Posts Tagged ‘conlangs’
New Language Began With Baby-Talk
Here is a fascinating article in The New York Times about a new language, Light Warlpiri, which is spoken by a relatively small group of Australian Aboriginal people. Everyone who speaks it is younger than 35 years old. And it began with baby-talk.
From the Times:
There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia.
Carmel O’Shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan, has been studying the young people’s speech for more than a decade and has concluded that they speak neither a dialect nor the mixture of languages called a creole, but a new language with unique grammatical rules.
Here is a video, “Monster Story in Light Warlpiri Child39”, from Dr. Carmel O’Shannessy’s YouTube account.
So what’s this about baby-talk? Again, from the Times: Read more »
