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Good for stereotypes and identities.

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https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/polarising-scent-of-lynx-africa-debated-by-australians/news-story/fa49c0b2bfa95c79f40af71144eaae14

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Prime minister on the referendum vote. Positive face needs 

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Prime minister on the referendum vote. Positive face needs 

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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From a guy who got 50 study score in Lang and is now a tutor of over 150 students in Lang each week

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From a guy who got 50 study score in Lang and is now a tutor of over 150 students in Lang each week

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- SAQ Writing Guide: https://www.englangpro.com/resources/saq-writing-guide

- AC Writing Guide: https://www.englangpro.com/resources/ac-writing-guide

- Essay Writing Guide: https://www.englangpro.com/resources/essay-writing-guide

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Has anyone noticed this new usage of the -core suffix?

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This subreddit is currently **limited** in protest. See pinned post (first post when you sort by "hot") for details. This is a community for discussions related to topics and questions about linguistics, the scientific study of human language. For common questions, please refer to the FAQs below.

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Definition of the slang term -core with an example.

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-core suffix  - eg Barbiecore, cottagecore, starcore/spacecore

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-core suffix  - eg Barbiecore, cottagecore, starcore/spacecore

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Derived from ( " hardcore punk; a particularly fast and intense form of punk rock " ).

-core

Derived terms

"-core", in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995-present.

Eric Partridge (2005), "-core", in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 1 (A-I), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, , page 481.

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Derived from ( " hardcore punk; a particularly fast and intense form of punk rock " ). -core Derived terms "-core", in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995-present. Eric Partridge (2005), "-core", in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English , volume 1 (A-I), London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, , page 481.

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Situationship, Barbiecore and "spicy cough": these are among the 3,000 new entries in the latest update to the Macquarie Dictionary.

Emphasising that dictionaries are in a constant state of playing catch up, Macquarie's managing editor, Victoria Morgan, says a number of pandemic-era and more recent colloquial nouns have trickled into the ninth edition of Australia's collection of vocabulary.

There's "goblin mode" (a pattern of behaviour characterised by an embrace of indolence and slovenliness), "menty-b" (a breakdown in one's mental health), and "doomscrolling" (the practice of continuing to read news feeds online or on social media, despite the fact that the news is predominantly negative and often upsetting).

Morgan says editors found the new words and phrases "in absolutely everything".

"The main role of the editors who work for the dictionary is to always have our eyes open," Morgan says.

"It doesn't matter whether we're reading or watching or listening to something for pleasure, or for work. Anything that just seems a little bit unfamiliar, we'll jot it down and research later."

This includes words like "situationship" (a relationship between two people in which they may engage in outings, sexual activity, etc, but do not consider each other a partner) and the phrase "bachelor's handbag" (a takeaway roast chicken).

Language evolves rapidly, and when there are enough new words being read, spoken, written or heard, it is time for an updated edition to make its way to our shelves.

Rapid evolution in technology, escalation of environmental catastrophes, and a global pandemic in the last three years has introduced new terms for phenomena that would not have crossed our radars a generation ago. Think "metaverse", or "Omicron".

Morgan's personal favourite from this pool is the "spicy cough" - a colloquial label for Covid-19.

"Then there are environmental terms as well."

"Net-zero" has finally made the cut (adjective: resulting in an even balance of something specified after all calculations have been made), after the 2015 Paris Agreement.

And pyrocumulonimbus is a new noun (a cumulonimbus which forms above a source of intense heat, such as a bushfire, volcanic eruption, etc) that Australia knows well, after the country had more supersized bushfires creating their own storms in the 2019-20 bushfire season than in the last 30 years.

Some new words label previously-nameless-but-widely-experienced phenomena, such as "orthosomnia" (insomnia thought to be caused by preoccupation with obtaining the amount and quality of sleep recommended by a sleep-tracking device, often resulting in anxiety, which can in turn adversely affect sleep quality and the ability to fall asleep).

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Big moves in politics and law leave their mark - like " Teal" and " coercive control " (the control an abuser exerts over their victim by the threat of violence or destitution, often in the form of financial abuse).

Popular culture also has an impact. "Barbiecore" (a fashion characterised by an all-pink colour palette, especially bright pink) following the excitement around Greta Gerwig's Barbie film has entered the dictionary. However, the "Barbenheimer" effect did not make the cut.

Emerging from the dictionary is a snapshot of today's Australia, taking the form of words its people have relied on to experience unfamiliar issues, thoughts and feelings together.

If a word "fills a hole" in vocabulary, and is widely used in Australian English, are the dictionary's general tests when considering the relevance of new entries. Voracious readers can also notify the dictionary of new terms they don't think they have seen.

As author Markus Zusak writes in the ninth edition's foreword: "If we allow ourselves the pleasure, we can spend our lives discovering and uncovering a seemingly infinite combinations of words".

Morgan predicts a very large multivolume dictionary will be on shelves in the near future.

"I think this is where the online dictionary is useful," she says. But the online version is just not the same. "The limitation of print is space. But I love the feel and smell of books.

"I think with dictionaries in particular, you might be looking for something, and then you're coming across all these things that are sitting right next to it."

"I know you can look for the same things online, but with print you get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction of finding words within it."

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Barbiecore and 'spicy cough': pop culture and the pandemic deliver updates to the Macquarie Dictionary

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'Goblin mode', situationship and pyrocumulonimbus among 3,000 new entries to the ninth edition

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A quick share: I absolutely LOVE this teenspeak slang used by Tetley's Tea in their 'Spill The Tea' advertising campaign earlier this year. They exploit covert norms to 'rejuvenate' their brand identity and expand into a new demographic/market segment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJNRzkgBIKI

I also found an article in a marketing magazine that reviews/unpacks the ad campaign and the language therein.

https://www.marketingmag.com.au/news/spill-the-tea-tetley-appeals-to-a-younger-generation/

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Quotes about language learning

"A different language is a different vision of life."
Federico Fellini

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
Ludwig Wittgenstein

"One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way."
Frank Smith

"Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going."
Rita Mae Brown

"He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You can never understand one language until you understand at least two."
Geoffrey Willans

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart."
Nelson Mandela

"To have another language is to possess a second soul."
Charlemagne

"Change your language and you change your thoughts."
Karl Albrecht

"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things."
Flora Lewis

"Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom."
Roger Bacon

"Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club – the community of speakers of that language."
Frank Smith

"Learn a new language and get a new soul."
Czech Proverb

"A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language."
Gaston Bachelard

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Qantas – Australia’s BFF or just a bunch of slot hoarders?

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Qantas – Australia’s BFF or just a bunch of slot hoarders?

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Qantas - Australia's BFF or just a bunch of slot hoarders? | First Dog on the Moon

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It is extremely funny how hugely the Australian public has been taken for a (plane) ride

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“The Spirit of Australia may be deflated, but it is not defeated and if we all work together, I’m confident Qantas can be great once more,” Lucas said.

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“The Spirit of Australia may be deflated, but it is not defeated and if we all work together, I’m confident Qantas can be great once more,” Lucas said.

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Qantas pilots welcomed the news as a “circuit breaker”. The Australian and International Pilots Association president, captain Tony Lucas, said his union looked forward to working with Hudson “to rebuild our iconic airline”.

“The Spirit of Australia may be deflated, but it is not defeated and if we all work together, I’m confident Qantas can be great once more,” Lucas said.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/05/alan-joyce-qantas-ceo-quits-resigns-retires-two-months-early?utm_term=64f68ba546e1b5cae868a5f6ce35d23f&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayAUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTAU_email

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Alan Joyce quits immediately as Qantas CEO following tough week for airline

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Beleaguered airline chief executive brings forward retirement by two months stating ‘the company needs to move ahead with its renewal as a priority’

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Emoji meanings- aimed at parents to understand their kids so they are more taboo in nature

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Emoji meanings- aimed at parents to understand their kids so they are more taboo in nature

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https://gamequitters.com/emoji-slang-meanings/

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https://gamequitters.com/teen-slang-meanings/#:~:text=Many%20of%20the%20words%20and,to%20break%20down%20communication%20barriers.

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https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/word/map/

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Rhyming/consonance.assonance - Gymnastics Australia - Discrimination of any sort has no place in our sport.

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Rhyming/consonance.assonance - Gymnastics Australia - Discrimination of any sort has no place in our sport.

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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10HgmeGvLldP_AcQE5TnKFtYHPM-3r1Q4JjA-s7xnpB8/htmlview

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Resharing this one because it is good and a BURRIDGE one. 

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Resharing this one because it is good and a BURRIDGE one. 

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https://theconversation.com/how-witch-hunts-and-stockholm-syndrome-became-part-of-political-language-and-what-it-has-to-do-with-wrestling-209375

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Dylan Alcott, self depricating humour -  My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA

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Dylan Alcott, self depricating humour -  My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA

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https://twitter.com/DylanAlcott/status/1690304652368306177

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My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA

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My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA https://t.co/BNLU6FAFx8

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My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚 MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA pic.twitter.com/BNLU6FAFx8
— Dylan Alcott (@DylanAlcott) August 12, 2023

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My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA https://t.co/BNLU6FAFx8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA https://t.co/BNLU6FAFx8

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
My god that was the closest I’ve ever been to standing up. @TheMatildas UNBELIEVABLE effort 💛💚  MCG going off #matildas #AUSFRA

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Parlview

You can view videos of Parliamentary proceedings on ParlView.

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Discussion about identity / representation 

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Discussion about identity / representation 

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https://theconversation.com/fair-representation-in-news-makes-multicultural-australians-feel-more-at-home-new-research-204104

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https://theconversation.com/reviled-reclaimed-and-respected-the-history-of-the-word-queer-197533

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Norms, attitudes, language change around obesity 

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Norms, attitudes, language change around obesity 

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https://theconversation.com/renaming-obesity-wont-fix-weight-stigma-overnight-heres-what-we-really-need-to-do-209224

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https://theconversation.com/felt-alienated-by-the-mens-game-how-the-culture-of-womens-sport-has-driven-record-matildas-viewership-211524

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https://theconversation.com/minimalist-poet-antigone-kefala-wins-the-patrick-white-award-for-her-contribution-to-australian-literature-195194

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https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-stan-grant-on-how-tyrants-use-the-language-of-germ-warfare-and-covid-has-enabled-them-204183

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It is 2019. There is a virus lurking in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is warning that if it is not contained, it could infect the entire country. It could turn the country upside down. Tear at the social fabric. The CCP's dream of harmony cannot withstand this. So they tell their people: this must be wiped out. Memories are too fresh in China of what happens when things spiral out of control.

China is a nation that barely hangs together. Throughout time, empires have risen and fallen. Bloodshed beyond imagining - on a scale almost unseen in human history - marks each turn in China's fate.

The hundred years between the mid-19th century and the Communist Revolution in 1949 were brutal. The Opium Wars with Britain, the fall of the Qing, the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the civil war between nationalists and communists, the Japanese occupation - tens of millions were slaughtered.

The CCP knows it should fear its own. It knows what happens when people rise up. The party seeks stability, but stability can only come with force and threats. Nothing can be tolerated that strays too far from the reach of the party.

Now, a virus is loose. In 2019, the world is not watching. Not really. Some warn of what is happening, what is to come. But who listens? It is too far away. We are trading with China and we grow rich as China grows rich.

So, the Communist Party goes to work in secret. It is rounding up people infected with the virus. It is locking them away in secret facilities. Prisons. Isolating them. Choking off the virus at its source. Nothing short of elimination will do.

Read more: Explainer: who are the Uyghurs and why is the Chinese government detaining them?

An ideological virus

This virus has a name. Uighur. Many, if not most, in the West cannot spell it. Nor can they pronounce it. Uighurs. Muslims. A people in the outer western regions of this vast country. People who have been yearning to be free. Who speak their own language. Practise their culture. Pray to their god.

They are a virus. At least, that's what the CCP calls them.

The Communist Party transmits "health warnings". As reported by Sigal Samuel in The Atlantic, and translated by Radio Free Asia, it aims them at Uighurs via WeChat, a popular social media platform in China:

Members of the public who have been chosen for re-education have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient [...] The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people [...] If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumour.

In 2018, Human Rights Watch released a report, titled Eradicating Ideological Viruses. The warnings are there. Even if the world is slow to wake to them. The report says:

Perhaps the most innovative - and disturbing - of the repressive measures in Xinjiang is the government's use of high-tech mass surveillance systems. Xinjiang authorities conduct compulsory mass collection of biometric data, such as voice samples and DNA, and use artificial intelligence and big data to identify, profile and track everyone in Xinjiang.

The authorities have envisioned these systems as a series of "filters", picking out people with certain behaviour or characteristics that they believe indicate a threat to the Communist Party's rule in Xinjiang. These systems have also enabled authorities to implement fine-grained control, subjecting people to differentiated restrictions depending on their perceived levels of "trustworthiness".

Note the language. Biometric data. Voice sampling. DNA. This is ideological and it is biological. People are treated as viruses that transmit illness. If not stopped, they will threaten us all, is the message.

Human Rights Watch says in the name of stability and security, authorities will "strike at" those deemed terrorists and extremists, to rid the country of the "problematic ideas" of Turkic Muslims. Not just Muslims, but anyone not expressing the majority ethnic Han identity. As Human Rights Watch says: "Authorities insist that such beliefs and affinities must be 'corrected' or 'eradicated'."

This is not new. What the CCP is doing is what other tyrannical regimes have done. They seek to create what's been called a "harmony of souls". They want nothing less than to produce the perfect, subdued, sublimated human. Compliant. Passive.

In the words of Joseph Stalin: "The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks." Historian Timothy Snyder says the Nazi and Soviet regimes turned people into numbers. And tyrants everywhere have used the language of germ warfare. They define their enemies as diseases or infections and they seek to inoculate their own societies.

Authoritarian regimes seek to sterilise and "purify" society. Listen to them.

Stalin's henchman Vyacheslav Molotov spoke of purging or assassinating people who "had to be isolated" or, he said, they "would spread all kinds of complaints, and society would have been infected".

The architect of Hitler's Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, in sending millions to the gas chambers, said he was exterminating "a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be infected by a bacterium and die of it". He said: "I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterise it."

And then there is Adolf Hitler, who compared himself to the famed German microbiologist Robert Koch who found the bacillus of tuberculosis. Hitler said,

I discovered the Jews as the bacillus and ferment of all social decomposition. And I have proved one thing: that a state can live without Jews.

To Hitler, Jewish people were "no longer human beings". He described the Holocaust as a "surgical task", "otherwise Europe will perish through the Jewish disease".

