Letter From The Editor
35 matches
Letter From The Editor - A New Parrot Time
Welcome to the first issue of the new magazine, Parrot Time.
Most people are attracted to languages for at least one of three reasons. They might be interested in the science behind them - the rules, the reasons one language evolves differently from...
January / February 2013
Letter From The Editor - Truth in Advertising
When I was a child, I used to see advertisements in comic books for a pair of glasses. These wonderful items were said to be x-ray goggles, which would allow the wearer to look through items, including clothes and human flesh. There was even a drawing...
March / April 2013
Letter From The Editor - Freaking Out
If you are reading this magazine, you probably have some interest in languages. You might be fascinated by the sounds of people speaking in a language that is unfamiliar to you. You might be intrigued by the different ways languages use grammar and...
May / June 2013
Letter From The Editor - Linguist or Polyglot
We refer to Parrot Time as covering "languages, linguistics and culture". Note how both language and linguistics are separated out, and not just referred to by a single word. That is because they are different.
It seems that for most of the world,...
July / August 2013
Letter From The Editor - Why Polynesian?
Welcome to our Malayo-Polynesian special issue! Many of you are probably wondering why we are doing this issue which focuses mainly on the languages of this branch of the Austronesian languages. More of you are probably wondering what the languages...
September / October 2013
Letter From The Editor - Price of Fame
How many languages can you name? The average person can probably name a handful of languages when asked that question. A person who has an interest in languages could probably name a few dozen. A person _really_ interested in languages might name...
November / December 2013
Letter From The Editor - The Highlander Condition
I was listening to a group of language lovers discussing Esperanto in the chat one day. Esperanto is a subject that can easily start a fierce debate among polyglots. There are those that believe it to be a great invention and they will exalt it the...
January / February 2014
Letter From The Editor - Globalization
One of the big buzzwords in use today is globalization. Wikipedia defines it as "Globalization (or globalisation) is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture....
March / April 2014
Letter From The Editor - Tracing Words
When we study a language, we are learning thousands of words. They make up a kind of fingerprint for a language; we can often guess what a language is just by seeing a few of its words. The vocabulary of a language gives the language a unique identity.
Lang...
May / June 2014
Letter From The Editor - Expansion
"Evolution is a process of constant branching and expansion." - Stephen Jay Gould
One of the key points to survival is the capacity for expansion. Countries expand their borders to take more land and resources as their populations grow and they need...
July / August 2014
Letter From The Editor - World Ambassadors
One of the main reasons for learning another language is to explore another country and culture. Language is your passport to the world. People who learn a language and travel to another country (or travel to another country and learn the language...
September / October 2014
Letter From The Editor - Over Time
This issue marks the end of the first dozen issues of Parrot Time. It also comes at the end of the year, which is always a time when people look back at where they have been and where they are going.
We tend to think of languages as pretty much unchanging....
November / December 2014
Letter From The Editor - Thirteen
This is the thirteenth issue of Parrot Time. This is significant because it means we have passed the two year mark and are still up and running. Many publications fail after just a few issues, so having our first dozen completed is a pretty important...
January / February 2015
Letter From The Editor - Breaking with Tradition
When we study a language and a culture, we learn about new customs and traditions. These can be very strange but also very interesting.
For example, every year in Buñol, Spain, there is "La Tomatina", which is a tomato throwing festival.
Meanwhile,...
March / April 2015
Letter From The Editor - Sounds Like
A short time ago, I was spending some time practising my pronunciation of some basic Italian phrases. I was using a simple app on my kindle that showed me the phrase, then I could click on the icon to hear it spoken by a native speaker.
Now, I know...
May / June 2015
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