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Using the word ‘Fali’ to identify a group of people and languages in northern Cameroon and Nigeria has caused significant challenges to the classification of the languages and the description of the link between those communities. This study aims at testing the intelligibility of Nigerian Fali to Cameroonian Fali (CamFali), Bana and Gude speakers in order to bring out the relationship between the languages. Participants to the study include 88 Cameroonian native and fluent speakers of the above listed languages, made up of 46 CamFali speakers from the Bossum, Kangu, Peske-Bori and Tinguelin communities, 35 Gude speakers from Gude dialect (Gude D), Djimi and Njanyi, and 7 Bana speakers. The informants were met either in-person or online (through WhatsApp), and they listened to 3 recordings from 3 dialects of Nigerian Fali, namely Vimtim, Bahuli and Muchalla which were obtained from Global Recordings Network to test the listeners’ recognition and comprehension of the languages. The findings indicated that the 3 languages are neither intelligible to CamFali nor to Bana listeners, but they are rather variants of Djimi which in turn is a dialect of Gude. The study also revealed that from the 3 dialects of Gude, Djimi is more related to Gude D than Njanyi. It was therefore concluded that Nigerian Fali is not related to CamFali and Bana, but it is rather Gude, which confirms that the word ‘Fali’ does not refer to specific people with common ancestral or linguistic background.

Languages that allow free word order, such as Arabic dialects, are of significant difficulty for neural machine translation (NMT) because of many scarce words and the inefficiency of NMT systems to translate these words. Unknown Word (UNK) tokens represent the out-of-vocabulary words for the reason that NMT systems run with vocabulary that has fixed size. Scarce words are encoded completely as sequences of subword pieces employing the Word-Piece Model. This research paper introduces the first Transformer-based neural machine translation model for Arabic vernaculars that employs subword units. The proposed solution is based on the Transformer model that has been presented lately. The use of subword units and shared vocabulary within the Arabic dialect (the source language) and modern standard Arabic (the target language) enhances the behavior of the multi-head attention sublayers for the encoder by obtaining the overall dependencies between words of input sentence for Arabic vernacular. Experiments are carried out from Levantine Arabic vernacular (LEV) to modern standard Arabic (MSA) and Maghrebi Arabic vernacular (MAG) to MSA, Gulf–MSA, Nile–MSA, Iraqi Arabic (IRQ) to MSA translation tasks. Extensive experiments confirm that the suggested model adequately addresses the unknown word issue and boosts the quality of translation from Arabic vernaculars to Modern standard Arabic (MSA).

Recent genetic, isotopic and linguistic research has dramatically changed our understanding of how the Corded Ware Culture in Europe was formed. Here the authors explain it in terms of local adaptations and interactions between migrant Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe and indigenous North European Neolithic cultures. The original herding economy of the Yamnaya migrants gradually gave way to new practices of crop cultivation, which led to the adoption of new words for those crops. The result of this hybridisation process was the formation of a new material culture, the Corded Ware Culture, and of a new dialect, Proto-Germanic. Despite a degree of hostility between expanding Corded Ware groups and indigenous Neolithic groups, stable isotope data suggest that exogamy provided a mechanism facilitating their integration. This article should be read in conjunction with that by Heyd (2017, in this issue).

The study tested phonological awareness in a cross-sectional sample of 200 Arabic-speaking 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th graders from low and mid-high Socio-Economic Status (SES). Participants were native speakers of a local dialect of Palestinian Arabic spoken in the north of Israel. Twelve phonological awareness tasks were administered: six of them included stimuli that have an identical form in Standard Arabic and in the spoken dialect (hereafter, SpA words; e.g., /sɑʒɑd/ ‘knelt’) and six used StA words with a unique form different from the one used in the dialect (hereafter, StA words; e.g., /ʔɑχɑð/ ‘took’). Three tasks (blending, segmentation, deletion) were developed for each set of words to test syllable awareness and three additional ones to test phoneme awareness. Repeated measure ANOVAs showed a cross-sectional growth in syllable and phoneme awareness across grades, as well as significant differences between children from low versus mid-high SES. The results also showed a consistent effect of phonological distance on phonological awareness across all tasks and in both groups with awareness of SpA words higher than StA words. At the same time, the impact of phonological distance was more prominent in children from low SES as against mid-high SES, in phoneme awareness as against syllable awareness, and in segmentation and deletion tasks as against blending tasks. The results underscore the roles of item-based properties of phonological distance and phonological-unit size, as well as the role of participant-based characteristics of SES in phonological awareness in Arabic diglossia.