It is no mistake these regimes use the language of virus, disease and contamination. Just as a virus is to be eradicated, so too people are to be removed, eliminated or exterminated. These attitudes do not belong to a time past. There are leaders today who exploit the same fears, who focus on difference and create division using the same language of disease.

Remember what Donald Trump said of Mexican immigrants? That they are responsible for "tremendous infectious diseases pouring across the border".

And in China, the Communist Party has locked up a million Uighur Muslims in "re-education camps", where human rights groups say they are brainwashed with Communist Party ideology. A virus to be eradicated.

Read more: UN report on China's abuse of Uyghurs is stronger than expected but missing a vital word: genocide

Virus of tyranny

The virus of tyranny has haunted our world. Albert Camus warned us of this in his novel The Plague: the story of a rat-borne disease that overruns an entire city. His was a bleak vision of death and fear, of a city sealed off and a people locked down, then shot when they tried to escape.

Written in 1947, just two years after World War II, when the West was still celebrating the victory of freedom, Camus's plague is an allegory of authoritarianism.

Camus wanted to tell us of the courage that swells within us, that when the plague was at its worst, brave people fought against it. But he cautioned us, too, that the plague can return. It is "a bacillus that never dies or disappears for good", but bides its time "slumbering in furniture and linen". It waits patiently "in bedrooms, cellars; trunks, handkerchiefs, old papers", until one day it will rouse again.

In coronavirus, tyranny may have found the perfect host: a fearful population and all-powerful government. French philosopher Michel Foucault long ago made the link between the plagues of the 17th century and authoritarian control.

Behind state-imposed discipline, he wrote, "can be read the haunting memory of contagions": not just the memory of a virus but of rebellion, crime, all forms of social disorder, where people "appear and disappear, live and die". It is the state that brings order to the fear: "everyone locked up in his cage, everyone at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked".

In the response to the plague, Foucault saw the forerunner of the modern prison: the panopticon; the all-seeing eye.

The plague-stricken village, wrote Foucault, is

traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilised by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies - this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city.

The coronavirus shutdowns remind us freedom is the province of the state. The crisis has centralised government control. Around the world, governments have used physical and biological surveillance to control the pandemic. To eradicate the virus.

We have all become, to varying degrees, a little bit like China.

Read more: Guide to the Classics: Albert Camus' The Plague

A strange illness in Wuhan

Coronavirus emerges out of China in the dying months of 2019. I remember reporting on it. A strange illness is being detected in the city of Wuhan. Dozens of people are being treated for pneumonia-like symptoms. In January 2020, there is the first reported death. Then quickly, deaths in Europe, the United States, South Korea, Japan, Thailand.

We are still so blasé. It feels so far away. We have seen this before, haven't we? SARS, swine flu, Ebola. They come and they go. Life goes on. We go to the beach. We get on planes. We have parties. And if we have a cough or feel a bit under the weather, we most likely still go to work.

We don't realise what is happening. I am on ABC's Q+A program in February 2020. Footage is shown of lockdown in Wuhan. People are barricaded in their apartments while police forcibly remove and restrain. The audience is appalled.

It couldn't happen here, could it? An epidemiologist on the panel says, actually, yes. We have laws to allow for just these extreme emergency measures. Surely though, we agree, it isn't likely.

On the same program is China's deputy ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining. Minister Wang, as he is known, is an old acquaintance. A sparring partner. When I was based in China for CNN, he was my minder. He was appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to watch everything that I did.

In China I was arrested and detained, taken to Chinese police cells for doing stories the authorities did not approve of. I was, on several occasions, physically attacked and beaten. My family was under constant surveillance. Now the man responsible was sitting next to me in an ABC studio.

In the audience, a Uighur man asks a question. He was separated from his wife and child. He had come to Australia ahead of them, hoping to settle and secure visas so they could follow. He didn't know where they were. He had family in the Chinese "re-education" camps. He was clearly worried.

Minster Wang defends the China COVID lockdown. And he defends the lockdown - soon to be called the genocide - of the Uighurs.

In this moment were twinned the two crises - the two "viruses" - threatening our world. COVID-19 threatened our health. Soon, we would indeed follow China's lead and introduce lockdowns. And the virus of tyranny was spreading.

In 2020, as COVID crossed borders, so, too, did tyranny. Liberal democracy was in retreat. Freedom House, which measures the health of democracy, now counted 15 straight years of democratic decline. From the post-Cold War boom, freedom was now being crushed.

Within democracies, too, people were falling under the sway of autocrats and demagogues. This had been a slow burn. Growing inequality, war-fuelled refugee crises and a blowback against globalisation had eroded trust. The poor and left-behind felt abandoned.

The devil dances in empty pockets. From the early 2000s, anti-immigration attitudes grew. Racial division became even more stark. Far-right parties made a comeback in Europe as barbed wire went back up on borders. People wanted their countries back and they were primed for populists. Türkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, India's Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro - all would come to power. Each spouted easy solutions to complex problems. Each divided to conquer.

Into the picture came a political circus act. A Manhattan real estate billionaire and reality television star. Donald Trump styled himself as the anti-politician. He promised to " drain the swamp" and "make America great again". Eight years of the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama, ended in 2016 with the election of a man who exploited racism.

To populists, COVID-19 initially was a boon. They seized on it to strengthen their grip on their countries. This was the state of the world in 2020, when the virus took hold. This was a perfect storm. A virus that robbed us of our freedom just as democracy was imploding and freedom was in retreat. And China was proudly boasting that its authoritarianism was ascendant.

If the 20th century was a triumph of democracy, the 21st century, to China's Xi Jinping, would crown the China dream.

Read more: 'Kafkaesque' true stories of ordinary people: inside the first days of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China

Plagues, political repression and violence

Plagues have historically been a harbinger of political repression and violence. The Spanish flu after World War I contributed to the rise of the extreme right in Germany. The Black Death in the 14th century unleashed violence against Jews.

Sydney University Professor of Jurisprudence Wojciech Sadurski, in his book A Pandemic of Populists, says COVID has been a "powerful accelerator of many of the pre-existing trends, both negative and positive, in business, culture and politics".

Populist leaders declared states of emergency and, as Sadurski writes, pushed them "well beyond the limits of the necessary". Viktor Orbán set aside parliament. He was a one-man government. People critical of him could be arrested. In the Philippines, as in India, police were given powers to detain anyone "spreading misinformation" or inciting mistrust.

Sadurski points out that, in most cases, these authoritarian leaders used militaristic language. Fighting COVID was a war. The people were conscripted.

Xi Jinping is not a populist leader. He doesn't seek legitimacy at the ballot box. He is an authoritarian. And he believes his system is better. To Xi, the battle against coronavirus is also a war: a "people's war".

It has been a war without end. Xi cannot allow the virus to win. Long after lockdowns passed elsewhere, Xi continued to keep a stranglehold on COVID flares. It has weakened the economy. It is straining nerves. People are angry. There have been protests. Some are even calling for Xi to go.

But Xi has strengthened his grip. By altering the constitution and scrapping two-term presidential limits, he is now leader for life. Under cover of fighting COVID, he has used enhanced surveillance and tracking technology to peer into every part of people's lives. The COVID crackdown coincided with crushing democracy in Hong Kong. He has arrested dissidents. Silenced rivals. He is threatening war on Taiwan.

And Uighurs remain a target. Still a "virus" to be eliminated.

A hinge point of history

We are at a hinge point of history. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, there is talk of Cold War 2.0. The United States is staring down a new rival: China. We are witnessing a return of great power rivalry. It is a supercharged great power rivalry.

China is more powerful today than the Soviet Union was then, and the United States is unquestionably diminished. America is politically fractured, it is deeply divided along racial and class lines; it has an epidemic of gun violence and it has been devastated by coronavirus.

Donald Trump thought he was bigger than COVID. He was slow to act, he was dismissive and his populism was eventually revealed as reckless. Yes, he fast-tracked vaccine research and production. But he was a master of mixed messaging and so much damage was done. At the time of writing, in the United States there have been more than 100 million cases and one million deaths. The only country to reach that number. Trump lost office.

By contrast, Xi Jinping is entrenched in power. The country where COVID first emerged is the world's biggest engine of economic growth. It is on track to usurp the United States as the single biggest economy in the world. It is extending its influence and economic reach via the Belt and Road Initiative, the biggest investment and infrastructure program the world has ever seen.

Xi is building an army to match his economic might. And he is leading the way on artificial intelligence research. The numbers tell the story. In the 20 years between 1997 and 2017, China's global share of research papers increased from just over 4 per cent to nearly 28 per cent. And what is it focusing on? Speech and image recognition. The Chinese Communist Party can track anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Technology was meant to liberate us. Some saw the death knell for authoritarian regimes. How can you control the internet? But China has. Cyberspace has become a tool of tyranny. China has taken the digital age and put it in service of genocide.

There are lessons here for journalists. Our job is not to simply report events, it is to connect them. To join the dots. To reveal the big forces at play in our world. We missed this opportunity.

We cannot understand the COVID pandemic and its impact without understanding the currents shaping our world. COVID emerged out of China at a time when Xi Jinping had his eyes on global supremacy. He had shown how far he would be prepared to go to "harmonise" the nation. He had trialled his lockdown measures on what he callously called the "virus" of the Uighurs.

Around the world, democracy was in retreat and authoritarianism on the march. And now a virus was spreading that would attack the liberal democratic West where it believed it was strongest: its freedom.

Media can so easily be overwhelmed by events. One of the most common failings - particularly of television - is to report what we see, not what it means. Images can drive coverage. And images of people in white suits locking down entire cities obscured what was even more important. COVID was a 21st-century virus; a virus of a globalised world, of high-speed travel and borderless trade. It was also a virus of an increasingly authoritarian world.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a stress test. It revealed and accelerated fault lines already there. Populists were stripped bare. Their slogans, easy answers and arrogance meant they were slow to act. Millions died who might otherwise have lived. In strong democracies where there is trust in science and authority, countries emerged stronger. Yet they, too, walked a fine line between surrendering liberty and saving lives.

In China, Xi Jinping believes the People's War is a victory for the Communist Party. The Party - the all-seeing eye - can control everything. It sits at the heart of everything. Xi believes he is the fulfilment of prophecy. The man who follows the great leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The one who delivers on China's greatness.

Xi walks a tightrope, too. He has strained the nation to breaking point. The relentless, cruel lockdowns have slowed the economy and crushed the spirit of Chinese people. And they are angry and rising. China, like the rest of the world, is also reaching a tipping point.

In December 2022, Xi felt the pressure from the Chinese people, following mass demonstrations and unrest, and lifted the lockdowns abruptly. COVID quickly ran rampant. However, though the COVID lockdowns have ended, the Uighurs continue to suffer.

The virus of tyranny sleeps within democracy, too. It has always been in our bloodstream. China has edged us, the democracies, closer to what political scientist Vladimir Tismaneanu has called "the age of total administration and inescapable alienation".

The COVID pandemic has passed, at least as a political crisis. Our minds are turned now to war in Ukraine and economic strife. But journalists must remember that, as in contagions past, COVID will shape us. It leaves behind the trace of tyranny. And that is the true virus. The virus that will not die.
This is an edited extract from Panemedia: How Covid Changed Journalism (Monash University Press). This essay was originally written in November 2022.

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Friday essay: Stan Grant on how tyrants use the language of germ warfare - and COVID has enabled them

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China's Xi Xinping had trialled his COVID lockdown measures on what he callously called the 'virus' of the Uighurs, writes Stan Grant. COVID lockdowns are now over, but the trace of tyranny remains.

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https://theconversation.com/six-pregnancy-terms-you-probably-wont-hear-again-including-high-risk-and-failed-207753

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The language midwives use is an important part of the care they provide. Blue Planet Studio/Shutterstock

Medical terminology evolves alongside our understanding of medicine. As time goes by, new terms are adopted while others are abandoned. In midwifery, there should always be a strong emphasis on the language we use, particularly in pregnancy.

In 2020, the Royal College of Midwives launched an initiative to discover the impact language has on women. The aim of the Re:Birth project was to find language around pregnancy that could be understood both by people delivering maternity care and those receiving it.

It was the first project of its kind to consult the maternity community (including new mothers and healthcare professionals) directly on their preferred language to describe labour and birth. The findings of the project supported the fact that many women were less concerned about the way their baby was born but with whether they had a positive experience and felt safe and listened to.

Last year, the Royal College of Midwives published a report outlining their findings and a new pocket guide is being issued to midwives this year.
This article is part of Women's Health Matters, a series about the health and wellbeing of women and girls around the world. From menopause to miscarriage, pleasure to pain the articles in this series will delve into the full spectrum of women's health issues to provide valuable information, insights and resources for women of all ages. You may be interested in: Spain is the egg donation capital of Europe - here's what it's like to be a donor 'Dirty red': how periods have been stigmatised through history to the modern day The orgasm gap and why women climax less than men
Here are six maternity terms you are now unlikely to hear:

1. Delivery

The term "birth" has now been accepted, rather than the term "delivery", which has commonly been used in the past. Women and health professionals also wanted accurate, specific descriptions as far as possible to describe what had happened in the labour and birth. For example, "birth with forceps" or "birth with ventouse". This also includes "caesarean birth".

2. Low risk / high risk

"Universal care needs" is being used rather than "low risk". While "additional care needs" is now the preferred term for "high risk". The word "risk" is associated with uncertainty and it is vital that women feel comfortable and confident during their pregnancy.

3. Normal

"Normal birth" is a term that has long been used by midwives and other healthcare professionals to describe a spontaneous, physiological vaginal delivery. But what counts as "normal"? Does this label someone as "abnormal" if they did not experience what we classify as "normal" birth?

The new preferred term, "spontaneous vaginal birth", covers spontaneous labour without significant medical interventions such as induction and oxytocin. It also covers spontaneous vaginal birth without the need for instruments, such as forceps.

4. Emergency caesarean

The new overarching term for an operative caesarean section is "caesarean birth". This replaces the word "emergency", which is a term that may cause alarm. The term "unplanned caesarean birth" is now preferred over "emergency caesarean".

5. Incompetent cervix

"Incompetent cervix" has connotations of personal failure. So, the preferred term is now "cervical insufficiency".

6. Failure / failed

During the Re:Birth project, women were keen to share how terms such as "failure to progress" can contribute to feelings of failure and trauma. "Delayed progress in labour" or "slow labour" are now preferred terms.

We can apply the same logic to terms such as "failed induction" or "failed homebirth". "Induction of labour, with delay and followed by operative birth" and "transfer in during planned homebirth" are favoured, respectively.

Language which infantalises pregnant women, such as "good girl" or "you are allowed/not allowed to" should also be avoided, as should language which has connotations of blame. Examples of this include "poor maternal effort" and "refused".

