1 . Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of our show Tease Your Brain. Today we will talk about brand language. When you walk into Starbucks, the world’s biggest coffee chain, you may hear a customer speaking a rapid-fire series of descriptions when asking for a drink — half-caf, black, and for the sizes — tall, grande, venti and trenta.

It is a special language, so this morning we have invited Scott, the Starbucks Regional Manager to talk about it. Welcome Scott!

First of all, can you say something about Starbucks language?

Scott: Thanks for inviting me. OK, sure. Our company invented these rules in the booklet, “Make It Your Drink”. It only belongs to Starbucks. We have also trained our baristas (咖啡师) to reply to customers using Starbucks vocabulary.

That is so fascinating, Scott! Is Starbucks the only company that uses brand language?

Scott: No. Many companies use this technique. When hungry Californians order a meal at In-N-Out, a burger chain, they need to specify the proportion of cheese slices to patties: a “triple double” means two patties sandwiched between three slices of cheese.

Thank you so much for your insight, Scott.

This past week, Tease Your Brain left the studio to ask people’s opinion about brand language. Let’s find out what they said：

A marketing professor: In my book The Language of Branding, I mention that brand language is a brilliant way of enhancing customer loyalty (忠诚). Companies that persuade people to use their own terms create “a sense of belonging and improved loyalty to the brand”. It also enables employees to work more efficiently.

A sociologist: People become part of a “speech community” when they use specialized vocabulary, which creates a feeling of shared values. Every time a company gets a consumer to refer to its products using a branded term rather than a general description — whoppers, say, rather than burgers — it is drawing them into its own community. In so doing, it makes them more likely to buy its products in the future.

OK. Now let’s listen to what a customer in Starbucks said.

I heard you order your coffee with the brand language, “no-whip”. So, what do you think of this kind of language?

A customer: I think it helps to create a “tribe” that members identify with. Take CrossFit, a fitness firm as an example. It has come up with a set of extensive vocabulary —“wod” means “workout of the day”. Using this kind of description, I feel like I am in the CrossFit group.

2 . It was widely believed that, in order to get the first languages off the ground, our ancestors first needed a way to create novel signals that could be understood by others, relying on visual signs whose form was directly similar to the intended meaning. Some gestures can be understood almost anywhere: pointing to direct someone’s attention, for instance.

However, an international research team, led by experts from the University of Birmingham and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS), Berlin, have discovered that certain vocalizations (发声法) can also be iconic and recognizable to people around the world — even when a speaker is not simply imitating a well-known sound. These findings, published in Scientific Reports, may help explain the rise of modern spoken language.

In 2015, language researchers challenged some English speakers to make up sounds representing various basic concepts (“sleep”, “child”, “meat”, “rock”, and more). When other English speakers listened to these sounds and tried matching them to concepts, they were largely successful. But “we wanted to be able to show that these vocalizations are understandable across cultures,” says study co-author and University of Birmingham cognitive scientist Marcus Perlman.

So Perlman and his colleagues conducted online and in-person experiments in seven countries, from Morocco to Brazil. They recruited more than 900 participants, who spoke a total of 28 languages, to listen to the best-understood vocalizations from the 2015 investigation and select matching concepts from a set of words or images. Vocalizations that called forth well-known sounds — for example, dripping water — performed best. But many others were also understood at rates significantly above chance across all languages tested, the team found. “There is a notable degree of success outside of just onomatopoeia (象声词),” Perlman says.

This is likely because certain patterns related to sound are universal, the team suggests. For example, short and basic sounds often convey the concept of “one” and repeated sounds are typically associated with “many”. Likewise, low-pitched sounds accompany something big, and high-pitched sounds convey small size. These findings of “iconic” sounds could help scientists understand how human ancestors started using rich acoustic (传音的) communication, says co-author Aleksandra Ćwiek, a linguist at the Leibniz-Center General Linguistics in Berlin. The human voice, she says, might “afford enough iconicity to get language off the ground.”

University of Tübingen linguist Matthias Urban, who was not involved in the research, agrees. “It’s unclear how words came into being in the first place,” he says. Iconic vocalizations are “potentially one pathway that could have been involved.”

Just like spoken language, body language varies from culture to culture. The gesture for “OK” has different     1     (meaning) in different cultures. In Japan, someone who witnesses another person employing the gesture might think it means money. In France, a person encountering an identical gesture may interpret it as meaning zero. However, you should avoid     2    (make) this gesture in Brazil and Germany, as it     3     (consider) impolite.

