Page 3 - Language Facts

If you listen closely, you can hear Paul McCartney swear during Hey Jude!

“Hey Jude” is one of the Beatle’s most recognized songs. It was written by Paul McCartney, and evolved from “Hey Jules,” a song that was written to comfort John Lennon’s son, Julian, during his parent’s divorce.

It spent 9 weeks as number 1 in the United States-the longest for any Beatle’s single. At 2:58 of the song, someone can allegedly be heard saying “F*cking hell!” Sound engineers Ken Scott and Geoff Emerick claim that it came from McCartney when he screwed up his part on the piano.

It was Lennon’s idea to leave it in the final mix, buried just low enough that it can barely be heard. “Most people won’t even spot it,” Lennon allegedly said, “but we’ll know it’s there.”

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People who use sign language can have accents!

While most people would assume all deaf people communicate in one formal language, there are actually many different types of sign language that usually tell where someone is from!

For example, while there is a standard American sign language, there is something known as a “village sign language” that is particular to a certain area.

Where there is a large deaf community, natural signs develop that those who are able to hear also use to communicate with their deaf family or friends. These particular signs are localized and become so engrained they eventually become synonymous with the region or village.

The best example of this is Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language, with is different from American Sign Language and is detectable by deaf people almost immediately!

Also, those who are not formally educated often have a hybrid form of sign language in which certain areas incorporate their own signs. All of this results in “accents” which are extremely similar to spoken languages!

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Ever wanted to learn how to say LOL or WTF in French?

The French have made their own equivalents of “LOL” and other Internet conversational acronyms. They include, but are not confined to:

• MDR is the LOL equivalent in French, meaning “mort de rire”, or dying with laughter, roughly translated.
• PTDR is a little stronger, akin to ROFL: “pété de rire”, or farting with laughter, roughly translated.
• KCDR is the strongest, from “cassé de rire”, meaning broken with laughterKC = Kah-say = cassé.

The French also use the English acronyms “LOL” and “WTF” in their daily internet conversations. The English acronym system is that strong and that global.They do still have their own equivalents to “WTF”, too. They include but are not confined to:

• TG is the vulgar way to tell somebody to stop talking (ta gueule – shut your mouth/gob/trap) (cf. STFU)
• OSEF is the less vulgar way of saying the same thing – who cares, or “on s’en fout”.

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Deaf babies learn sign language on the same timetable as hearing babies do spoken language!

For a long time it was believed that speech was a key component to learning language. Universal studies have been done and seemed to link baby babble happening at the same age with language learning. Dr. Laura Ann Petitto did extensive studies on the issue throughout her career. She totally busted the theory that hearing and speech were key in language acquisition. She found again and again that deaf infants who learned American Sign Language were at an equal level of language learning as hearing children were. She studied infants 0 to 48 months old primarily.

Today, it is very popular to teach infants various American Sign Language signs. Studies now show that infants exposed to ASL are able to develop their language centers in the brains more rapidly, because they can sign before they are able to verbally communicate. The studies show that infants exposed to ASL have higher IQ’s not because they are that much more intelligent than other infants, but simply because the language center in their brains was able to begin developing sooner.

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There’s a Chinese palindrome poem that can be read in over 2800 different ways!

Su Hui was a Chinese poet living in the 300s during the Six Dynasties period. She’s most famous poem is a complex palindrome. Hui actually started the palindrome genre and hers is the most complex one to date. Su Hui came from the kingdom of Former Quin and came from a literate family in the Shaanxi Province. She was the third daughter of Su Daozhi.

She got married when she was 15 or 16 to Dou Tao and moved in with her new husband. He lived in the Gansu Province where he was the governor. Su Hui has an important and unusual poem, the "Xuanji Tu". The poem is in the form of a twenty-nine by twenty-nine character grid, and can be read forward or backwards, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

This arrangement allows for 2,848 different readings. It is an incredible piece of work and feat that Su Hui accomplished with Xuanji Tu.

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