During pregnancy and birth, which is a vulnerable time for many, the role of the midwife is to empower women and to value their autonomy over their care decisions.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council's standards of proficiency for midwives document states that midwives provide universal care for all women and new-born infants. Midwives support physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual safety. The emphasis on psychological care is clear, therefore, with language having a profound impact on wellbeing.

Healthcare professionals must acknowledge that the language we use is an important part of the care we provide. Improved psychological safety and wellbeing is closely linked to improved safety, positive outcomes and future experiences. Language matters.

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Six pregnancy terms you probably won't hear again, including 'high risk' and 'failed'

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Several familiar maternity terms have been abandoned after a consultation with pregnant women and healthcare professionals.

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https://theconversation.com/why-somepeopletalkveryfast-and-others-take-their-time-despite-stereotypes-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-intelligence-210614

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Why somepeopletalkveryfast and others ... take ... their ... time − despite stereotypes, it has nothing to do with intelligence

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Language, geography, age and other factors can all affect how fast a person talks. But sometimes, these perceived differences are only in the listener’s head.

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https://theconversation.com/first-nations-students-are-engaged-in-primary-school-but-face-racism-and-limited-opportunities-to-learn-indigenous-languages-203408

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' school experiences are often inaccurately described through what researchers call " deficit perspectives". This means their experiences are spoken about by others in ways that aren't representative of lived experience.

It is rare to hear from Indigenous students and young people directly in research and reports.

Indigenous students, their parents and their teachers shared their experiences as part of the federal government's ongoing " Footprints in Time " study. Our research using this data set illuminates Indigenous primary school experiences.

Our findings show young Indigenous school students are engaged in their school lives. But they and their families still experience significant levels of racism and want more teaching of Indigenous culture and language.

Meanwhile, teachers say they do not have adequate training to value and teach Indigenous cultures in their classrooms.

Our research

Footprints in Time is also known as the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. Since 2008, it has followed the development of Indigenous children to understand what they need to grow up strong.

It involves annual waves of data collection and follows about 1,700 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in urban, regional and remote locations. Interviewers have spoken with more than 1,200 of the original families for most of the study's 15 years.

Our new primary school report has been produced as the majority of children in the study have now completed primary school. For this, we used data collected between 2009 and 2019.

Here are some of our early findings, ahead of our full report due to be released in mid-2023.

Students are engaged

There is a prevailing assumption in education debates that school engagement is a struggle for Indigenous students and their families.

Yet more than half of the children in this data set were very highly and consistently engaged with school right across the primary years.

Parents' trust and engagement with schools was also high - with high rates of visiting the classroom (76%), attending school events (76%), talking to other parents (72%) and contacting the teacher (68%).

Read more: How can Australia support more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers?

Racism is a problem (despite what some teachers think)

Our report found a disconnect between teachers' approaches to cultural identity, the training they have received and racism experienced by parents and students.

Many teachers spoke of taking a " colourblind " approach, with teachers having the general sense racism is not an issue in their classrooms.

As one teacher noted:

I aim to treat each child the same as any other in terms of race. I also aim to teach this to my students. I emphasise that a colour or religion is not what makes us different.

Another teacher stressed students were simply treated the "same" to foster a culturally inclusive classroom:

We treat ALL students the same. Culturally our students don't know they are different/same; five out of six are Aboriginal students.

But this approach does not appear to be working. Almost a quarter (24%) of students said they had experienced racist bullying at school, while 22% of parents said they had experienced racism at their child's school.

Meanwhile, 53% of teachers also said they had insufficient cultural competency training.

Despite many schools noting that they celebrate Indigenous days of significance, 41% of parents surveyed reported no or limited representation of Indigenous teachers or staff at their child's school.

Read more: Racism hits Indigenous students' attendance and grades

Time to change homework approaches?

Teachers were asked what strategies they used to encourage parents to support children's learning at home. Of more than 400 responses, homework was in the top three. This included weekly homework to revise what is taught in class, as well as readers and flash cards.

This was despite there being little evidence for academic benefits of homework in the primary years.

When asked what they would like to change about school, children reported reduced homework. They also said they wanted to see less staff turnover, better play areas and less bullying.

Opportunities to learn Indigenous languages

While learning to read and write in Standard Australian English is important, so too are Indigenous literacies and languages.

Almost 90% of parents surveyed said they wanted their child to learn an Indigenous language at school, but only 21% of children had this opportunity. Most teachers (57%) reported their schools were not delivering an Indigenous language program.

There was also very little access to specialist language teachers in remote areas, despite the fact most children in the study who had an Indigenous language as their first language lived in remote regions.

Primary school teachers most frequently reported they would benefit from learning to teach Indigenous children successfully (61%), followed by learning about Indigenous culture in the local area (59%), and then learning to teach Indigenous knowledge appropriately (58%).

Roughly 18% of teachers were confident they had sufficient training. Overall, an average of 84% of teachers across the primary years said they felt they would benefit from some form of additional training. This reflects the words of one parent who shared their own experience at school:

I was always proud to be Black, but we didn't learn any (Indigenous) history.

Read more: Tradition and innovation: how we are documenting sign language in a Gurindji community in northern Australia

What next?

Our report highlights several areas where we can make positive - and necessary - changes. These include:

improve cultural competency training for teachers. This training is the responsibility of schools, policy makers, and universities alike

professional learning should explicitly address race-based bullying and racism, providing teachers with clear strategies to put into practice

it is essential that teachers personally reflect on their approaches and how a "colourblind" approach may not be working

teachers should act to strengthen relationships with families and build opportunities for engagement with parents throughout the primary school years

we need to make Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island histories and cultures a national priority across the curriculum. It should be delivered fully and universally, regardless of location, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student numbers

homework policies across primary schools in Australia should be transparent and evidence-based. Consideration needs to be given as to whether homework is an engagement barrier for Indigenous children

the overall lack of provision of Indigenous language programs is of significant concern and a national plan to address this should be a top priority for government.

The National School Reform Agreement

These priorities should be addressed in the next National School Reform Agreement.

The agreement is a joint agreement between the Commonwealth, states and territories, designed to lift student outcomes in Australian schools.

The current agreement will expire in December 2024. And the new one is now being examined by an expert panel, with a report due in October. The government has asked it to look at supporting students, student learning and achievement, attracting and retaining teachers and data collection.

Indigenous voices are key to improving each of these areas and should be central to future discussions.

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First Nations students are engaged in primary school but face racism and limited opportunities to learn Indigenous languages

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The federal government-commissioned "Footprints in Time" study also found teachers say they do not have adequate training to value and teach Indigenous cultures.

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https://theconversation.com/not-a-relationship-why-the-legal-language-of-child-abuse-needs-to-change-184453

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The ACT government has announced plans to change the name of the criminal offence of engaging in a "sexual relationship with child or young person under special care" to "persistent sexual abuse of child or young person under special care".

ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury explained this change was inspired by public advocacy by victim-survivors, including 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame. The change was made because, for many, the term "relationship" implies the victim was a willing participant in their abuse, adding to the often gruelling experience of complainants in sexual assault trials.

In 2019, Tasmania made similar reforms in response to sustained advocacy. In that case, the government changed the name of the crime of "maintaining an unlawful relationship with a child" to " persistent sexual abuse of a child". Critics had said the original wording "normalised" sexual offending against children and suggested the child was a voluntary participant.

These reforms are the latest chapter in law-making efforts, going back to the 1990s, which aim to craft criminal laws that capture this kind of offending.

In recent years the Child Abuse Royal Commission reviewed the relevant laws. The commission found the laws in most states and territories were not working as designed. This has renewed attention to the issue and created an opportunity for reform across the country.

Read more: Does the government's new national plan to combat child sexual abuse go far enough?

Why the language of the law matters

According to journalist and survivor-advocate Nina Funnell, the "sanitised" language of a relationship exacerbates the trauma of survivors, painting them as active participants in a mutual romance.

These criticisms are backed by research showing that, in some cases, courts have interpreted the crime of an "unlawful sexual relationship" by comparing it to " ordinary " sexual relationships between mutually consenting adults.

This has made it necessary to prove there has been consistent, ongoing sexual contact. Cases where abuse is sporadic or opportunistic might not be enough.

This is at odds with social science evidence that sexual abuse is often opportunistic. In fact, labelling abuse as a "relationship" mirrors the distorted thinking of many perpetrators.

What about the other states and territories?

The term "relationship" is now used in the laws of all states and territories except for Victoria and Western Australia.

Although reforms in Tasmania and the ACT change the name of the offence, the words "relationship" or "sexual relationship" still appear in the legislation.

In fact, in the past few years, both South Australia and New South Wales have changed their laws from "persistent sexual exploitation" or "persistent sexual abuse" to "maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship".

This reflects the recommendations of the Child Abuse Royal Commission that all Australian states and territories adopt this language in their criminal laws. This was despite the commission's acknowledgement this language did not match the "exploitation" of repeated sexual offending against a child.

So why did the commission recommend this language?

Simply, because it works.

Child sexual abuse is one of the most under-punished crimes in Australia.

The purpose of the royal commission's recommendations was to ensure these offences were made more effective by reflecting the way victims remember repeated child sexual abuse.

Our legal system normally requires crimes to be charged individually, with specific details like the time and location of an offence. This gives the accused the best possible chance to mount a defence.

However, it is very normal for a survivor of persistent sexual abuse to remember the abuse as a whole and not as individual acts.

This creates what two justices of the South Australian Supreme Court have called a " perverse paradox ": that "the more extensive the sexual exploitation of a child, the more difficult it can be proving the offence".

As a result, all Australian states and territories have laws that allow repeated sexual offending against a child to be charged as a single offence. However, in most jurisdictions, juries must still be able to identify and unanimously agree on a minimum number of separate occasions of abuse. This undermines the effectiveness of the laws by requiring complainants to recall details of specific events.

At the time of the royal commission, the Queensland law was unique in allowing a jury to convict if they agreed an unlawful sexual relationship existed, even if they did not unanimously agree on specific acts of sexual offending. This overcame the "perverse paradox".

For that reason, the royal commission drafted model legislation using the Queensland wording, labelling the crime "maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a child", and requiring a jury to unanimously agree there was a relationship but not on individual acts of abuse.

Read more: Child sex abuse survivors are five times more likely to be the victims of sexual assault later in life

Future reforms

Many states and territories have now partly implemented the royal commission's recommendations, but more work needs to be done. Four states and territories still require evidence of individual acts of sexual offending. This includes the only two states, Victoria and Western Australia, that do not describe the crime as a "relationship" anywhere in their legislation.

Calls for national reform of these offences using language that accurately names the crime are timely and well justified. Future reforms should tell the truth about this crime: it is persistent sexual abuse of a child, not a relationship. Reform should also create laws that give survivors a chance to secure justice through the courts.

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Not a 'relationship': why the legal language of child abuse needs to change

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The ACT government has announced plans to change the name of the criminal offence of engaging in a "sexual relationship with child or young person under special care" to "persistent sexual abuse of child or young person under special care".

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https://theconversation.com/do-phrases-like-global-boiling-help-or-hinder-climate-action-210960

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Last week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres coined an arresting new term. The era of global warming has ended, he declared dramatically, and the era of "global boiling" has arrived.

You can see why he said it. July was the hottest month on record globally. Searing temperatures and intense wildfires have raged across the Northern Hemisphere. Marine heatwaves are devastating the world's third-largest coral reef, off Florida. And as greenhouse emissions keep rising, it means many even hotter summers await us.

But critics and climate sceptics have heaped scorn on the phrase. Taken literally, they're correct - nowhere on Earth is near the boiling point of water.

Is Guterres' phrase hyperbolic or an accurate warning? Do phrases like this actually help drive us towards faster and more effective climate action? Or do they risk making us prone to climate doomism, and risk prompting a backlash?

Rhetoric and reality

Guterres is rhetorically adept. He uses the moral authority of his position to vividly depict the climate crisis. For instance, he told attendees at last year's COP27 climate summit in Egypt we are on "a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator". In many ways, it's one of the only tools he has, given the UN has global influence but limited real power.

"Global boiling" ups the verbal ante. It's designed to sound the alarm and trigger more radical action to stave off the worst of climate change.

Guterres chooses his words carefully. But does he choose them wisely?

At one level, "global boiling" is clearly an exaggeration, despite the extreme summer heat and fire during the northern summer.

But then again, "global warming" is now far too tame a descriptor. Prominent climate scientists have pushed for the term "global heating" to be used in preference.

Similarly, phrases such as "the climate crisis" haven't gained traction with either elites or the ordinary public. That's because many of us still feel we haven't seen this crisis with our own eyes.

But that is changing. In the past few years, extreme weather and related events have struck many countries - even those who may have thought themselves immune. Australia's Black Summer brought bushfires that burned an area the size of the United Kingdom. Germany suffered lethal flooding in 2021. The unprecedented 2022 deluge in Pakistan flooded large tracts of the country. China has seen both drought and floods. Savage multi-year droughts have hit the Horn of Africa. India has banned rice exports due to damage from heavy rain.

Once-abstract phrases are now having real-world purchase - in developed and developing nations alike.

Climate scepticism has also dropped away. Fewer doubters are trying to discredit the fundamental science than during the long period of manufactured scepticism in Western nations.

In this context, we can see "global boiling" as an expression of humanitarian concern backed by rigorous science showing the situation continues to worsen.

The hazards of theatrical language

There are risks in warning of catastrophe. People who don't pay close attention to the news may switch off if the predicted disaster doesn't eventuate. Or the warnings can add to climate anxiety and make people feel there's no hope and therefore no point in acting.

There's another risk, too. Catastrophic language often has moral overtones - and, as we all know, we don't like being told what to do. When we hear a phrase like "global boiling" in the context of a prominent official exhorting us to do more, faster, it can raise the hackles.

Read more: 'It can be done. It must be done': IPCC delivers definitive report on climate change, and where to now

You can see this in the emerging greenlash, whereby populist-right figures scorn solar and wind farms. Even struggling mainstream leaders like UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can pivot this way, as evidenced by his recent positioning as pro-car and pro-oil extraction.

Opponents of climate action - who tend to be on the right of politics - often complain about what they see as the overuse of "crisis talk". If everything is a crisis, nothing is a crisis. This view has some merit.

But even critics such as Danish controversialist Bjørn Lomborg, author of False Alarm, may have more in common with Guterres than one might think. In admittedly different ways, they pursue similar ends: a world where people can live free from harm, with dignity, and with reasonable prospects of a fulfilling life pursued sustainably. The question, as always, is how to get there.

