Featured series 
Tag: Language
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Nation & World
How to translate a Nobel-winning author (and 700-page sentence)
Damion Searls — English ‘gateway’ for Jon Fosse and other writers — discusses Harvard roots, elevating new voices, and his multilingual ‘Matrix’ moment
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Nation & World
The collective effort
Harvard students, alumni, faculty, and staff from the nationwide “To Serve Better” project weigh in on how coronavirus is affecting their corner of the country, and the work they do.
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Nation & World
Picture-perfect approach to science
After creating a 3-D language called quon, which could be used to understand concepts related to quantum information theory, Harvard mathematicians now say the language offers tantalizing hints that it could offer insight into a host of other areas in mathematics, from algebra to Fourier analysis, and in theoretical physics from statistical physics to string…
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Nation & World
We speak, therefore we are
Divinity School alum and indigenous Maskoke person Marcus Briggs-Cloud discusses his efforts to maintain his ancestral language and identity in the next installment of the Gazette’s podcast “Heard at Harvard.”
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Nation & World
Making math more Lego-like
A trio of Harvard researchers has developed a new 3-D pictorial language for mathematics with potential as a tool across a wide spectrum, from pure math to physics.
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Nation & World
The power of babble
Babies need conversational stimulation for their intellectual development, and a piece published in JAMA Pediatrics hopes to advise parents and pediatricians on how and when to best nurture that development.
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Nation & World
To speak, and move others to act
Language, literature, and the liberal arts are key disciplines in forming leaders, Harvard President Drew Faust said during a speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
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Nation & World
Body of work
An émigré physician at Harvard Medical School has written a book about the multitude of anatomy-based English expressions.
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Nation & World
Sounding out speech
A new study demonstrates that infants as young as 6 months can solve the invariance problem in speech perception.
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Nation & World
Listening for clues
Baby songbirds learn to sing by imitation, just as human babies do. So researchers at Harvard and Utrecht University, in the Netherlands, have been studying the brains of zebra finches — red-beaked, white-breasted songbirds — for clues to how young birds and human infants learn vocalization on a neuronal level.
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Nation & World
Asia Center to support summer travel for 75 students
This summer, the Asia Center will fund 75 students traveling to east, south, and southeast Asia to conduct research, participate in internships, and pursue intensive language study.
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Nation & World
Bathing in Chinese language and culture
Expanding language program connects students with broader fields, such as history, art, and culture.
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Nation & World
Data may not compute
The Dataverse Network Project, spearheaded by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, provides archival storage for research projects whose records are on outmoded technology formats.
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Nation & World
Korea Institute offers undergraduates Korean study opportunities
The Korea Institute at Harvard University promotes the study of Korea and brings together faculty, students, distinguished scholars, and visitors to create a leading Korean studies community at Harvard University.
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Nation & World
Rescuing ancient languages
Harvard Linguistics Professor Maria Polinsky and her lab team work to understand and preserve ancient Mayan tongues, with the help of native speakers.
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Nation & World
Putnam awarded Rolf Schock Prize
The 2011 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy will be awarded on Nov. 2 to Hilary Putnam, Cogan University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.
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Nation & World
Language made visible
New Harvard lecture series, “Visible Language,” explores the origins of the written word across diverse ages and cultures, its origins marked by a “diverse oneness.”
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Nation & World
Melding Spanish and spirituality
A new language course offers students at Harvard Divinity School a chance to develop a nuanced cultural approach to their ministry work.
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Nation & World
Lunt, scholar of Slavic languages and literatures, dies at 91
Horace Gray Lunt, Samuel Hazzard Cross Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Emeritus, passed away on Aug. 11, in Baltimore, Md., scarcely a month short of his 92nd birthday.
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Nation & World
When the past is present
Marcus Briggs-Cloud believes native language is what connects communities. His time at the Divinity School has helped him strengthen that bridge.
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Nation & World
Language of learning
With a culturally diverse student body and more than 80 languages and several hundred courses available for study, Harvard’s commitment is unmatched nationally.
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Nation & World
‘The health of poetry’
As a graduate student at Oxford, Gwyneth Lewis wrote her dissertation on 18th century literary forgery. But as a working poet for three decades — and this year as a Radcliffe Fellow — she is as far from that fraud as conceivable.
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Nation & World
Phillips Brooks House: A tradition of reaching out to the community
This is the fourth in a series of Gazette articles highlighting some of the many initiatives and charities that Harvard affiliates can support through this month’s Community Gifts Through Harvard campaign. The Community Gifts campaign allows affiliates to donate to a charity of their choice through cash, check, or payroll deduction.
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Nation & World
Probing an unlikely friendship
Theirs was an unlikely friendship. One man was a black abolitionist, orator, and journalist who had been a slave from Maryland, the other a white politician from the backwoods of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.
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Nation & World
Teacher of Arabic Wilson B. Bishai dies at 85
Wilson B. Bishai, professor emeritus of Arabic for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC), died Aug. 1 from kidney failure at his home in Maryland. He was 85.
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Nation & World
Language can be an ambiguous heritage
Two images fill a computer screen in Maria Polinsky’s language lab. On the left, a young boy is painting a portrait of a girl. On the right, the roles are reversed — the girl paints a portrait of the boy. Once the images are shown, Polinsky, professor of linguistics, plays a single recorded sentence for…
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Nation & World
Galbreth ’08 named Marshall Scholar
Megan Galbreth, a senior in Lowell House, has been named a 2008 Marshall Scholar. The award entitles Galbreth to two years of study at Oxford University, where she will pursue an M.Phil. in English Language and Literature.
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Nation & World
Researcher finds roots of fundamentalism in 16th century Bible translations
The English Reformation — heyday of religious change — spurred a fundamentalist approach to Bible reading, according to new research by a Harvard professor.
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Nation & World
Steven Pinker’s ‘Ideas on the Fringe’
Not long ago, Steven Pinker appeared on “The Colbert Report.” He managed to explain the functioning of the human brain to Stephen Colbert in only five words: “Brain cells fire in patterns.”