AI & Language

Linguistics and the study of language

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    How Long Does it Take to Learn Mandarin?  

    ByChris Lonsdale

    If you’re wondering how long it would take to learn Mandarin Chinese, the answer of course has to be: “it depends”.  If you make a decision to use your brain and your time in the correct way, and put in adequate time, then you could be communicating competently at a basic level within a few months.  You Can Learn To Speak Mandarin in Six Months For me personally, from a completely zero base (i.e. complete beginner) I was very competent at Mandarin speaking within six months and reading and writing within a year.  In my case I was able to do this because I moved to Beijing and although I was doing classes at the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages (as it was called at the time), I actually…

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    Upcoming Book: Modern Cognitive AI

    ByJohn Ball

    How to build AI that’s like us and its benefit to society! Language, like our ability to navigate the world with our senses and muscles, comes from our brain. AGI needs better ‘cognitive AI.’ We choose our words carefully, because amazing precision is what our brain does. Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash I’m writing a new book explaining how AGI works with cognitive AI. I will publish the sections for comment before the final book is compiled. You’ll be able to follow in LinkedIn, Speech Genie, Substack and Medium for the series. I invite you to debate and correct me where you disagree with the model. I want to shine the torch on much-needed science, so let’s do some science! My goal is to…

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    What’s missing from AI – Part 1

    ByJohn Ball

    Background In the 1930s, the American focus on behaviourism turned the linguistics world from the science of signs (semiotics) to one aligned with one of the great scientists in history, Pāṇini, who lived perhaps as far back as the 7th century BC. The use of Pāṇini’s linguistic model by Leonard Bloomfield led to linguistics excluding meaning, such as in the influential Chomsky monograph, Syntactic Structures, published in 1957. My proposed move back to semiotics is a side effect of the highly influential work of Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., whose development of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) over the past 40+ years creates a clear distinction between the words and phrases in a language (morpho-syntax) and their meaning in context (contextual meaning). RRG views the world’s diverse languages with a…

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    New language model for human conversation!

    ByJohn Ball

    The breathtaking view from Kobe University looking over Osaka Bay – home to the RRG 2025 bi-annual conference. Linguistic Conference: RRG 2025 The linguistic conference in Kobe, Japan, has just wrapped up. Expert linguists from around the world gave English presentations of progress over 2 days in a variety of languages including: Japanese, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Breton, Vietnamese, German, Mandarin, Mexican languages, Taiwan Sign language, and a range of African languages. They all use RRG as the model of communications. Primary developer, Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., has continued work on and growing the global community since the early 1980s. What makes Van Valin’s contributions so significant in the 20th and 21st century is its adoption of a model in which the words in a language…

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    Understanding isn’t just memorization

    ByJohn Ball

    We learn all the time, continuously, regardless of our age. We never stop, but would it surprise you that many scientists propose the model where we stop learning while we are young? That is false, although more research would help prove the point. We just need some people to use experimental science!   Inside view of the ground floor of a Starbucks in Tokyo – wow! The perfect venue to learn more about language and our ability to understand — with coffee!   OK, how can I claim that learning doesn’t stop while we are young? Why so confident? Do you know the (made up) word Preada? It’s a brand that sells glasses, like Prada. Preada puts additional effort (E) into the designs of Prada,…