Hot language can motivate us, just as quieter, process-heavy, technocratic language can. It can be folded into a discourse of hope and aspiration for the future, rather than of fear and trembling.

Rethinking calamity

Climate writer David Wallace-Wells has written that the future will be "contested and combative, combining suffering and flourishing - though not in equal measure for every group".

As the critics Frederick Buell and Rob Nixon remind us, a hotter Earth will worsen existing human vulnerabilities as well as creating new ones. The poor and marginalised, both authors observe, are already living through crises, year-in and year-out. They suffer what Nixon dubs "slow violence", punctuated by dramatic environmental events such as landslides and failed harvests.

Are there better phrases to capture this? Possibly. Take the challenge yourself: can you think up a pithy, accurate phrase to cover intensifying local and regional-scale droughts, fires, typhoons and floods; damage to crops and food insecurity; water shortages; existential threats to coral reefs and low-lying communities? You can see how hard it is.

When Guterres uses highly charged phrases, he's not inviting to us to imagine a Hollywood-style apocalypse. What he's hoping is to make people listen - and act - now we can see what climate change looks like.

What happens if we write off his comments as overblown rhetoric? The risk is it becomes another form of denial. Climate change, global warming, global heating, the climate crisis, global boiling - whatever the phrase, it is now undeniable that it's upon us.

Read more: The climate crisis is real - but overusing terms like 'crisis' and 'emergency' comes with risk

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Do phrases like 'global boiling' help or hinder climate action?

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Climate change is ramping up, and with it, so is the rhetoric for action. It's a fine line to walk between sounding the alarm and being accused of alarmism.

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https://theconversation.com/ai-to-z-all-the-terms-you-need-to-know-to-keep-up-in-the-ai-hype-age-203917

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AI to Z: all the terms you need to know to keep up in the AI hype age

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There’s a lot of overlap in AI-related concepts. Understanding how they are different from each other, and how they relate, is important.

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https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-and-other-language-ais-are-nothing-without-humans-a-sociologist-explains-how-countless-hidden-people-make-the-magic-211658

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The media frenzy surrounding ChatGPT and other large language model artificial intelligence systems spans a range of themes, from the prosaic - large language models could replace conventional web search - to the concerning - AI will eliminate many jobs - and the overwrought - AI poses an extinction-level threat to humanity. All of these themes have a common denominator: large language models herald artificial intelligence that will supersede humanity.

But large language models, for all their complexity, are actually really dumb. And despite the name "artificial intelligence," they're completely dependent on human knowledge and labor. They can't reliably generate new knowledge, of course, but there's more to it than that.

ChatGPT can't learn, improve or even stay up to date without humans giving it new content and telling it how to interpret that content, not to mention programming the model and building, maintaining and powering its hardware. To understand why, you first have to understand how ChatGPT and similar models work, and the role humans play in making them work.

How ChatGPT works

Large language models like ChatGPT work, broadly, by predicting what characters, words and sentences should follow one another in sequence based on training data sets. In the case of ChatGPT, the training data set contains immense quantities of public text scraped from the internet.

Imagine I trained a language model on the following set of sentences:

Bears are large, furry animals. Bears have claws. Bears are secretly robots. Bears have noses. Bears are secretly robots. Bears sometimes eat fish. Bears are secretly robots.

The model would be more inclined to tell me that bears are secretly robots than anything else, because that sequence of words appears most frequently in its training data set. This is obviously a problem for models trained on fallible and inconsistent data sets - which is all of them, even academic literature.

People write lots of different things about quantum physics, Joe Biden, healthy eating or the Jan. 6 insurrection, some more valid than others. How is the model supposed to know what to say about something, when people say lots of different things?

The need for feedback

This is where feedback comes in. If you use ChatGPT, you'll notice that you have the option to rate responses as good or bad. If you rate them as bad, you'll be asked to provide an example of what a good answer would contain. ChatGPT and other large language models learn what answers, what predicted sequences of text, are good and bad through feedback from users, the development team and contractors hired to label the output.

ChatGPT cannot compare, analyze or evaluate arguments or information on its own. It can only generate sequences of text similar to those that other people have used when comparing, analyzing or evaluating, preferring ones similar to those it has been told are good answers in the past.

Thus, when the model gives you a good answer, it's drawing on a large amount of human labor that's already gone into telling it what is and isn't a good answer. There are many, many human workers hidden behind the screen, and they will always be needed if the model is to continue improving or to expand its content coverage.

A recent investigation published by journalists in Time magazine revealed that hundreds of Kenyan workers spent thousands of hours reading and labeling racist, sexist and disturbing writing, including graphic descriptions of sexual violence, from the darkest depths of the internet to teach ChatGPT not to copy such content. They were paid no more than US$2 an hour, and many understandably reported experiencing psychological distress due to this work.

What ChatGPT can't do

The importance of feedback can be seen directly in ChatGPT's tendency to " hallucinate "; that is, confidently provide inaccurate answers. ChatGPT can't give good answers on a topic without training, even if good information about that topic is widely available on the internet. You can try this out yourself by asking ChatGPT about more and less obscure things. I've found it particularly effective to ask ChatGPT to summarize the plots of different fictional works because, it seems, the model has been more rigorously trained on nonfiction than fiction.

In my own testing, ChatGPT summarized the plot of J.R.R. Tolkien's " The Lord of the Rings," a very famous novel, with only a few mistakes. But its summaries of Gilbert and Sullivan's " The Pirates of Penzance" and of Ursula K. Le Guin's " The Left Hand of Darkness" - both slightly more niche but far from obscure - come close to playing Mad Libs with the character and place names. It doesn't matter how good these works' respective Wikipedia pages are. The model needs feedback, not just content.

Because large language models don't actually understand or evaluate information, they depend on humans to do it for them. They are parasitic on human knowledge and labor. When new sources are added into their training data sets, they need new training on whether and how to build sentences based on those sources.

They can't evaluate whether news reports are accurate or not. They can't assess arguments or weigh trade-offs. They can't even read an encyclopedia page and only make statements consistent with it, or accurately summarize the plot of a movie. They rely on human beings to do all these things for them.

Then they paraphrase and remix what humans have said, and rely on yet more human beings to tell them whether they've paraphrased and remixed well. If the common wisdom on some topic changes - for example, whether salt is bad for your heart or whether early breast cancer screenings are useful - they will need to be extensively retrained to incorporate the new consensus.

Many people behind the curtain

In short, far from being the harbingers of totally independent AI, large language models illustrate the total dependence of many AI systems, not only on their designers and maintainers but on their users. So if ChatGPT gives you a good or useful answer about something, remember to thank the thousands or millions of hidden people who wrote the words it crunched and who taught it what were good and bad answers.

Far from being an autonomous superintelligence, ChatGPT is, like all technologies, nothing without us.

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ChatGPT and other language AIs are nothing without humans - a sociologist explains how countless hidden people make the magic

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Language model AIs seem smart because of how they string words together, but in reality they can't do anything without many people guiding them every step of the way.

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https://theconversation.com/chatgpt-threatens-language-diversity-more-needs-to-be-done-to-protect-our-differences-in-the-age-of-ai-198878

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ChatGPT threatens language diversity. More needs to be done to protect our differences in the age of AI

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When you ask ChatGPT to generate content, the default output is in the voice, style and language of white English-speaking men, who have long dominated many writing-intensive sectors.

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https://theconversation.com/dont-fret-about-students-using-chatgpt-to-cheat-ai-is-a-bigger-threat-to-educational-equality-202842

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Don’t fret about students using ChatGPT to cheat – AI is a bigger threat to educational equality

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AI technology holds promise for education, but it will also likely exacerbate the digital divide and increase the online dominance of English.

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https://theconversation.com/six-decades-210-warlpiri-speakers-and-11-000-words-how-a-groundbreaking-first-nations-dictionary-was-made-205019

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of deceased people. The symbol † next to a personal name is a conventional respectful indicator that the person has died.
The first large dictionary of the Warlpiri language began in 1959 in Alice Springs, when Yuendumu man †Kenny Wayne Jungarrayi and others started teaching their language to a young American linguist, † Ken Hale.

Sixty years in the making, the Warlpiri Dictionary has been shortlisted for the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards - a rarity for a dictionary.

Spoken in and around the Tanami Desert, Warlpiri is an Australian Aboriginal language used by around 3,000 adults and children as their everyday language.

Warlpiri artist Otto Sims Jungarrayi says:

In the old days when kardiya [non-Indigenous] people came, when they reached this continent, we had jukurrpa "law" here, not written on paper but true jukurrpa "law", that the ancestors gave us. Now we put our language and our jukurrpa law on paper.

The dictionary and these materials represent the authority of elders, even if those elders are no longer present.

From the start of this project, Hale tape-recorded and transcribed many hours of Warlpiri people talking about language, country, kin and diverse aspects of traditional life.

The Warlpiri people he recorded came from different parts of Warlpiri country, speaking their own distinctive varieties of the language. From this material, Hale hand-wrote the words and meanings on small slips of paper that could be sorted in different ways.

Read more: Friday essay: my belly is angry, my throat is in love - how body parts express emotions in Indigenous languages

Making a dictionary

Bilingual education was introduced in Northern Territory schools in the 1970s. It meant the Warlpiri communities needed a common spelling system.

In the early 1970s, at Lajamanu community, Warlpiri men † Maurice Luther Jupurrurla and †Marlurrku Paddy Patrick Jangala worked with linguist †Lothar Jagst to develop that spelling system. It was adopted in the new bilingual schools.

Dictionary work became a focus for the new linguist position at Yuendumu School, first filled in 1975 by the dictionary's chief compiler, Mary Laughren. She worked closely in the school with dictionary co-compiler †Jeannie Egan Nungarrayi.

Over the next four decades, in a type of early crowd-sourcing, more than 210 Warlpiri speakers from different Warlpiri communities worked on and off with Laughren and others. They found words (ultimately 11,000 plus), decided how to spell them, translated them into English, showed how they can be used in Warlpiri sentences, and provided the social, cultural and biological information that makes this a truly encyclopaedic dictionary.

Co-compiler †Marlurrku Paddy Patrick Jangala took on a mission to preserve the meanings of conceptually difficult and older words by writing definitions directly in Warlpiri. The 4,000 complex definitions in Warlpiri provide Warlpiri perspectives on the most important characteristics of each concept.

For example, in these two entries, both defined by †Marlurrku Paddy Patrick Jangala:

Kukuju-mardarni is like when a person is happy or is sitting on their own feeling satisfied, or is nodding off to sleep, or is smiling - a man or a woman feeling happy about something like a lover or about their spouse whom they desire or because their lover has sent them a message.
Kukuju-mardarni, ngulaji yangkakujaka yapa wardinyi manu yangka nyinami kurntakurntakarra manu yukukiri wantinja-karra manu yinkakarra karnta manu wati yangka wardinyi nyiya-rlanguku marda waninja-warnuku manu marda kali-nyanuku kujaka yangka wardu-pinyi manu marda yangka kujakarla jaru yilyamirni waninja-warnurlu.
And:

Jalangu is a day which is not tomorrow or not yesterday. It is today. It is the time of daylight that is now.
Jalangu, ngulaji yangka parra jukurra-wangu manu pirrarni-wangu, jalanguju. Yangka parra rdili kujaka karrimi jalanguju.
Then, there was the laborious task of checking the draft dictionary entries.

Computer scientists assisted with data management and experimented with an electronic display, called Kirrkirr. Kirrkirr users can type in a word and see a visual display of meanings connected to that word (for example, words with a similar meaning, or the opposite meaning). They can also hear it pronounced, and see examples of how the word is used in Warlpiri.

Experts (among them anthropologists, Bible translators, botanists and zoologists) helped to identify plants, animals and more.

And artists, including Jenny Taylor and Jenny Green, provided images they had created for the Institute for Aboriginal Development Press Picture Dictionary series and other publications.

Passing on Warlpiri language

Warlpiri people have been working to pass on their language, to ensure their children and grandchildren can speak it.

Tess Ross Napaljarri began working as a teaching assistant 50 years ago, setting up the Yuendumu bilingual education program. She has described how she learned to read and write Warlpiri. "We became partners with the teachers in how to teach the Warlpiri children," she says.

The children were learning their first language, Warlpiri, and second language, English, "and they were really smart on both languages". The commitment of Warlpiri people to bilingual education has been - and continues to be - enormous. Since 2005, they have dedicated royalty money through the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust into supporting this work.

Warlpiri want Warlpiri children to be able to speak for themselves in a meaningful way - in both English and Warlpiri. Today, many Warlpiri now live away from Warlpiri country.

Tess's niece, Bess Price Nungarrayi, is now assistant principal at Yipirinya School, on Arrernte country in Alice Springs. With more limited opportunities for hearing Warlpiri, Bess says the dictionary will be very useful in strengthening children's Warlpiri.

This bilingual dictionary has many audiences. Warlpiri people enriching their knowledge of their language, Warlpiri and non-Warlpiri teachers preparing learning materials, Ranger groups studying eco-systems on Warlpiri country. And anyone wanting to learn about Warlpiri language, history, natural history knowledge and culture.

It can help Warlpiri speakers translate complex Warlpiri words into English, and it's also an important tool for outsiders to learn Warlpiri - something Warlpiri people have long encouraged.

Read more: Friday essay: we are the voice - why we need more Indigenous editors

Future generations

Ormay Gallagher Nangala, a Warlpiri educator at the Bilingual Resources Development Unit, says:

Junga jintajinta-manulu nyurruwarnu-patu-wiyi ngulalpalu nyinaja, purlkapurlka wurlkumanu. And ngulajangkaju-ngalpa manurra, young people ka wangka school-rla karnalu warrki-jarri ngulalku, ngulangkalu jintajinta-manu and jungarlupa ngurrju-manu nyampu naa dictionary. Kurdu-kurdurlulu ngula nyanyi yangka.

The dictionary makers brought together information and intentions from the elders who have now passed away, the people who have been working in education for many years, and the future generations who will continue to learn Warlpiri.

This article was written with the collaboration of senior Warlpiri women Ormay Gallagher Nangala and Tess Ross Napaljarri.

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Six decades, 210 Warlpiri speakers and 11,000 words: how a groundbreaking First Nations dictionary was made

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The Warlpiri Dictionary has been 60 years in the making - and it's shortlisted for the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards, a rarity for a dictionary.

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https://theconversation.com/snapchats-creepy-ai-blunder-reminds-us-that-chatbots-arent-people-but-as-the-lines-blur-the-risks-grow-211744

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Artificial intelligence-powered (AI) chatbots are becoming increasingly human-like by design, to the point that some among us may struggle to distinguish between human and machine.

