The World in Words July 2009 news: Banning Hungarian, swearing for pain relief, and dog barks translated
Patrick Cox and Clark Boyd select their top five language-related stories from July. Among them: Slovakia passes a law banning Hungarian in official communications in some of its Hungarian-speaking regions; new research seeks to show why babies and toddlers are so adept at learning two languages simultaneously; the trangressive nature of swearing helps when it comes to tolerating pain; and Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy has come up with a device that claims to translate dog noises into human language. But do we ready want to know what pooch is saying? Plus, our favorite hated words
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