6 . Language Acquisition(习得)

Almost all humans acquire at least one language before the age of five. How do young children understand and produce complex sentences with complicated meanings? Do adults learn language differently from children? Most linguistic(语言学的) researchers agree that both nature and nurture(后天) are involved in language acquisition. They disagree， however， about how much linguistic knowledge children have from birth-and thus whether genetics or experience is more important in language acquisition.

For many linguists， biological factors are the most important in language learning. Some argue that some linguistic knowledge must exist in our brains from birth because children cannot possibly experience every feature of their language before the age of five. These linguists point out that nearly all children can produce the same kinds of complex sentence structures by the age of five， even without having heard them before.

Many researchers have theorized what this innate(先天的) linguistic knowledge must look like. One popular theory(理论) is universal grammar. This theory believes that all languages have the same basic structural foundation. That foundation is the innate knowledge universal to all humans. While children are not genetically tending to speak a particular language， a universal grammar gives them certain linguistic information as a starting point， which allows them to readily acquire the rules and patterns of whichever language they are exposed to.

Not all linguists， however， believe that an inborn ability for language is the most important factor in language acquisition. These researchers place greater emphasis on the influence of usage and experience. They argue that children are exposed to a wealth of linguistic structures over the course of five years. They gather data and determine language patterns and structures from what they have observed.

Linguists on both sides of the debate are still working to explain the different language learning abilities of adults and children. Early childhood seems to be an important period for mastering certain aspects of language. Children also tend to have a heightened ability to learn second languages. While adults may have some advantages when studying in a formal classroom， they usually do not learn second languages. While adults may have some advantages when studying in a formal classroom, they usually do not learn as quickly and easily as children. Are these different abilities a result of differences in how adults and children are exposed to a new language? Are they the result of biological changes， or do both biology and experience come into play?

While our understanding of language acquisition is incomplete, this pursuit is well worth the effort. “We still don’t understand how a child learns its first language, why some children have language disorders, or how children and adults learn a second language,” explains Professor Joan Ma ling.

Explaining the process of language acquisition promises not only to help scientists answer these questions, but also to explain fundamental features of learning and the human brain.

7 . If you are currently learning English, 1 highly recommend you check out the apps below.

Quizlet

When learning English, you probably have to memorize a lot of words. If you want to grow your vocabulary as fast as possible, a flashcard app like Quizlet is a great shortcut. With Quizlet, you can create a set of flashcards with new English words you are trying to learn, and practice typing them out until you know them by heart. It's a simple concept, but it's highly effective.

Spotify

Spotify is not a language learning app. But chances are that you already use it or a similar app for listening to music or podcasts（播客）, and one of the effective ways to study is combining something you already use into your existing habits. If Spotify is already on your phone, you can subscribe to some podcasts for English learners or download playlists of songs for learning English, or make your own.

Beelinguapp

Beelinguapp makes reading in English as convenient as possible. It shows you a text in your own language with the English translation side-by-side. Texts are short enough so that you can really dig into every word. They cover topics from fairytales, to science, to current news articles. There's even a "karaoke" feature where you can read along to audio, which helps you match up the English pronunciation with the English spellings.

Tandem

Tandem is a language exchange app which connects learners from all over the world. It can help you find a native English speaker who is trying to learn your native language, so you can swap language skills. If you only have five minutes to spare, you can simply exchange messages with a native English speaker. If you have more time, you can have a longer, digital language exchange" by sharing voice notes, or using video chat. It's a great way to test your English skills out with real people.

Voyages of people from England played     1     important part in spreading the English language. At present, English is frequently spoken as an official or common language in many countries.     2     (base) on British English, English spoken in these countries can be understood well by native English speakers. But actually, English has been changing     3     (gradual) in terms of accents, spellings, expressions and vocabulary usage. Because of these facts, you can recognize the differences and tell from which country a foreigner comes.

It's very common that, when students don't know which major to choose in college, they choose English for     1    (they); when they want a better job, they pick up English, and when they want to master a foreign language, it is English. There is a view that English is the path    2    a better life.But the law of supply and demand tells that if everyone supplies the same service, the value of that service declines. So those    3    have taken a less travelled road may have the last laugh.