This week, Snapchat's My AI chatbot glitched and posted a story of what looked like a wall and ceiling, before it stopped responding to users. Naturally, the internet began to question whether the ChatGPT-powered chatbot had gained sentience.

A crash course in AI literacy could have quelled this confusion. But, beyond that, the incident reminds us that as AI chatbots grow closer to resembling humans, managing their uptake will only get more challenging - and more important.

From rules-based to adaptive chatbots

Since ChatGPT burst onto our screens late last year, many digital platforms have integrated AI into their services. Even as I draft this article on Microsoft Word, the software's predictive AI capability is suggesting possible sentence completions.

Read more: Google and Microsoft are bringing AI to Word, Excel, Gmail and more. It could boost productivity for us - and cybercriminals

Known as generative AI, this relatively new type of AI is distinguished from its predecessors by its ability to generate new content that is precise, human-like and seemingly meaningful.

Generative AI tools, including AI image generators and chatbots, are built on large language models (LLMs). These computational models analyse the associations between billions of words, sentences and paragraphs to predict what ought to come next in a given text. As OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever puts it, an LLM is

[...] just a really, really good next-word predictor.

Advanced LLMs are also fine-tuned with human feedback. This training, often delivered through countless hours of cheap human labour, is the reason AI chatbots can now have seemingly human-like conversations.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is still the flagship generative AI model. Its release marked a major leap from simpler "rules-based" chatbots, such as those used in online customer service.

Human-like chatbots that talk to a user rather than at them have been linked with higher levels of engagement. One study found the personification of chatbots leads to increased engagement which, over time, may turn into psychological dependence. Another study involving stressed participants found a human-like chatbot was more likely to be perceived as competent, and therefore more likely to help reduce participants' stress.

These chatbots have also been effective in fulfilling organisational objectives in various settings, including retail, education, workplace and healthcare settings.

Read more: The hidden cost of the AI boom: social and environmental exploitation

Google is using generative AI to build a "personal life coach" that will supposedly help people with various personal and professional tasks, including providing life advice and answering intimate questions.

This is despite Google's own AI safety experts warning that users could grow too dependant on AI and may experience "diminished health and wellbeing" and a "loss of agency" if they take life advice from it.

Friend or foe - or just a bot?

In the recent Snapchat incident, the company put the whole thing down to a " temporary outage ". We may never know what actually happened; it could be yet another example of AI "hallucinatng", or the result of a cyberattack, or even just an operational error.

Either way, the speed with which some users assumed the chatbot had achieved sentience suggests we are seeing an unprecedented anthropomorphism of AI. It's compounded by a lack of transparency from developers, and a lack of basic understanding among the public.

We shouldn't underestimate how individuals may be misled by the apparent authenticity of human-like chatbots.

Earlier this year, a Belgian man's suicide was attributed to conversations he'd had with a chatbot about climate inaction and the planet's future. In another example, a chatbot named Tessa was found to be offering harmful advice to people through an eating disorder helpline.

Chatbots may be particularly harmful to the more vulnerable among us, and especially to those with psychological conditions.

A new uncanny valley?

You may have heard of the "uncanny valley" effect. It refers to that uneasy feeling you get when you see a humanoid robot that almost looks human, but its slight imperfections give it away, and it ends up being creepy.

It seems a similar experience is emerging in our interactions with human-like chatbots. A slight blip can raise the hairs on the back of the neck.

One solution might be to lose the human edge and revert to chatbots that are straightforward, objective and factual. But this would come at the expense of engagement and innovation.

Education and transparency are key

Even the developers of advanced AI chatbots often can't explain how they work. Yet in some ways (and as far as commercial entities are concerned) the benefits outweigh the risks.

Generative AI has demonstrated its usefulness in big-ticket items such as productivity, healthcare, education and even social equity. It's unlikely to go away. So how do we make it work for us?

Since 2018, there has been a significant push for governments and organisations to address the risks of AI. But applying responsible standards and regulations to a technology that's more "human-like" than any other comes with a host of challenges.

Currently, there is no legal requirement for Australian businesses to disclose the use of chatbots. In the US, California has introduced a "bot bill" that would require this, but legal experts have poked holes in it - and the bill has yet to be enforced at the time of writing this article.

Moreover, ChatGPT and similar chatbots are made public as " research previews ". This means they often come with multiple disclosures on their prototypical nature, and the onus for responsible use falls on the user.

The European Union's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive regulation on AI, has identified moderate regulation and education as the path forward - since excess regulation could stunt innovation. Similar to digital literacy, AI literacy should be mandated in schools, universities and organisations, and should also be made free and accessible for the public.

Read more: Do we need a new law for AI? Sure - but first we could try enforcing the laws we already have

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Snapchat's 'creepy' AI blunder reminds us that chatbots aren't people. But as the lines blur, the risks grow

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Snapchat's AI-powered chatbot malfunctioned this week, raising questions of "sentience" among users. As AI becomes increasingly human-like, society must become AI-literate.

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https://theconversation.com/non-native-english-speaking-scientists-work-much-harder-just-to-keep-up-global-research-reveals-208750

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These days it's necessary to have at least a basic level of English proficiency in most research contexts. But at the same time, our collective emphasis on English places a significant burden on scientists who speak a different first language.

In research published today in PLOS Biology, my colleagues and I reveal the enormity of the language barrier faced by scientists who are non-native English speakers.

English has become essential in academic life

Scientists need to know English to extract knowledge from others' work, publish their findings, attend international conferences, and collaborate with their peers from around the world.

There's no doubt this poses a significant challenge for non-native English speakers, who make up more than 90% of the global population.

Yet there is a shocking lack of insight into how much extra effort non-native English speakers must invest in order to survive and thrive in their fields.

Making these hurdles visible is the first step towards achieving fair participation for scientists whose first language isn't English.

We launched the translatE project in 2019 with the aim of understanding the consequences of language barriers in science.

We surveyed 908 environmental scientists from eight countries - both native and non-native English speakers - and compared the amount of effort the individuals required to complete different scientific milestones.

Big hurdles to jump

Imagine you're a non-native English-speaking PhD student. Based on our findings, there are several major hurdles you'll need to overcome.

The first hurdle is reading papers: a prerequisite for scientists.

Compared to a fellow PhD student who happens to be a native English speaker, you'll need 91% more time to read a paper in English. This equates to an additional three weeks per year for reading the same number of papers.

The next big hurdle comes when trying to publish your own paper in English.

First, you'll need 51% more time to write the paper. Then you'll likely need someone to proofread your text, such as a professional editor.

That is if you can afford them. In Colombia, for instance, the cost of these services can be up to half the average monthly salary of a PhD student.

The bad news doesn't end there. On average, your papers will still be rejected 2.6 times more often by journals. If a paper isn't rejected, you'll be asked to revise it 12.5 times more often than your native English-speaking counterparts.

Read more: Long before Silicon Valley, scholars in ancient Iraq created an intellectual hub that revolutionised science

Attending international conferences is key to developing your research network. But you might hesitate to register because you "feel uncomfortable and embarrassed speaking in English", as one of our participants told us.

If you do decide to go and give a presentation, you'll need 94% more time to prepare for it, compared to a native-English speaker.

And to stay in academia, you'll need to overcome all of these hurdles again and again.

Language barriers have a widespread impact

These hurdles lead to considerable disadvantages for non-native English speakers. Our study participants expressed feeling "great stress and anxiety". They felt "incompetent and insecure", even as they made massive investments of time and money into their work.

We can imagine how such experiences might ultimately drive people out of scientific careers at an early stage.

One particularly unhelpful and shortsighted view is that language barriers are "their problem". In fact, language barriers have significant consequences for scientific communities more broadly, and for science itself.

Research has shown us that diversity in science delivers innovation and impact. Scientific work conducted by non-native English speakers has been, and will be, imperative to solving global challenges such as the biodiversity crisis.

If indeed, "much research remains unpublished due to language barriers" - as one of our participants said - we could be missing out on substantial scientific contributions from a number of intelligent minds.

What the scientific community can do

Historically, the scientific community has rarely provided genuine support for non-native English speakers. Instead, the task of overcoming language barriers has been left to individuals' own efforts.

There are a number of actions individuals, institutions, journals, funders and conference organisers can take to change this.

As a first step, journals could do more to provide English editing support to academics (as Evolution has started doing) and could accept multilingual publications (as the preprint server EcoEvoRxiv does).

Conference organisers also have myriad opportunities to support non-native English-speaking participants. For example, last year's Animal Behaviour Society conference incorporated a multilingual buddy program to improve inclusivity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may have a role to play, too. AI was widely used by our survey participants for English editing.

The British Ecological Society recently integrated an AI language editing tool into its journals' submission system. However, some journals have banned the use of such tools.

We believe it's worth exploring how the effective and ethical use of AI can help break down language barriers, especially since it can provide free or affordable editing to those who need it.

It's time to re-frame

I wish English was my first language.

This comment by one of our participants underscores the way non-native English speakers in science are often viewed by themselves and the whole community: through a deficit lens. The focus is solely on what's lacking.

We should, instead, view these people through an asset lens. By transferring information across language barriers, non-native English speakers provide diverse views that can't otherwise be accessed. They have an indispensable role in contributing to humanity's knowledge base.

The scientific community urgently needs to address language barriers so that future generations of non-native English speakers can proudly contribute to science. Only then can we all enjoy the full breadth of knowledge generated across the globe.

Read more: 3 reasons to study science communication beyond the West

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Non-native English speaking scientists work much harder just to keep up, global research reveals

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Our research found non-native English speakers face higher rejection rates and 12.5 times more revisions than their native English-speaking counterparts. But there are solutions.

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https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-of-warlpiri-language-shows-how-baby-talk-helps-little-kids-learn-to-speak-207835

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Carmel O'Shannessy, Author provided (no reuse)

Parents and other caregivers typically modify their speech when they talk to babies and young children.

They use simple sentences and special words, like "nana" for banana. They also speak slowly, use a higher pitch, and exaggerate the ups and downs of the "tune" of their speech. In many languages, caregivers also exaggerate their vowels in a process called "hyperarticulation".

Researchers refer to all these things as "child or infant-directed speech". But it is also commonly known as "motherese" or "baby talk".

Baby talk is used around the world. A 2022 study involving people from 187 countries showed adults can tell whether speech is intended for children or adults, even when they have no familiarity with the language being used.

Our new research looks at how baby talk works in the Australian Indigenous language Warlpiri.

Why do we use baby talk?

Simplifying speech and using baby talk modifications makes it easier for children to understand. But it also helps children regulate their emotions because it sounds more positive.

On top of this, the enhanced "tune" is thought to attract and maintain children's attention to speech and the exaggerated vowels help babies learn the sounds of languages.

However, almost all we know about the shape and purpose of baby talk is based on studies of a few European languages, Mandarin and Japanese.

These are languages spoken in predominantly western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic cultures. This excludes thousands of other languages spoken in the world.

For example, where most of the world's languages have just five to seven vowel sounds, many European languages, including English, have more than double that number, making those languages rather unusual. This raises the question of what modifications speakers use in other types of languages and cultures.

Do they use the same speech modifications to children? And if so, why?

Read more: Why 'baby talk' is good for your baby

Our research

Our research, published this month, investigates the use and purpose of child-directed speech in Warlpiri. Warlpiri is spoken in Central Australia by more than 3,000 people and has three vowel sounds: "i", "a", and "u", which correspond loosely to the vowels in "bee", "bah", and "boo" in English.

To compare vowels in words spoken to children to words spoken to adults, we videoed four Warlpiri-speaking caregivers in conversation with other familiar adults and four young children (aged between two and three) at their homes.

Our approach deliberately considers the real-life social contexts in which conversations are had. Most previous work has recorded interactions with children in lab settings, and then recorded caregiver-adult interactions separately, typically with an unfamiliar researcher.

Read more: Six decades, 210 Warlpiri speakers and 11,000 words: how a groundbreaking First Nations dictionary was made

Warlpiri baby talk helps children learn new words

Our study showed Warlpiri speakers, with just three vowels, also use pitch and vowel modifications in their speech to young children.

It is the first time a finding like this has been established.

This is similar to what English speakers do. But there are also important differences.

Firstly, Warlpiri speakers raise their pitch and change the quality of their vowels so that they sound more like vowels produced by children. This modification likely enhances the children's attention to speech. As other research has shown children prefer to listen to the voices of other children over adults.

Secondly, Warlpiri speakers use vowel modifications for a special teaching purpose.

Walpiri caregivers pronounce nouns with very clear and exaggerated vowels. This is different from how they pronounce vowels in other parts of speech, such as verbs. It is also very different from the way adult Walpiri speakers speak to each other. This helps little children learn new words by ensuring the names for things (often "toys" or "food") stand out in speech.

Adults are probably not aware of how their vowels sound, or how they are changing them. But they are aware of other aspects of how they change their speech in baby talk style. As Alice Nelson Napurrurla also told us:

When we are sitting and talking with the little ones, we must always use their words [...] like when we say 'mangarri' [food], 'miyi' [vegetable food], they say 'nyanya' [food]. Or when we say 'jinta-kari', 'jinta-kari' means 'another one', but the little ones they use 'jija-jayi' [another one] [...] we've got to use their language.

Our study is the first to observe that caregivers use vowel and pitch modifications to achieve two different goals at the same time: to hold child attention and to teach the names for things.

We believe they are able to do this because Warlpiri has only three vowels. By contrast, a new study of Danish, which has more than 20 vowels, revealed Danish caregivers make their speech slower and exaggerate the "tune" but do not hyperarticulate their vowels. This shows us while baby talk might be a universal phenomenon, the vowel inventory of each language plays an important role in determining what strategies caregivers can use.

Read more: Lots of kids are 'late talkers'. Here's when to take action

What next?

Our research shows again how baby talk is not an affectation or a silly thing adults do. It helps little children learn language.

Warlpiri caregivers make sophisticated use of baby talk modifications, showing the importance of further research on the shape and function of child-directed speech in diverse languages from across the world.

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A new study of Warlpiri language shows how 'baby talk' helps little kids learn to speak

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Previous studies of baby talk have focussed on European languages, Mandarin and Japanese. For the first time, research looks at an Australian Indigenous language.

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https://theconversation.com/a-silver-lining-from-the-pandemic-how-lockdowns-helped-kids-learn-the-languages-their-parents-speak-205012

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None of us is a stranger to the downsides of the pandemic. For families with kids, kindergartens and schools closed during the lockdown, and parents had to manage schooling and working from home.

Yet there is a silver lining: our research shows that, in families where a parent's mother tongue is not the language spoken in wider society, children learned more about that language during lockdowns.

