es porque hay aspiración en la /s/ especialmente en el fin de palabras. También, hay una elisión en la /d/  intervocálica. Estos dos partes de la español chileno son común en muchos dialectos, pero hay una conjugación que es muy único. En el forma “tu” en vez del normal terminado “-as”, terminan en “-ai” o “-i”.  En conclusión, el español chileno es difícil aprender por los tantos diferencias en su lenguaje.

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1. Chilean Spanish is different from the Spanish you learn in class.

2. Even native Spanish speakers have trouble understanding Chileans.

3. Chilean Spanish is the hardest Spanish to learn.

4. If you can understand Chilean Spanish, you can understand anything in the language.

Today, I'm here to dig deeper into #3, from a linguist's point of view. We've all heard that Chilean Spanish is challenging. Most likely, you've even experienced the struggle of learning the Chilean dialect first-hand. So, what makes Chilean Spanish so difficult to learn?

You've probably heard people say "Chileans don't pronounce the 's' ". While this may seem to be what they're doing, in linguistics, Chileans actually aspirate the "s" at the end of a word when it follows a vowel. For example, let's take a phrase like:

Los chilenos son más conservadores.

In Spanish class, we were always taught to pronounce the "s". Contrary to what most people think, Chileans are not entirely leaving off the 's'; instead, it is aspirated to [h]. So, if the Chilean pronunciation of this previous phrase were to be written out (in layman's pronunciation, not in phonetic script), it would be something like:

Loh chilenoh son máh conservadoreh.

So, what's the difficulty?

The aspiration of the 's' often makes it hard for those learning Spanish to distinguish where one word ends and another begins. Language learners are caught listening for a sound that they were taught in a traditional Spanish classroom that is not actually "pronounced" in the Chilean dialect.

While "s" is the most common letter to trip up students of Chilean Spanish, "d" would most certainly be the second. It's not that Chileans never pronounce the "d". For example, you'll notice in words like difundir and dibujar that the "d" is pronounced like normal. However, we run into a bit of a challenge when a "d" is surrounded by vowels. In Spanish, this would be in reference to adjectives and participles ending in "ado" as well as some nouns. For example:

You'll notice that in the first example, we have a feminine adjective (thus the 'a' ending). In this case, the pronunciation would sound something like:

Instead of pronouncing the "d", the vowel "a" is accented (in pronunciation ONLY, the spelling in written form does not change and will never change).

In the second and third case, we see a similar occurrence. The pronunciation becomes:

So, when we have a masculine ending, we will see a pronunciation similar to the "ao" in the word "chao".

So, what's the difficulty?

Once again, language learners will be listening for a sound that they are not going to hear. Nonetheless, it's not that difficult once you know to look for it. In fact, I would argue that the "d" lenition is less difficult to catch than the "s" aspiration as it normally occurs in the middle of two vowels instead of at the very end of the word.

Something very random happens in Chile in the tú conjugation. The actual pronoun "tú" remains the same (except for the occasional vos); however, the conjugation changes. For example, in Standard Spanish, you would hear conjugation such as "hablas, comes, llamas, pides, etc.". Nonetheless, Chileans conjugate these differently.

You'll notice that in Spanish there are "-ar","-er", and "-ir" verbs. You can see above that "-ar" conjugates as an "ai" ending while "-er" and "-ir" verbs take an "i" ending.

So, what's the difficulty?

I don't fault our Spanish teachers for not teaching us the "ai" conjugation. I mean, if they were to take the time to teach us the different conjugations that each Spanish speaking country uses, it would just be superfluous. Due to the fact that Chile is a smaller nation (17.62 million people), this isn't something that we are likely to even realize until we visit Chile. So, my advice is to just pick it up as you go along. Start imitating the conjugations that you hear your Chilean friends use.

