Studies have shown that a regular reading habit not only sharpens vocabulary and improves IQ but also reduces the brain’s rate...
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
The simple act of reading has a lasting effect on the brain. And no, we’re not talking about the way you might think about the characters of your favourite historical fiction novel long after you flip the last page.
Studies have shown that a regular reading habit not only sharpens vocabulary and improves IQ but also reduces the brain’s rate of decline in old age and expands EQ and well-being.
But, according to a recent Gallup survey, reading is on the decline. Perhaps most striking, however, is the fact that the decline is greater in groups that have historically been among the biggest readers: college graduates, women and older people.
How can you read more books?
There are simple ways you can incorporate healthy and voracious reading habits into your life, such as making a point to read for at least 30 minutes before bed.
* Deep reading
One technique to cultivate this practice is known as RIDA: read, imagine the scene, describe it to yourself and add more mental detail by noting imagery or passages that strike you.
Or listen to the audiobook while simultaneously reading along from the print book. Doing this will focus your senses on the act of reading and totally immerse you in the story.
* Reading for pleasure
If you find yourself struggling to stick with a book, consider what you’re reading. Maybe you’ve picked up a dense classic novel but aren’t really enjoying it. So go ahead and pick a pleasure read, whether that’s a romance novel or juicy vampire book.
The language of Kusunda, a tiny indigenous group now scattered across central western Nepal, also called Kusunda, is unique. It is believed by linguists to be unrelated to any other language in the world.
It has a variety of unusual elements, including lacking any standard way of negating a sentence, words for “yes” or “no”, or any words for direction.
Indeed, the language has few words implying anything negative. Instead, context is used to convey the exact meaning. If you want to say “I don’t want tea”, for example, you might use the verb to drink, but in an adjusted form which indicates a very low probability – synonymous with the speaker’s desire – of the drinking of tea.
Kusunda also has no words for absolute directions, such as left or right, with the speaker using relative phrases such as “to this side” and “to that side” instead.
Furthermore, Kusunda does not have rigid grammatical rules or structures found in most languages. It is more flexible, and phrases must be interpreted relative to the speaker. For example, actions are not divided into past and present. When saying “I saw a bird” compared to “I will see a bird”, a Kusunda speaker might indicate the past action not by tense, but by describing it as an experience directly related to the speaker. Meanwhile, the future action would remain general and not associated to any subject.
Ironically, these rare qualities are partly why the language has struggled to continue.
For the Kusunda people, losing their language means losing a link to their past, and to their identity. There is a growing body of research that has found indigenous language revitalisation associated with higher indicators of physical and mental wellbeing.
From a linguistic point of view, it is a loss in other ways, too.