Let's call the language these parents speak the "home language" and the language society uses the "societal language". Take me as an example: at home I speak Shanghainese with my mum, Mandarin with dad, and Telepath with my cat. But in the community and at work, I speak English, the societal language.

To many multilingual families, our kids' home language often comes second to the societal language, which dominates their language development as they grow up. When parents witness this transition, they fear their children will gradually lose the ability to use the language they speak. They fear that, as a consequence, their children will lose touch with their roots.

Along with my colleagues, Elisabet García González and Elizabeth Lanza, we conducted a survey of around 200 multilingual families in Norway (published in the journal Multilingua). Parents expressed their concerns about their children's development of home and societal languages. For example, one said:

Since our daughter mostly speaks [home language] with her father and [societal language] with me and at kindergarten (although her father and I exclusively speak [home language] to each other), her [home language] is generally less advanced than her [societal language] [...]

Multilingual children rarely use all their languages in the same contexts or with the same frequency. This is often perceived as being more or less "advanced" in one language than the other, but in reality multilingual speakers use their languages as best fits their needs.

Despite these concerns, there was a silver lining. Our study found children's home language literacy improved during the pandemic. The parents who reported the concern above later said:

We've clearly noticed that her spoken [home language] has developed during the lockdown.

Another family told us:

With the two-year-old, I noticed an improvement in her [home language] vocabulary while kindergarten was closed.

What is the reason for this improvement in the home language? As one family shared:

My children started to be interested and speak more [home language] during the lockdown. Assume this is a result of (us) working from home for an international company and them hearing mum use this (home) language.

Another said:

My kids have started using more [home language] in their [societal language] speech with parents and each other during the lockdown, because they are watching more YouTube and playing Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Zelda. Words from the games are difficult to translate into [societal language].

Our statistical analyses had something even more interesting to say: the improvement of a child's home language made their parents feel more positive about their children being multilingual. Parents see it as a source of wellbeing, especially when they notice their child is picking up their mother tongue. Overall, family relationships, resilience, cultural connection and hope are boosted even in the darkest days of the pandemic.

Is this at the expense of the societal language, one may ask? Indeed, some parents were worried about the development of kids' societal language, especially when it was not spoken at home. Others said the societal language was still being used during the lockdown, such as in online media. One parent said:

My son is a bit behind the level of the class. He really improved his [societal language] reading during the lockdown, since we had more time to individually support him in a positive way. Before, he was much more negative.

Another family told us:

The difference (in language use) was noticeable when the kindergarten reopened. [Societal language] came back for the kids as easily as restarting to ride a bike.

The societal language is often strong in young children - sometimes so strong that it can bully the home language into a corner. The key task for many multilingual families is not so much to find a balance between the two languages, but to make sure the home language is being actively used and not being overshadowed by the societal language.

Unity is important in society. Being able to speak a common language is important, but equity and diversity are important too. The ability to speak one's mother tongue can become a source of belonging and wellbeing.

In addition, children growing up in a culturally and linguistically diverse environment tend to be more flexible. Their neurocognitive plasticity shines across developmental domains, from language learning to music perception.

So the pandemic lockdowns were bad, but not all bad. Our kids adapt and adjust to the new environment, and can surprise us with stronger skills that make mum and dad proud.

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A silver lining from the pandemic: how lockdowns helped kids learn the languages their parents speak

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Amid all the stresses of lockdowns, our research found there was some good news: children had the chance to better develop their home language.

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https://theconversation.com/research-on-2-400-languages-shows-nearly-half-the-worlds-language-diversity-is-at-risk-204014

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There are more than 7,000 languages in the world, and their grammar can vary a lot. Linguists are interested in these differences because of what they tell us about our history, our cognitive abilities and what it means to be human.

But this great diversity is threatened as more and more languages aren't taught to children and fall into slumber.

In a new paper published in Science Advances, we've launched an extensive database of language grammars called Grambank. With this resource, we can answer many research questions about language and see how much grammatical diversity we may lose if the crisis isn't stopped.

Our findings are alarming: we're losing languages, we're losing language diversity, and unless we do something, these windows into our collective history will close.

What is grammar?

The grammar of a language is the set of rules that determines what a sentence is in that language, and what is gibberish. For example, tense is obligatory in English. To combine "Sarah", "write" and "paper" into a well-formed sentence, I have to indicate a time. If you don't have tense in an English sentence, then it's not grammatical.

That's not the case in all languages though. In the indigenous language of Hokkaido Ainu in Japan, speakers don't need to specify time at all. They can add words such as "already" or "tomorrow" - but speakers consider the sentence correct without them.

As the great anthropologist Franz Boas once said:

grammar [...] determines those aspects of each experience that must be expressed.

Linguists aren't interested in "correct" grammar. We know grammar changes over time and from place to place - and that variation isn't a bad thing to us, it's amazing!

By studying these rules across languages, we can get an insight into how our minds work, and how we transfer meaning from ourselves to others. We can also learn about our history, where we come from, and how we got here. It's rather extraordinary.

Read more: Meet the remote Indigenous community where a few thousand people use 15 different languages

A huge linguistic database of grammar

We're thrilled to release Grambank into the world. Our team of international colleagues built it over several years by reading many books about language rules, and speaking to experts and community members about specific languages.

It was a difficult task. Grammars of different languages can be very different from each other. Moreover, different people have different ways of describing how these rules work. Linguists love jargon, so it was a special challenge to understand them sometimes.

In Grambank, we used 195 questions to compare more than 2,400 languages - including two signed languages. The map below provides an overview of what we have captured.

Each dot represents a language, and the more similar the colour, the more similar the languages. To create this map, we used a technique called "principal component analysis" - it reduced the 195 questions to three dimensions, which we then mapped onto red, green and blue.

The large variation in colours reveals how different all these languages are from each other. Where we get regions with similar colours, such as in the Pacific, this could mean the languages are related, or that they have borrowed a lot from each other.

Language is very special to humans; it's part of what makes us who we are.

Sadly, the world's indigenous languages are facing an endangerment crisis due to colonisation and globalisation. We know each language lost heavily impacts the health of Indigenous individuals and communities by severing ties to ancestry and traditional knowledge.

Read more: People on Vanuatu's Malekula Island speak more than 30 Indigenous languages. Here's why we must record them

Almost half the world's linguistic diversity is threatened

In addition to the loss of individual languages, our team wanted to understand what we stand to lose in terms of grammatical diversity.

The Grambank database reveals a dazzling variety of languages around the world - a testament to the human capacity for change, variation and ingenuity.

Using an ecological measure of diversity, we assessed what kind of loss we could expect if languages that are currently under threat were to disappear. We found certain regions will be hit harder than others.

Frighteningly, some regions of the world such as South America and Australia are expected to lose all of their indigenous linguistic diversity, because all of the indigenous languages there are threatened. Even other regions where languages are relatively safe, such as the Pacific, South-East Asia and Europe, still show a dramatic decrease of about 25%.

What's next?

Without sustained support for language revitalisation, many people will be harmed and our shared linguistic window into human history, cognition and culture will become seriously fragmented.

The United Nations declared 2022-2032 the Decade of Indigenous Languages. Around the world, grassroots organisations including the Ngukurr Language Centre, Noongar Boodjar Language Centre, and the Canadian Heiltsuk Cultural Education Centre are working towards language maintenance and revitalisation. To get a feel for what this can be like, check out this interactive animation by Angelina Joshua.

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Research on 2,400 languages shows nearly half the world's language diversity is at risk

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A new, extensive database of language grammars from around the world indicates an alarming trend of global language loss.

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https://theconversation.com/that-is-the-language-they-understand-why-indigenous-students-need-bilingual-teaching-at-school-210559

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Last month, the federal government released the annual Closing the Gap data.

According to the report, 34.3% of Indigenous preschoolers were starting school developmentally on track, compared to almost 55% of non-Indigenous Australian students as of 2021.

About 68% of Indigenous people aged 20-24 years had attained Year 12 or equivalent as of 2021, with a target of 96% by 2031.

Speaking about the Closing the Gap report, Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney noted her disappointment about the results.

The gap is not closing fast enough. I know many people are frustrated by the lack of progress.

But are these reports asking the right questions? Many Indigenous children who do not speak English at home struggle with English at school. This suggests some poor education outcomes may arise from cross-language difficulties.

Our new study investigated children speaking Kriol.

This is the largest Indigenous language after English in Australia. Kriol-speaking children make up the largest group of Indigenous kids with English as a second language.

What is Kriol?

Kriol is the result of contact in the 19th century between speakers of Indigenous languages and English, and many Kriol words come from English.

Kriol has been called "broken English". But Kriol is neither "broken", nor English. It is a separate language with its own grammar and vocabulary.

Recognition of the language barrier experienced by Kriol-speaking children has been delayed by two unfortunate assumptions. One is that Kriol is a dialect of Australian English or Aboriginal English, not a separate language.

The other assumption is Kriol is "highly variable" and speakers use many versions of Kriol - including some that are very similar to English. As a consequence, it has been assumed Kriol-speaking children won't struggle to learn in English when they get to school.

Read more: Explainer: the largest language spoken exclusively in Australia - Kriol

Our research

Our research investigated children's use of Kriol for the first time.

We spoke to 13 children between four and seven. The children were all students at Wugularr School (also called Beswick) in the Northern Territory. The community language in Wugularr is Kriol, but a range of traditional languages are also spoken.

Less than 1% of the population in Wugularr only speak English at home. Children first learn English when they start preschool.

Our findings

We used two game-like activities to test children's knowledge of Kriol words and sounds.

In one activity we showed the children a picture of a familiar object (such as a door or an apple) accompanied by a recording in Kriol asking, "what's this?". The kids then spoke the word.

In the other "game", we played recordings of Kriol words - some produced the right way, and some produced with an error. For example, "diger" for "tiger" and "abble" for "apple". We then used a recorded Kriol prompt asking if the lady in the recording said the word the right or wrong way. (The students found this really hilarious - an adult making so many mistakes!)

These activities showed students had a good knowledge of the sounds of Kriol and the correct shape of words in Kriol, which are important pre-literacy skills. This showed they are ready to learn to read, just not in English.

This also demonstrated very substantial linguistic differences between English and Kriol. This means Kriol-speaking children are not speakers of English, and that they do not effortlessly "slide" into a version of Kriol that is "close enough" to pass for English as a consequence of formal schooling in English.

The need for bilingual education

Our research shows Kriol-speaking children face similar difficulties when they start school as children from other non-English speaking backgrounds.

In an ideal setting, students would be given a bilingual education. This means Indigenous children would be able to use their First Language knowledge and cultural knowledge as a foundation for learning.

Teaching assistant and linguist Hilda Ngalmi is a Wubuy/Nunggubuyu woman from Numbulwar, where Kriol is widely spoken. She collaborated with us on the research. As she explains:

When I teach kids, I have to explain to them in Kriol first. Because that is the language they understand.

The need for bilingual education for children who speak traditional Indigenous languages has been debated for decades in Australia. Support has waxed and waned and today only a small number schools offer a genuine bilingual education.

However, where it does happen, it is having positive results.

For example, Yirrkala School in Northeastern Arnhem Land teaches students " both ways " in local language Yolngu Matha and English. In 2020, eight students became the first in their community to graduate Year 12, with university entry-level scores.

Not making the most of children's First Language competence creates additional learning barriers for Indigenous children. If we really want to "close the gap", our education system needs to support students to learn in a bilingual environment.

Read more: Why more schools need to teach bilingual education to Indigenous children

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'That is the language they understand': why Indigenous students need bilingual teaching at school

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A new study investigated children's use of Kriol language at the Wugularr School in the Northern Territory.

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https://theconversation.com/how-witch-hunts-and-stockholm-syndrome-became-part-of-political-language-and-what-it-has-to-do-with-wrestling-209375

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It's hard to sympathise with powerful people hounding out innocents - which is why the Coalition wanted us to know the Robodebt Royal Commission was a political witch-hunt. Poor Donald Trump wants us to know he's the victim of a witch-hunt, too.

To be fair, maybe the Coalition and Trump are trading on the good reputation of witches. After all, a 2013 poll found most Americans preferred witches (also cockroaches and haemorrhoids) to politicians.

But much like polls, political terms tell us something about society and language. Words like "witch-hunt" take us on an illustrative - and sometimes illusory - journey through metaphor, semantics and the politics of, believe it or not, professional wrestling.

Read more: Brekkies, barbies, mozzies: why do Aussies shorten so many words?

The cynical political power of metaphor

Pollies and pundits love metaphors. In fact, we all do. They are the containers you put ideas in before you hand them over to the world. And they can be shiny linguistic confetti for the brain.

Going back as far as Aristotle, scholars have emphasised the ability of metaphors to bring to mind new aspects of the world and new ways of understanding reality. They have been shown to be effective pedagogical tools, and their therapeutic value is well established.

Metaphors can be helpful - but they can also be harmful.

Good political metaphors can move a nation. Post-war Australian Prime Minister Ben Chiefly's "light on the hill" had good pedigree (the Sermon on the Mount) and a positive message ("betterment of mankind" in Australia and beyond).

But the pedigree and message of political metaphors can get dark, very fast. When Premier Dan Andrews was up in the polls, some political pundits accused Victorians of suffering from "Stockholm syndrome" - a traumatic bonding as might happen between captives and their abusers. Metaphorical uses of this controversial condition, and the domains it's been applied to, have grown exponentially since the 1970s.

Metaphors are effective spin doctors when it comes creating political realities and influencing public perceptions, all the more so in the current climate of general scepticism towards experts. "Knowing stuff isn't enough", as one article put it. Two epoch-making events, Brexit and Trump, were bankrolled by persuasive metaphors.

Cappuccinos and witch-hunts

It's not hard to find bizarre examples of powerful people moulding language and others accepting it. At a café in tech company WeWork's headquarters, the "cappuccinos" were called "lattes" because CEO Adam Neumann insisted they were.

"Witch-hunt" is a particularly egregious use of metaphor. When the term first appeared (originally as witch-hunter) in the 1600s, literal witch-hunts empowered some people at the expense of others to cope with the unknown - failed crops and things that went bump in the night.

But at a deeper level, witch-hunts often served to settle personal grudges and punish (largely) women who didn't conform to a community's expectations. Most importantly, witch-hunts were at the discretion of the powerful and at the expense of the less powerful.

"Witch-hunt" has had metaphorical and political currency for more than a hundred years. It's been drawn into many 20th century debates, including racial politics in Canadian elections (1900) and, perhaps most famously, US Senator Joseph McCarthy's (1940s-1950s) campaign against communism. Links between McCarthyism and witch-hunts strengthened with Arthur Miller's 1953 play about the Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible - which was an allegory of McCarthyism.

