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Referees Study Curses In Preparation For U.S.-England, Chicago Tribune 10/6/2010

19AugustLeximania.grLanguage, News, Onomasiology

RUSTENBURG, South Africa — The Brazilian referee and his assistants who will work the England-United States match at the World Cup have been studying English-language obscenities the players might use.

Carlos Simon will referee Saturday’s match in Rustenburg, assisted by Roberto Braatz and Altemir Hausmann. They want to ensure players can’t get away with abuse.

We Know ‘Boogie’ Led To ‘Book,’ But Did ‘Nook’ Lead To ‘Nooky’?, Chicago Tribune, 21/6/2010

19AugustLeximania.grEnglish Language, Language, News

June 21, 2010

When I was coaching cross-country running during the late 1970s, the runners on my team would sometimes yell before a race, “Let’s book!”

I knew that “book” meant “speed off,” but for 30 years I’ve tried to find the origin of this odd meaning of “book,” a definition that doesn’t appear in any of the dictionaries I consulted, though I’ve heard the word used this way quite often.

You Say “Ga,” I say “Ba,” but Everyone Hears “Da”, Scientific American 12/5/2008

19AugustLeximania.grNews

A fascinating auditory illusion proves that the visual cue of moving lips plays an important role in accurately hearing what people say.

So this week I’m taking it back to a study published in Nature in 1976 to tell you about a freaky auditory illusion called the McGurk effect. However, it also requires some visual input, so I’ll have to send you to a video at http://snipurl.com/sciam-illusion.

People Hear with Their Skin, As Well As Their Ears, Scientific American 26/11/2009

19AugustLeximania.grNews

A new study shows that the skin could help us hear by ‘feeling’ sounds

By Carina Storrs

The act of hearing is a group effort for the human body’s organs, involving the ears, the eyes and also, according to the results of a new study, the skin.

Study shows unborn babies cry in their mother tongue, The Times 6/11/2009

19AugustLeximania.grNews

Hannah Devlin

Newborn babies mimic the intonation of their native tongue when they cry, indicating that they begin to pick up the first elements of language in the womb, a study suggests.

Scientists were already aware that babies are able to recognise certain sounds from birth, such as their parents’ voices, but they believed that infants were only able to imitate them from the age of about 12 weeks.