Videos

'Yow', 'Peace', 'Man'. Those English loanwords fly around joyfully when Melissa Schuring asks children for her research to briefly imitate a rapper. Very different, in fact, from when she has them play a farmer or a minister. Experiments like this teach her more about the development of linguistic stereotypes in children. In her video, she tells you more about her research.

"Hebt gij Pieter toevallig nie gezien vandaag?"

This trivial Dutch question illustrates how, in our daily lives, we often use a more informal language, than the one we learn at school. This makes it challenging for non-native speakers to learn our language. In his research, Valentijn Prové studied conversations of Dutch native speakers with non-native speakers. He thus offers us an insight into how we adapt our language when we think someone will not understand us.

How would you feel if you were always labeled as "non-Dutch-speaking", even though you often use Dutch throughout the day? Graziela Dekeyser (KU Leuven) is doing research on emotions in multilingualism.

Have you ever been stressed because you had to give a presentation? What if we told you that linguistic research could give you the key to becoming a better presenter in any language of the world? Linguist Charlotte Bourgoin (KU Leuven) studies the "information structure of speech" in different languages. Her research can help you better convey information and thus become a better presenter, both in your native language and in foreign languages.

Dutch is full of loan words, such as "last minute" or "lunch". It seems as if it can borrow English words without any limit. But is that really the case? Linguist Marlieke Shaw (KU Leuven - FWO) looks into this by studying transcriptions of spoken texts. A real must-see for fans of the Dutch language.

There is only one stable grammar, which applies in all situations of language use, right? Not really, says linguist Alexandra Engel (KU Leuven). Her research shows that, depending on the formality of the situation, we use different variants of grammar - for example, you talk differently to your friend than to your boss. In a sense, we are multilingual in our own mother tongue.

One in three stroke patients suffer from aphasia, a language disorder, and suddenly face problems communicating. The good thing is that with the right therapy their communication can be improved. In her PhD, Jill Kries (KU Leuven) is developing an automatic, fast, and precise method for diagnosis drawing on audio stories, EEG, and an algorithm.

Can you recover from aphasia after a stroke? And how long does it take? At the moment no doctor can immediately answer these questions. Klara Schevenels (KU Leuven) wants to give patients with aphasia after a stroke a quick and reliable prognosis so that they have a reliable window on the future.

Hearing impairments play an important role in dyslexia. For example, people with dyslexia are less able to hear the subtle sound difference at the start of similar letters, such as the 'b' and the 'p'. By offering children adapted audio stories in nursery school, Shauni Van Herck wants to tackle these hearing problems at an early stage.

The disappearance of forests is nothing less than "a genocide of trees, with bleeding stumps and amputated branches. With this powerful imagery, the French writer Pierre Gascar already sounded the alarm about the environment 50 years ago. Sara Buekens studies how he and his colleagues wanted to put environmental issues on the agenda in their novels half a century ago. Are you ready for an ecological novel?

A 'vector', isn't that something for mathematicians and physicists? Linguist Weiwei Zhang (KU Leuven) proves the opposite. She uses vectors to study related words and synonyms that appear in different language variants, such as "subway" in American English and "underground" in British English.

People are very good at making analogies: our brains can very quickly see similarities between two things and then draw comparisons between them. We're so good at it that we do it unconsciously. Marie-Anne Markey (KU Leuven), with the help of Boris Johnson & Jane Austen, explains how this can be seen in our language...