In the 21st century, "witch-hunt" has become the go-to metaphor for powerful people, especially men, evading scrutiny. The persecution of Harvey Weinstein led some, like Woody Allen, to claim a witch-hunt of Hollywood men was afoot.

And, perhaps most famously, Donald Trump - by his own account - is a prolific victim of witch-hunts - whether through investigations of his business practices, his nominees to government positions or his practices as president.

In short, there's a bit of blatant, moral inversion at work here. Witch-hunts left many thousands of victims in their wake - usually the less powerful at the hands of the powerful. Now, the powerful are invoking "witch-hunt" as a metaphorical and moral shield, and to claim victimhood.

Read more: From 'technicolour yawn' to 'draining the dragon': how Barry Humphries breathed new life into Australian slang

Language, kayfabe and keeping the bastards honest

Frank Luntz - the Republican Party pollster who helped shift the debate from "global warming" to "climate change" - has aptly pointed out, "it's not what you say, it's what people hear".

Increasingly, we don't hear the same things.

Studies of Trump's speeches suggest he speaks at a 4th-6th grade level. Some have celebrated supposed empirical proof that Trump is a dummy. Others point out this makes him more accessible. Trump's fan-base loves that he speaks to them in their language - and it's a robust finding in linguistics that this is exactly what he should do.

But witchcraft and similar metaphors point to a more sinister strategy. When it comes to language, some of us want a fact-based debate, whereas others want a pro-wrestling spectacle. More than a few scholars and journalists have drawn parallels between something called "kayfabe" and contemporary politics - especially right-wing politics.

Kayfabe is a pro-wrestling term referring to "the performance of staged and 'faked' events as actual and spontaneous". In other words, we know wrestling is scripted and the wrestlers know we know it's scripted, but we all maintain the pretence of believing it isn't. The same can be true for political language.

An even more understated part of kayfabe are the "marks" - they are the ones who don't know it's all scripted.

So, we're faced with witch-hunts, lynchings and Stockholm syndrome. People don't hear the same thing, and even if they do, it may or may not be real. Language as a social contract has more loopholes than footholds.

Journalist and essayist Abraham Josephine Riesman, lamenting the impact of kayfabe on US politics, might be observing language when she writes:

perhaps the only antidote [...]is radical honesty. It's less fun, but it tends to do less material harm, in the long term.

We love metaphors, but accountability and honest debate disappear in a mist of kayfabe when powerful people use them. But metaphorical meaning requires collaboration - sometimes we just have to say, no, actually, that's a cappuccino.

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How 'witch-hunts' and 'Stockholm syndrome' became part of political language (and what it has to do with wrestling)

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How politicians have cynically used metaphor to imply meaning through language.

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https://theconversation.com/do-languages-become-less-complex-with-more-new-adult-speakers-research-shows-its-not-that-simple-211732

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If you've ever seen Monty Python's Life of Brian, you might remember that Romanes eunt domus means "Romans go home". Or does it? Isn't domus the nominative? Shouldn't we be using the dative? Or is it the accusative?

Grammar is very complicated, especially if you are learning a new language. And if lots of people have to learn a new language, wouldn't it be easier to make things simpler?

This is an intriguing idea linguists have previously proposed: languages lots of people learn as adults should tend to change over time to have simpler grammar, to accommodate the needs of learners who lack children's sponge-like facility for picking up a new lingo.

However, in a new study in Science Advances, we analysed more than 1,200 languages to show this idea is not true, dashing the hopes of language learners worldwide.

How many words for 'the dog' do you need?

The theory of grammatical simplicity and non-native speakers has thrived because it seems intuitively reasonable.

Just as more non-native speakers should lead to simpler grammar, languages primarily spoken by native speakers should become more complex. This is because children can readily learn arbitrary grammatical rules and, as we collectively become more familiar with a language, we can encode more information in language more efficiently.

Read more: Most assume writing systems get simpler. But 3,600 years of Chinese writing show it's getting increasingly complex

For example, in the relatively isolated language of Iceland, there are three different word forms for "the dog", depending on what the dog is doing in a given sentence: hundurinn, hundinn and hundinum (the nominative, accusative, and dative forms, respectively). But speakers of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, three countries historically in more regular contact with each other, simply use hunden in all scenarios.

It's nice to think we can bend our language rules to accommodate newcomers and neighbours. But is this example just an anecdote, or does it indicate a universal feature of language change where languages evolve in different ways depending on who speaks them?

Putting the theory to the test

To test this theory we used a global database of grammatical features called Grambank.

From the database, we created two measures of grammatical complexity for each language: fusion, which depends on how much the language uses features such as prefixes and suffixes, and informativity, which shows how many pieces of grammatical information must be present for sentences to make sense.

Using these measures, we modelled the relationship between complexity, social and demographic factors (such as numbers of native and non-native speakers), and language status (such as whether the language is a national language or is used in education).

We also took into account the historical origins of languages. For example, French and Italian are similar because both descended from Latin. This process creates "trees" of languages, like the picture of the Uralic languages family above.

Grammar changes more slowly than populations

Our results show how language complexity evolved alongside the number of native - and non-native - speakers of each language. Contrary to the hypothesis, it seems that changes in grammatical complexity are too slow to be affected by the ebbs and flows of new adult speakers.

A good example of this is German, which is learned and spoken by a large number of non-native speakers who must navigate its case system, three genders, verbal agreement, and a multitude of other grammatical distinctions. For example, anyone learning German needs to remember whether every single noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter, like the feminine fork ( die Gabel), the masculine spoon ( der Löffel), and the neuter knife ( das Messer).

Read more: Research on 2,400 languages shows nearly half the world's language diversity is at risk

Instead, we found the patterns of grammatical complexity we observe today are more likely to have arisen through a combination of historical language change and contact with other languages.

Our study shows how large-scale datasets and rigorous methods can shed new light on long-standing questions about what makes grammar more or less complex.

And although we found no evidence for the impact of non-native language speakers on grammatical complexity, there are still many more questions to explore about how social and demographic changes might influence the way we communicate with each other.

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Do languages become less complex with more new adult speakers? Research shows it's not that simple

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The idea a language should grow simpler if people need to learn it as adults has an intuitive appeal. But an analysis of more than 1,200 languages shows this doesn't quite stack up.

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https://theconversation.com/is-australian-rhyming-slang-in-a-bit-of-froth-and-bubble-lets-take-a-captain-cook-spoiler-the-billy-lids-may-hold-the-key-186731

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Have you heard? Barry Crocker's having a ... well, Barry Crocker ("shocker") of a time with those Reg Grundies ("undies") people.

everywhere can relate - they know it's up when your name gets swept up in social parlance.

And sure, Crocker has a point. We've got to draw the line somewhere when these corporate Noahs ("sharks", from "Noah's Ark") claim our names.

But we reckon having your name become part of the old Jack Lang ("slang") - especially Aussie rhyming slang - is apples ("nice", from "apples and spice"). So let's take a Captain Cook ("look") at what's so special about rhyming slang.

Terces segaugnal: enter the world of secret languages

Over the years there have been many secret languages in English, and all of them distort words in some way, often with remarkable skill. Particularly impressive is the flip-flop of backslang, when words are said backwards - "secret languages" becomes "terces segaugnal" ( yob "boy" is a rare survivor of Victorian-era backslang).

The disguise prevents bystanders or eavesdroppers from understanding what's being said, but mainly it operates a bit like a "clique" or in-group recognition device. Being able to manipulate language in this way means you're automatically part of the gang - it's also a matter of identifying what's become routine for those involved, much like slang and jargon generally.

There's the fun of the game, too, and rhyming slang is a real lexical and etymological pass the parcel. Often we don't even know we're playing it. Sidney Baker gives a wonderful example: Melbourne ("back") from Melbourne Grammar ("hammer") from hammer and tack ("back"), which, it so happens, is also rhyming slang for zac ("sixpence") - so Melbourne is also a "sixpence"!

Read more: Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn't carked it, but we do want to know more about it

The comic cuts ("guts") of Aussie rhymin' Jack Lang

There's no sign of rhyming slang before the 1800s. Not a single example appears in the first edition of Captain Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (from 1785). Dating early slang is tricky, especially if it's a secret language, but if rhyming slang had been around then, it would be among Grose's 4,000 colloquialisms and vulgarisms.

The earliest reference to it occurs in John Camden Hotten's 1859 slang dictionary. Hotten suggests this kind of slang "was introduced about twelve or fifteen years ago".

People assume it began life within criminal language, and certainly this was where it was first discovered. But most likely it was the lexical invention of Cockney and Irish navvies (labourers in civil engineering projects). It later made its way into the "flash language" of the Victorian underworld.

These beginnings explain the presence of rhyming slang in early Australian English. The first recorded example (1844) is Jimmy Grant or jimmygrant for "immigrant". Whoever he was, Jimmy Grant went on to inspire the Pom/Pommy, short for pomegranate ( Pommy Grant, also "immigrant"). The Australian National Dictionary has a lovely account of the word play around the jimmies and the pommies.

Other early examples date from the late 1800s (like rubbity dub "pub"), although most of today's survivors are from the 1900s, including favourites like dead horse ("sauce") and she's apples.

"Australian" rhyming slang in the USA

Our seppo chinas ("mates" from "china plates") haven't taken up rhyming slang as much as we Aussies. In the US, rhyming slang has largely stayed in the criminal underworld - it's been popular among prisoners and white supremacists.

But it may surprise you to learn that rhyming slang in the US underworld was called "Australian slang". This may be linked to the arrival of Australian criminals, the Sydney Ducks, on the US goldfields in the mid-19th century. The Ducks later did a Harold Holt ("bolt") and left the US - they also may have left a word or two, and the label "Australian slang".

Regardless, the Australian-ness of US rhyming slang is certainly in doubt. When a US expert on slang and argots, David W. Maurer, sent a list of 352 rhyming slang terms to Sidney Baker, the latter found fewer than 3% of these terms were Australian - just like many of our so-called Americanisms aren't in fact American English.

Jimmy, Herby and Oscar: the grocer's cart ("heart") of Aussie rhyming slang

Rhyming slang is still much loved if the amount of talk is anything to go by.

As part of a wider project on Aussie slang, we examined articles from The Australian and The Age from 1996-2020 and found that, respectively, 7.32% and 10.70% of references to "slang" were to "rhyming slang". We can compare this to combined references to "Australian slang" or "Aussie slang", which clocked in at 7.01% and 9.05%.

But what is it about the old Jack Lang - this Aussie rhyming slang?

We reckon rhyming slang hits that sweet spot of secret, taboo and irreverent humour. For instance, every good Aussie knows that a seppo is full of shit ( Yank-> septic tank-> septic-> seppo) - but a seppo doesn't necessarily.

However, whether it's Jimmy Dancer ("cancer"), Herby de Groote ("root") or Oscar Ache ("cash"), rhyming slang also gives us a way to discuss things that make us squeamish - like disease, sex and money.

Read more: Orright you spunkrats, here's where all our Aussie summertime language came from

Is the rhyming Jack Lang in for some froth and bubble?

Barry Crocker might be getting his Reg Grundies in a knot over the ad, but if our recent survey is an indicator, rhyming slang is in for some froth and bubble ("trouble").

We surveyed more than 2,300 Australians on their use of Australian words. Most rhyming slang examples came from participants who were 60 or older.

What's happening? It's hard to know for sure, but slangs are like this - they don't age well. We can't expect those billy lids ("kids") to love the same words as us.

In fact, billy's a great example of this process - it might be giving way to a new slang homonym billy, referring to a "bong" (likely a play on billabong). (For those not in the know, a billy is a special kind of cherry ripe "pipe".)

And, in closing, it is worth noting our survey shows another glimmer of hope for rhyming slang. One grandmother in the survey said:

"I taught Reg Grundies to my granddaughter. She thinks it's funny. She is 7."

Sidney Baker long ago pointed out that Australian rhyming slang's popularity comes and goes in waves of vogue. Perhaps there's a new generation of rhyming slang users on the horizon. And right now, we're pinning our hope on the under-10 set.

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Is Australian rhyming slang in a bit of froth and bubble? Let's take a Captain Cook (spoiler: the billy lids may hold the key)

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Have you heard? Barry Crocker's having a ... well, Barry Crocker ("shocker") of a time with those Reg Grundies ("undies") people. everywhere can relate - they know it's up when your name gets swept up in social parlance. And sure, Crocker has a point.

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https://theconversation.com/yeah-nah-aussie-slang-hasnt-carked-it-but-we-do-want-to-know-more-about-it-165746

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Writer C.R Read cautioned in 1853 "that Englishmen going to the Australian digging should search their souls and ask themselves 'if they can stand a little colonial slang'".

This slang - our Australian slang - has been a lightning rod for pride, prejudice and confusion. "Dustbin language" writes one (not a huge fan), "people's poetry" writes another (we'd agree).

Expressions like budgie smugglers, fair suck of the Siberian sandshoe or flat out like a lizard drinking may not be the stuff of great literature and poetry, but they draw on the same devices: metaphor, irony and features of sound such as alliteration.

We know what you're thinking: "Yeah, nah. Aussie slang's carked it. When was the last time you heard someone say "cobber" or "dinkum"?" Fairly recently, actually -- we're starting to collect these terms, and rest assured, we're finding them.

Read more: Get yer hand off it, mate, Australian slang is not dying

What's interesting about Australian slang

What's interesting about Australian slang -- as far as "slang" goes -- is the mere fact that some of these words stick around for so long, and that we still call them slang. They may not be part of your everyday lingo, but they can have a special place in your heart.

And heaps of grouse Aussie words have been doing the hard yakka for decades- grouse is around 100 years old. Mate is even older, even though since the 1930s people have been worrying about its well-being. First it was the arrival of digger, then the threat of buddy or pal. Now we worry mate will die at the hands of dude.

But which words go, and which words stay, and which ones stay slangy? And why do we love this language so much?

Getting to the bottom of Australian slang

We could try to answer these questions by collecting data in a survey -- and we are doing just that. We can also look at the results others have gathered. We're doing that, too. And we can give you a teaser of what we've found.

ABC radio stations around the country have asked their listeners: "What do you think is the greatest Aussie slang word or phrase?". Out of more than 1,000 unique phrases, the answer is (drum roll please!) -- various versions of mate, followed by yeah, nah (though mate gets unfairly boosted because it's tagged onto so many favourites like g'day mate).

Another place to look is in contexts where our knowledge about slang is made explicit. We're fortunate to have such a data source: The Age newspaper runs a daily quiz on its puzzles page, and questions about slang appear occasionally. A sample from April 2006 until March 2021 contains 109 such questions (that's about one slang question every six weeks).

