Shreyas G Kamath’s Post

There are 7,168 living languages! But this number is in constant fluctuation. Languages are not a permanent part of the world. Languages are created and they change, evolve, grow, or even cease to exist. This is an interesting visual showing the status's of the current living languages. What are your thoughts on this contant transition of languages? With our currently technology and AI, do you think we can keep all of the languages alive? #language #livinglanguage #multilingual

What is the future of the thousands of languages in our world - I wonder sometimes. In the age of #artificialintelligence and instant translations, one gets a feeling that there is no need to learn any other languages. (even learn English for that matter?) Is it so? As someone who has an obscure language as his mother tongue (தமிழ்) , it has been an ordeal and an adventure learning several languages through my life. Every time I learn a new language, I always get a strange sense of familiarity in understanding the local culture. There is a sense of belonging that appears suddenly. At the same time, how practical it is to continue evolving the vocabulary of science and technology in every language there is. Is it even doable? The proliferation of new scientific vocabulary in English is hard to replicate, even though many languages are keeping it up as we speak (e.g. German, Chinese, Japanese etc.) Similar to the obsession we have on replacing our creative processes with #artificialintelligence or #chatGPT, there seems to be an obsession towards reaching the holy grail in natural language processing. Technology aside, does this unburdening of mental struggle not steal the joy of sharing the cultural closeness created by mastering a new tongue? What is the fun when you cannot be lost in translation anymore? It does not always have to be about efficiency, does it? :)

About 22% of the population, roughly 73 million people, speak a language other than English at home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. #language #languagematters #languageaccess #communication #languageservices #languageserviceprovider #translationservices #translation #interpretationservices #interpretation #interpreting #community #societyandculture #accessibility #meaningfulaccess #experience #engagement #quality #qualityassurance #diversity  #diversityandinclusion #culturalresponsiveness #compliance #healthequity #health #languageaccessispower #everywordmatters https://lnkd.in/gKQs_Ap4

"Real questions such as those regarding orthography and the standardisation of African languages still need to be resolved. Many languages are still transcribed phonetically, and the risk of losing the alphabets of each language cannot be ignored." These concerns were originally raised in a 2005 UNESCO paper, which warned about the potential danger of African languages being underrepresented on the web. Even 18 years later, in the era of #AI, these issues remain highly relevant, and I'm unsure of the progress made since then. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Girum Gizachew, a software engineer, about an innovative open-source tool he has developed. This tool enables developers to integrate an "Amharic converter" into their web applications. Due to recent internet shutdowns in #Ethiopia, the number of Amharic speakers online has decreased. In 2017, the percentage of Amharic speakers online was 12.18%, which grew to 25.51% by 2022. But according to Funredes, as of April 2023, this percentage dropped to 17.31%. Ethiopia is ranked fifth globally for having the largest unconnected population, with over 100 million people offline, representing 83% of the country's population. Initiatives such as Gizachew's "Amharic Converter" are therefore helping to make the internet more inclusive for a community that has been offline for the past two years. Thanks to Girum Gizachew and Mentesnot Ertibu for taking the time to answer my questions. ↓ Keep reading to learn more. ↓ https://lnkd.in/e7d_MSp7

In a significant milestone for digital news in India, the latest Comscore data reveals that News18 Indian Languages cluster has claimed the top spot, surpassing Times of India Vernacular, to become the leading digital news platform for Indian languages in the country.... Read More At:- https://lnkd.in/g3WujEbw News18 India #digitalnews #ComScore #Timesofindia #Platform #News18India #news #NewsUpdate #newsfeed #dailynews #IBWNews

The latest official demographic statistics: Young mothers are more worrying than the decrease in the number of newborns On October 12, the National Health Commission released the latest demographic statistics, with several points of concern that are not easy. The total number of births in 2022 was 9.56 million. Two children accounted for 38.93, three children and above accounted for 15. The sex ratio at birth is 111.1. That is less than 50 per cent. Increased employment opportunities for women who improve their educational level, place excessive demands on their own development and quality of life and are reluctant to have children earlier. High house prices, education costs, pension pressures put young couples off. Many capable women are reluctant to get married and have children, according to online users. What is ability? If you don't have the ability to have a child? This phrase really hurts a lot of people. Always take into account other people's feelings before speaking. Some say that 8 million civil servants and 40 million career editors are the main source of fertility. Others say there were 18 million college entrance exams last year and 9 million births last year. Of course, there are still a lot of repetitions in this data. The official sex ratio is 111.1, i.e. more than 11 per cent more boys than girls. According to experts interviewed by state media, the number of people born in 2023 could be between 7 million and 8 million. And the director of the medical department of the Peking University Hospital said: fertility rate of women of childbearing age is worrisome, the number of women of childbearing age further Translated excerpt from toutiao https://lnkd.in/dc7JNraN

Absolutely delighted to share that my second book "Incels and Ideologies: Exploring How Incels Use Language to Construct Gender and Race" has been published and is out now! In this book, I really unpick the language used by incels, try to help ground them from a theoretical perspective, and explore how they construct social actors. It was a really challenging book to write (the subject matter is a bit grim to say the least), but I feel better for it being in the world and being a resource for people to use. Hopefully, it might help people begin to understand harmful gender and racial-based ideologies. I definitely couldn't have written this without the support of wonderful friends and my amazing colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University. I am eternally grateful to both groups! The link to buy the book is as follows: https://lnkd.in/gwWch3Bx The blurb for the book is below: This book explores how incels use language and other semiotic resources to construct ideologies of gender and race/ethnicity. The author theorises and positions incels' performances of masculinity against a backdrop of broader social sciences and linguistic literature, and discusses some of the limitations of different lenses through which incels have previously been understood, as well some of the ethical issues involved with researching a hostile community. Corpus linguistic methods and netnographic reflections are used to explore how incels construct ideologies about gender, gendered social actors, and race/ethnicity, as well as where these concepts intersect. Taking a post-structuralist critical analysis to this community reveals a number of way ideologies towards different groups based on social identities are linguistically constructed. This book will be relevant to those researching or studying language, gender, and sexuality, sociology, and criminology. Outside of academic applications, it is also written in a way that is accessible to external organisations interested in equality and the prevention of incel-ideology-motivated offline attacks.

I am excited to share this recently published #research co-authored with Luísa Nazareno and Matteo Zullo on the labor market outcomes of bilinguals in the United States. In this study, we analyze individual earnings of bilinguals using 15 years of Census data and an augmented wage model, accounting for cognitive, manual, and interpersonal skills derived from O*NET job task descriptors via sparse principal component method. Using unconditional quantile regression, we find evidence that language skills mostly benefit individuals at the lower end of the earnings distribution: https://lnkd.in/gTipDMUC

These days if you’re in a work environment with a mixed language group in Quebec that requires you communicate in writing with others in French, you’ll likely observe frequent use of automated or machine translation via Google translate or Deepl for example. The impact of easy and quick translation both written and voice will have a critical impact on our interaction across language lines and continue to influence written as well as verbal communication. That’s true in Quebec, a global hub for translators as it is in other places with mixed language demographics. It’s yet unclear as to how this will affect language policies. But to-date, insufficient attention is being directed at how AI and machine translation will modify public policy objectives with respect to language planning. #Quebec #AI #Languages #translation