The Linguist’s Calendar: May 25

Minsk, Belarus

May 25

1917: The town of Minsk in Belarus gives official recognition to Yiddish. The special status of Yiddish in the republic is later manifested in the coat of arms, which bears the inscription “Workers of the world, unite” in Russian, Belarusan, Polish, and Yiddish.

1925: Otto Jespersen gives his last lecture at the University of Copenhagen.

1948: Andrew Booth’s computer intended for machine translation experiments is de­mon­stra­ted to re­pre­sen­ta­tives of the Rockefeller foundation, which finances the project.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 24

Fidelia Fielding

May 24

The Day of Slavic Writing is a national holiday in Bulgaria, to commemorate the invention of St Cyril and St Method in the 9th century.

1873: In a talk before the Société de Linguistique de Paris, A Dufriche-Desgenettes makes the first documented use of the word phonème.

1917: A Russian orthography reform is officially accepted by a Special Meeting of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

1936: At the Shantok Burial Ground in Uncasville, Connecticut, a monument is erected to Fidelia Fielding (1827–1908), the last speaker of Pequot-Mohegan.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 23

Big Bill Neidjie

May 23  

1947: Typologist Bernard Comrie is born in Sunderland, Britain.
 

1998: Founding of the Linguistics Society of Taiwan.

1999: Closing of the first international conference on language teacher education at the University of Minnesota.

2002: The Australian language Gagadu vanishes as the only remaining speaker Big Bill Neidjie draws his last breath.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 22

Zellig Harris

May 22 

1992: Chomsky’s mentor Zellig Harris dies.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 21

Monument to the
Estonian Language

May 21

1994: Solemn inauguration of the monument to the Estonian language in Kadrina, Estonia.

2002: Joseph Mesa is convicted for the murder of two of his classmates. He is sentenced despite his plea of insanity, according to which the murders were inspired by voices in his head. Since Mesa is deaf, however, these were not literally speaking voices, but glove-clad hands urging him to kill—in American Sign.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 20

Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn)

May 20

Eliza Doolittle Day, encourages “proper use” of language.

1980: Francophone Québec votes in favor of remaining a Canadian province.

1999: Opening of the first international conference on language teacher education at the University of Minnesota.

The Linguist’s Calendar: May 19

May 19 

1859: Paul “Broca’s area” Broca holds his first meeting together with the Société d’Anthropologie, which he has just founded.

1965: Publication of Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.