Of those 109 questions, 26 explicitly mention Australian slang and another two mention Australian rhyming slang. Three expressions are repeated ( furphy and spit the dummy each occur four times, and daks twice). This means there are 19 expressions identified as Australian, plus the two rhyming slang expressions-- actually another of the 19 ( cheese and kisses "missus") is rhyming slang too, but not identified as such. Here's the full list:

A cabinet of linguistic wonders

A curious collection, you might well be thinking. And you'd be right.

It has a few staples of you-beaut Aussie lingo, some minted in this country ( sanger, snag, drongo). Many are part of everyday language ( furphy, bogan), and some we've even gifted to the rest of the world ( ratbag and its offspring ratbaggery, spitting the dummy). Shortenings like mozzie are also being exported (and let's not forget the global Aussie rockstar selfie). These shortenings are thriving, as any sparky or garbo could tell you.

There are also a few lexical zombies on this list. When did you last use like a Bondi tram, or pineapple for that matter, unless you're getting the rough end of it. This pineapple, though, is the A$50 note (compare the $5 prawn, $10 blue (swimmer), $20 lobster and $100 avo). They're slang curiosities - rarely heard but still loved.

There are those on this list that (wait for it) were originally American English. True, pinpointing the origins of slang is notoriously difficult, but have a gander "to look" does make its first appearance in early 1900s American criminal slang. Even illywhacker takes its inspiration from American spieler "con-man" (it needs some fossicking to track down illy's origin in the word "eeler-spee", a transposition of spieler).

Others on this quiz list were once British English, but we've given them an Aussie makeover. Strides originally referred to pantaloons with plenty of stride. And daks, a blend of Dad and slack(s), was the exclusive label of Simpson's of Piccadilly; it lives on in our beloved trackie daks (these days our pandemic pants) and newly minted dack "to steal something" (presumably by shoving it down your daks).

Dunny comes from dunnakin underworld slang for what was known euphemistically as "the necessary" ( danna "dung" + ken "house"). Even the thunderbox isn't our own. Its origin is unquestionably British, as is the mandarin "senior public servant", though we see its potential as Aussie rhyming slang mandarin duck.

Read more: How Australians talk about tucker is a story that'll make you want to eat the bum out of an elephant

Looking for the good oil on Aussie slang

"Who gives a mandarin"? We do, because there's a special place in our cabinet of lexical wonders for slang and we want to know more about it. You'll find long lists on the internet, and it features large in these quizzes. However, people disagree about what is or isn't slang, whether or not something is Aussie, whether slang is dying, and what any of this means to us Aussies.

Slang is different things to different people. There are some contexts in which it can be presumed, and others in which it requires a lot more discussion, and a lot more sleuthing. Don't leave us on our Pat Malone. We'd be happy as Larry if you could share some of your knowledge of Aussie slang with us.

You can take our survey here. Onya mate!

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Yeah, nah: Aussie slang hasn't carked it, but we do want to know more about it

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Writer C.R Read cautioned in 1853 "that Englishmen going to the Australian digging should search their souls and ask themselves 'if they can stand a little colonial slang'". This slang - our Australian slang - has been a lightning rod for pride, prejudice and confusion.

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https://www.skynews.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity-life/extraordinary-aussie-vernacular-barry-humphries-contribution-to-australias-language/video/3657e4684b859c56e4e7029b9743e738

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Sky News host Rowan Dean says one of the late Barry Humphries most "extraordinary legacies" is his contribution to Australia's language.

"He created some of the most amazing expressions, others he borrowed, but he gave us the most colourful and extraordinary Aussie Vernacular which he took to the world.

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'Extraordinary aussie vernacular': Barry Humphries contribution to Australia's language

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Sky News host Rowan Dean says one of the late Barry Humphries most "extraordinary legacies" is his contribution to Australia's language. "He created some of the most amazing expressions, others he borrowed, but he gave us the most colourful and extraordinary Aussie Vernacular which he took to the world.

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https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2023/06/28/re-imagining-australia-using-a-multilingual-lens.html

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A newly launched virtual archive of rarely known non-English speaking resources about Australia is hoping to challenge the Anglocentrism of the country's history and shed new light on the role of language in shaping Australian identity.

As part of ongoing research into how users of different languages experience Australia, the 'Opening the Multilingual Archives of Australia' (OMAA) project brings together historical materials referencing Australia in over 50 languages other than English.

The extensive virtual archive, now open to the public, draws on letters and diaries, newspapers, notes, personal papers and more to provide a new realm of sources for examining and unpacking Australian history and culture.

Professor Adrian Vickers, project lead and expert in Indonesian history and culture from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, says the archive highlights the wealth of non-English sources in understanding "the story of Australia".

"How can we fully understand Australian history and what it means to be Australian if we are only examining perspectives from sources communicated in the English language?" he said.

"To this day, our understanding of Australia's migrant and settler history and identity has been informed by sources that centre us in our 'British-ness' and reinforce our colonial legacy.

"Australia has always been multilingual, so understanding Australia requires more than just knowledge of the English language. Our project seeks to mobilise these under-utilised resources so we can rethink and reorient modern Australian history using a non-English perspective."

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Re-imagining Australia using a multilingual lens

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'Opening the Multilingual Archives of Australia' project hopes to mobilise under-utilised non-English resources from over 50 languages to highlight the multilingual nature of Australian history.

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https://amp.9news.com.au/article/decbedff-4d35-4a5d-a41d-591cfad5aed0

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Auslan to be available in NSW schools from kindergarten to year 10

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A critical communication form for the deaf community is set to be taught in New South Wales schools. Australian Sign Language, also known as Auslan, will be offered as an elective to students from kindergarten to Year 10 to increase inclusiveness and address a shortage of interpreters.

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https://www.2gb.com/podcast/whatever-happened-to-aussie-lingo/

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Watch

Whatever happened to Aussie lingo?

Luke speaks with Bernard Salt, Managing Director of The Demographics Group & columnist with The Australian, about the infiltration of the American term "bro" into Australian language, particularly among the youth.

This term, originating from African-American slang, has gained popularity in Australia and seems to be gradually replacing the traditional Australian term "mate", says Mr Salt.

He sees this linguistic shift as indicative of broader social and cultural changes in Australia following the pandemic with our language increasingly reflecting the influence of cultural trends and international partnerships.

Mr Salt emphasises that while "mate" holds a central place in Australian language, the growing usage of "bro" might challenge its prominence, even though the iconic phrase "g'day, mate" might struggle to transform into "g'day, bro."

Download this podcast here

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Luke speaks with Bernard Salt, Managing Director of The Demographics Group & columnist with The Australian, about the infiltration of the American term "bro" into Australian language, particularly among the youth. This term, originating from African-American slang, has gained popularity in Australia and seems to be gradually replacing the traditional Australian term "mate", says Mr [...]

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https://www.sbs.com.au/language/filipino/en/podcast-episode/australian-soldiers-on-learning-filipino-and-rediscovering-their-filipino-culture/vzydxf1la

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Key Points

Filipino-Australian soldiers have the opportunity to reconnect to their culture.

Learning a language is made easier if done in an engaging manner.

The intensive language course prepares them for possible assignment to the Philippines.

The Filipino language students

Liam's interest in learning the Filipino language was sparked by his interest in the Filipino culture.

Mark's parents on the other hand were both born and raised in the Philippines, he couldn't explain how proud and happy they were when he called them one day and spoke in Filipino (Tagalog). ' ' shares Mark.

While Vincent initially learned how to speak in Filipino and Kinaray-a, having lived in Australia for most of his growing up years, he lost the ability to easily converse in Filipino.

My relatives would speak to me in Filipino or the dialect and I would try my best to reply in Tagalog, they loved hearing me speak in Tagalog with my Aussie accent.

Vincent

The challenge of learning a new language and discovering a new culture was what captured Australian-Greek soldier Maria to enroll in Filipino language classes.

In learning the Filipino language, I also learned that Filipinos are very kind and discovered how important family is to them.

Liam

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Australian soldiers on learning Filipino and rediscovering their Filipino culture

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Australian soldiers learn the Filipino language at the ADF School of Languages.

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https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102771930

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The language of Thomas Watson's people is no longer spoken.

He's a Gangulu man whose family are from Central Queensland.

Raised in Katherine and now living in Melbourne, Mr Watson didn't grow up speaking the Gangulu language.

But in 2018 when he met with family around Rockhampton hoping to learn Gangulu from his elders, he discovered the language hasn't been spoken fluently for decades.

Now he's on a mission to not only learn the language fluently, but also document it by working with the University of Melbourne to create a Gangulu dictionary.

"It kind of snowballed," he said.

"I got a linguist involved, he taught me the foundations of linguistics, and now I'm working at Melbourne uni, at the Research Unit for Indigenous Language, to revive my language."

Mr Watson is among a group of young language learners attending the PULiiMA Indigenous Languages and Technology Conference in Darwin this week, a major biennial event bringing together experts in preserving Australia's vast array of Indigenous languages.

He's one of nine people taking part in the event's Young Champions program, which supports young language learners involved in projects varying from creating traditional language databases to teaching future generations.

Indigenous language experts from across Australia and the world have come to Darwin for the conference. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)

Mr Watson said while working to revive the Gangulu language had been "hard at times", it had also been a special process.

"It's disheartening, you know, not having any fluent speakers ... But it's also rewarding when you come across some stuff - some old audio, for example, or manuscripts, with our language in it," he said.

"Plenty of tears along the way - happy ones and sad ones.

"It's special [and] frustrating, but I think mostly it's rewarding."

'The future is exciting'

Dylan Collard, a Wadjak and Balardong Noongar man from Perth, was raised in a culturally strong environment where he learnt some words in language - mainly phrases and words for animals and plants.

Dylan Collard has been teaching Noongar language for over five years.(ABC News: Dane Hirst)

But six years ago, when an aunty who taught the language brought him along to a class, it marked the start of a journey to becoming a Noongar language teacher.

Now Mr Collard teaches in schools, runs community-based classes open to members of the public, and this year started his own education program.

Mr Collard said it was empowering to teach the Noongar language to future generations.

"Kids love it, whether they're Noongar kids or non-Indigenous kids - they all love the language and find it enjoyable, and really see the value in learning it," he said.

Mr Collard said he had noticed growing interest in learning Indigenous languages in the wider community.

"I always tell the kids, 'we're on Noongar country, what language should we be speaking?' And they say 'Noongar'."

"I think the future is quite exciting."

Modern technology helping share language

For Lelarnie Hatfield, a Darumbal woman from Rockhampton, language and culture have always been a vital part of her life, having learnt both from family at a young age.

"Language to me is who I am," she said.

"It's my relationship with country, it's my relationship with my family, it's my relationship with my mum and my relationship with other mobs.

"It's a part of our identity and it connects all of us - it's a part of our story and it will always be a part of our story."

In her role as a cultural coordinator, she organises cultural ceremonies on country, works with organisations and community around culture and language, and teaches Darumbal at local schools.

Lelarnie Hatfield is passionate about sharing the language of the Darumbal people.(ABC News: Suzie George)

Ms Hatfield said sharing her language and culture with others was an indescribable experience, and she noticed the impact it had on people.

"With the little fellas, the baby ones, they grow up and they have this first interaction with black fellas that's positive, and it's them learning about their country that they grow up on, that they live on," she said.

"For adults, teaching them culture and language, it's a big eye-opener and it's also life-changing."

The PULiiMA conference brought together close to 1,000 delegates.

Some of the presentations and workshops focused around the sharing and preservation of language through technology, such as early learning apps.

Ms Hatfield said modern technology was opening new doors for Indigenous language learning.

"There's no limits as to what all of us can do with our language and sharing it with everyone."

"With what we're doing now, our language won't die, and it won't be lost, it will never be forgotten," she said.

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Meet the young people helping to preserve Australia's Indigenous languages

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The language of Thomas Watson's people is no longer spoken. He's a Gangulu man whose family are from Central Queensland. Raised in Katherine and now living in Melbourne, Mr Watson didn't grow up speaking the Gangulu language.

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Most people agree we’re a bit over “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi”. So what are the alternatives and how do we get the whole crowd singing them at games, asks Dan Colasimone.

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"It could do with more funding ... I feel like if it was a men's issue, we'd have a million different ways to combat things, but with women, there just needs to be more funding in that area."

So how much research has actually been done in this field, why don't we know more about it, and will things change in the future?

How do periods impact athletes?

"A lot of the time, I probably haven't felt comfortable ... to put my hand up and say 'I can't train today because of this'."

AFLW player Chloe Dalton says she struggles with a significant amount of pain during her period each month. Source: Getty / Ian Hitchcock

"If you had a sore back or a sore hamstring, it's a similar level of pain, but it's probably not something that's widely acknowledged ... I don't think a lot of staff have had enough education about it."

"That can mean things like experiencing cramps that will affect their ability to perform ... some people have really heavy periods, and they actually become anaemic over the course of their menstruation period, so feeling fatigued and weak and those sorts of things ... there can be mood changes as well."

"For those people, it's important to know (about the condition), but the science of how to mitigate those effects is still far behind."

What research has been done in this space?

"One of the things that I find the most frustrating in this literature is that there's just so little (of it)," she said.

"There are some studies that have ... potential methodological problems with low sample sizes or inaccurate or invalid methods for determining menstrual cycle phase."

Australian Institute of Sport launches landmark project

The project is a collaboration between the AIS, the National Women's Rugby League (NRLW), the Australian Catholic University (ACU), and Boston Children's Hospital's Wu Tsai Human Performance's Female Athlete Innovation Hub.

The Female Athlete Research Camp will see 26 members of the NRL Indigenous Women's Academy train full-time at the AIS in Canberra for a camp focused on the impacts of periods and hormonal contraceptives on female athletes. Source: Supplied / AIS

The Female Athlete Research Camp will see 26 members of the NRL Indigenous Women's Academy train full-time at the AIS in Canberra, while being monitored and supported daily by 12 female researchers conducting 10 different studies.

"We have seen an incredible growth in women's sport over the past decade and it's imperative that we commit to research and innovation to support the health and performance of our female athletes," Dr Harris said.

Periods 'shouldn't be perceived as weakness'

"I don't think it's something that should be perceived as a weakness simply because we can be impacted by periods, I think it's really important that we don't shy away from talking about that."

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Female athletes are calling for more research into periods. Here's why

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From discord- good format and explanation. 9

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From discord- good format and explanation. 1

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Discord - taboo language (offensive tweet warning - homophobia) 

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Discord - taboo language (offensive tweet warning - homophobia) 

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