Like with any country, Chilean Spanish has its own phrases/sayings. Nonetheless, let me be completely forthcoming in saying that Chile is notorious for its chilenismos. In a way, I feel that as a U.S. Southerner, I can kind of relate. For example, I hear my grandparents say things all of the time that I know my friends from other regions of the U.S. would never understand. Still, Chile as a country, not just as a region, loves its slang. Here are some examples of sayings that, to the best of my knowledge, you'll only hear in Chile (I've highlighted the words that are "Chilean"):

...and that's just the beginning. There are loads of books and articles that cover the thousands of Spanish expressions that are native to Chile. One of my favorites? How to Survive in the Chilean Jungle .

So, what's the difficulty?

Well, unless you had a Chilean Spanish teacher, your professor most likely didn't even know these chilenismos to begin with. When arriving to Chile, do your best to familiarize yourself with these Chilean phrases. That way, even if you don't feel comfortable using these expressions, you will still be able to understand their meaning.

When I began to learn Spanish in school, I didn't know it at the time, but many of the words I was being taught were variants that just aren't used everywhere. In fact, I would venture to say that, having learned Spanish in the United States, I was most often taught the Central American version of certain words. Once you start traveling to different Spanish-speaking nations, you'll notice that many of the vocabulary words are different. This is just like if we were to compare American and British English. So, while words like carro and aguacate are acceptable in Mexico, the terms for these concepts in Chile are auto and palta. I've actually written an entire post about this concept, titled: Chilean Vocabulary You Didn't Learn in Class.

So, what's the difficulty?

Sometimes I think that when we're taught something in school, we just automatically accept that that's the way it is. So, it's hard for us to change some of the most simple Spanish vocabulary that we were taught in one of our first classes. However, after spending a longer period of time in Chile, I promise that this gets easier.

Leah is a translator and part-time traveler currently based in Santiago, Chile. She loves languages, nerdy history podcasts, and baby talking to every dog she meets.

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WHAT MAKES CHILEAN SPANISH SO DIFFICULT TO LEARN? - Gringa Journeys

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Chilean Spanish is different from the Spanish you learn in class. Even native Spanish speakers have trouble understanding Chileans. Chilean Spanish is the hardest Spanish to learn. If you can understand Chilean Spanish, you can understand anything in the language. Today, I'm here to dig deeper into #3, from a linguist's point of view.

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Portuñol es un dialecto que mezcla los idiomas de español y portugués que existe en la frontera entre Uruguay y Brasil.También conocido como la Frontera de la Paz porque viaje entre los dos países es libre. Es un dialecto muy interesante porque los sonidos en ambos español y portugués son casi iguales, y por eso portuñol es un variante simple. Originó en el norte de Uruguay cuándo no había claro a quién pertenecían los territorios. Me gusta este tópico mucho porque muestra las variaciones entre lenguas, que no estudiamos en clase.

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Portuñol riverense - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre

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El portuñol riverense, también conocido como fronterizo, fronteiriço (portugués) o misturado, es un dialecto del idioma portugués presente en la región fronteriza del norte del Uruguay y sur del Brasil. Se habla en ciudades como Artigas y Quaraí, Bella Unión - Barra do Quarai y más específicamente en la zona de las ciudades vecinas de Rivera (Uruguay) y Santana do Livramento (Brasil).

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En esta grabación de Laura, ella habla sobre las cosas lo más interesante de Madrid. Uno se puede ver que ella es del centro o norte de España porque hace unas pronunciaciones muy definitivos. Cuándo dice palabras como “Madrid” y “Prado” existe una elisión de /d/, es mucho menos fuerte. También hay yeísmo, que quiere decir que no hay una diferencia entre /ll/ y /y/. Las palabras “mayor” y “castilla” comparten el mismo sonido. Pero la diferencia lo más notable es la distinción entre la /s/ y /θ/ que se puede ver en palabras como “plaza” que usa la  /θ/ pero palabras como “enseñar” tiene la /s/. Me gustaba escuchar a esta grabación porque es más práctica con las variaciones.

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Laura : Por las calles de Madrid - Audio Lingua - mp3 en anglais, allemand, arabe, catalan, corse, espagnol, italien, russe, occitan, portugais, chinois et français

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Si la visitara en Madrid, Laura me llevaría a ...