Why is support the radical right higher in some geographic locations than others? This article argues that what is frequently classified as the “rural” bases of radical-right support in previous research is in part the result of something different: communities that were in the historical “periphery” in the center–periphery conflicts of modern nation-state formation. Inspired by a classic state-building literature that emphasizes the prevalence of a “wealth of tongues”—or nonstandard linguistic dialects in a region—as a definition of the periphery, we use data from more than 725,000 geo-coded responses in a linguistic survey in Germany to show that voters from historically peripheral geographic communities are more likely to vote for the radical right today.

Based on the establishment data of provincial-provincial, city-city, provincial-city, city-provincial Hometown Chambers of Commerce (HCCs) in China by the end of 2022, this paper combines social network analysis and exponential random graph model to explore network spatial patterns and determinants of China’s HCCs. Findings indicate that: 1) Point degree centrality in eastern China is high, but spatial patterns vary across network types: provincial-provincial and provincial-city types exhibit a “rhombus-net” pattern, the city-city type follows a “small-ring-line” structure, and the city-provincial type forms a “large-ring-net” type. Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Shandong constitute core areas of China’s HCC network, and provincial-provincial and city-city types mainly flow within the core area and from core to periphery, while provincial-city and city-provincial types flow mutually between core and periphery areas. 2) Stronger government intervention and earlier HCC connections significantly inhibit both provincial-provincial and city-city HCC establishment. However, this inhibitory effect is not statistically significant for provincial-city and city-provincial types. Only city-city HCCs exhibit economic sensitivity, with less-developed origin cities favoring stronger operation cities, while other HCC types remain economically neutral. Road, dialect, and urban cluster distances significantly affect HCC establishment at the city-level place of operation but show no significant impact on the provincial-level place of operation. This research not only expands the theoretical perspective on the spatial study of social organizations but also provides scientific evidence for breaking down regional market fragmentation and optimizing cross-regional governance systems.

Language serves as a vital link between individuals. In a multi-ethnic country like China, significant differences exist between Standard Mandarin and various regional dialects, which can influence family entrepreneurs’ access to entrepreneurial resources and information. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical impact of Standard Mandarin and dialects on family entrepreneurship choice and performance, using microdata from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The results show that families who predominantly use Standard Mandarin have a higher probability of starting a business, with cognitive competence and social networks as two important channels through which language influences the likelihood of entrepreneurship. Specifically, the effect of Standard Mandarin on urban families’ entrepreneurship choice is more significant, whereas the impact on rural families is not as pronounced. Regardless of whether they are in urban or rural areas, speaking a dialect is more beneficial for entrepreneurial families in terms of integrating into the local community, leading to better entrepreneurial performance. Further analysis reveals that in most of the ten dialect regions of China, Standard Mandarin has a significant positive impact on family entrepreneurship choice, but a significant negative impact on family entrepreneurial performance. In high-income, young, eastern, and central region families, the probability of starting businesses is higher for families using Standard Mandarin, while dialects have a significant positive impact on family entrepreneurial performance in most sub-samples.

Dialects are a cultural property of animal communication previously described in the signals of several animal species. While dialects have predominantly been described in vocal signals, chimpanzee leaf-clipping and other ‘leaf-modifying’ gestures, used across chimpanzee and bonobo communities, have been suggested as a candidate for cultural variation in gestural communication. Here we combine direct observation with archaeological techniques to compare the form and use of leaf-modifying gestures in two neighbouring communities of East African chimpanzees. We found that while both communities used multiple forms, primarily within sexual solicitation, they showed a strong preference for a single, different gesture form. The observed variation in form preference between these neighbouring communities within the same context suggests that these differences are, at least in part, socially derived. Our results highlight an unexplored source of variation and flexibility in gestural communication, opening the door for future research to explore socially derived dialects in non-vocal communication.