RenoVous

  Sometime between the 6th and 4th century BCE, Indian scholar Daksiputra Panini wrote down some rules describing the workings of Sanskrit.  Over 2,000 years later these rules helped establish the science of linguistics. He studied how words are formed and how they relate to others in the same language, now known as morphology.  He described syntax and semantics, as well as an algorithm to construct grammatically correct Sanskrit words, but it's been hardly understood. Now, a PhD student from the University of Cambridge, claims to have decoded this "language machine."  Rishi Rajpopat believes this will have implications in teaching computers to understand human speech. Panini provided a set of rules for word building, as well as a metarule - In the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar's serial order wins .  Rajpopat believes this has been misinterpreted, and that is why scholars have struggled so long....

  Image is borrowed from a page I'm linking to because it was on their podcast that I learned of today's topic. TLO Podcast That topic is Polari - a code language used by gay men to communicate in order to survive. It was used in the UK in response to strict anti-homosexuality laws in the 1920's but it originates from at least the 19th century.  It's a combination of Italian, Romani, London slang, backslang, sailor slang, circus slang, and thieves' cant.  It later expanded to include some Yiddish as well. The core lexicon includes words such as: bona - good ajax - nearby eek (or ecaf) - face cod - bad, vile naff - bad, dull lattie - room, house, flat nanti - no omi - man palone - woman trade - sex rozzer - policeman There were specific words to identify oneself and to compliment others on their hair or fashion.  Drag, queen, and butch are Polari terms.  It allowed gay men to interact with one another without fear of the law, or getting beat up when reaching out ...