Language | featured news

Sweden's language watchdog has accused Google of trying to control the Swedish language in a dispute over the definition of the colloquial term "ungoogleable. The Swedish version of the word — "ogooglebar" — made the Language Council of Sweden's 2012 list of words that aren't in the Swedish dictionary but have entered common parlance. The council defined it as something "that cannot be found on the Web with a search engine."

Duolingo taps into crowdsourcing to teach a language and translate the Web... His free Duolingo app and website invite users to learn one of six languages for free. The gamelike interface is ad-free and encourages users to compete with friends. But here's the thing: After about 45 minutes of instruction, the program begins asking users to translate random sentences into their new language. Von Ahn plans to sell the sentences to sites that want their material translated on the Web. He expects that half of the service to be up and running later this year.

At the Everland Zoo in South Korea, there is a young male elephant that can speak Korean. His vocabulary includes “annyong” (hello), “anja” (sit down), “aniya” (no), “nuo” (lie down) and “choah” (good). Researchers say the elephant, whose name is Koshik, vocalizes in a novel way: he puts his trunk in his mouth.

It's about freakin' time. The term "F-bomb" surfaced in newspapers more than 20 years ago but will land Tuesday for the first time in the mainstream Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, along with sexting, flexitarian, obesogenic, energy drink and life coach.

You may feel cool and modern when you communicate with your friends in bits of jargon and acronyms - LOL, BTW, BRB and so on — but it may interest you to know that OMG may be older than your grandparents.

A 19-year-old British student took her love for the Korean culture to new heights when she had her tongue surgically lengthened so she could speak the language better, the Telegraph reported.

Humanity's right-hand dominance might be more than 500,000 years old, new research indicates. The trait of right-handedness is commonly believed to be a sign of the development of another uniquely human trait — language.

OMG! The exclamatory online abbreviation has won the approval of the Oxford English Dictionary. The term _ short for "Oh my God" or "Oh my gosh" _ is one of dozens of new entries in the authoritative reference book's latest online update. Other Internet-inspired expressions given the stamp of approval include LOL, "laughing out loud"; IMHO, "in my humble opinion"; and BFF, "best friends forever."