Rare Foreign Accent Syndrome From Stroke
A woman from southern Ontario Canada, recovering from a rare brain syndrome due to stroke, starts to speak with a different accent, and this is the first reported cases in Canada. This woman’s family noticed the accent change while the woman was recovering from a stroke. Her Ontario accent now sounds like Maritime Canadian English.
Researcher Alexandre Sévigny, a cognitive scientist at McMaster University in Ontario said that this women never visited the Maritimes, nor has she been exposed to anyone with an East Coast accent. Karin Humphreys, a psychologist at McMaster University reported that the woman didn’t notice any changes in her accent. As strange as it sounds, the ongoing research at McMaster University will open a new perspective of FAS.
Other Species Can Learn Foreign Language
There are nine species of honeybees found worldwide and they do different type of dances as their “language” to tell each other the location of a tasty flower or nesting site.
The study leader Shaowu Zhang of The Australian National University mentioned that the duration of the waggle dances differs from species to species.
The research team mixed two species of honeybees, Asian and European together in a hive, and trained one species to fly to a feeder. The untrained species were able to identify the dances of by the trained cousins and interpret where the feeder was.
This study proved that these honeybees can learn to translate each others’ languages very effectively.
Reveal Mother Tongue By Brain Waves
All this time no one can read our thoughts, but some scientists proved that they can at least figure out the language that we do our thinking. Experts can figure out our mother tongue and the level of proficiency in the other languages before we even utter a word. This has been done by analyzing our brain activity while we read in our mind.
Picture Source: http://dericbownds.net/
Language splits fast
Research has revealed that when a new language emerges from an old one its vocabulary changes dramatically in a short period of time. Researchers believe that 10 to 33 percent of divergence between languages arise from key vocabulary changes during the time of splitting. Sudden emergence of American English during 1800s and the distinct black american english can be looked as the proof of the finding.
