This paper presents a case study delving into the intricate relationship between the mindset, language resources, and contemporary language learning practices. While addressing the shifts in obstacles to language learning over time, including the inundation of unsolicited digital information and a concerning decline in students’ self-discipline, the author offers suggestions for potential rectification of the observed challenges. In order to probe deeper into language learners’ mindset, their rapport with emerging technologies and resources, and their proficiency in time management, an interactive survey was conducted. Collected between March and June 2023 among (a) the participants of the Polyglot Gathering Online in March 2023 and (b) single-language and multilingual students, the data, although limited in scale, revealed a consistent and enlightening trend. Many participants highlighted the disadvantages of technology in language learning, noting their propensity to get distracted, be overburdened with information, and curtail genuine human interactions. Yet, the adoption of technology for language learning was acknowledged as beneficial, simplifying the search for language resources and practice tools. The recurrent obstacles identified ranged from time constraints, waning motivation, and self-discipline challenges, to the detrimental practice of incessant self-comparison. In line with these findings, the advice given by the participants for aspiring language learners highlighted the importance of consistency, enjoyment, and abstaining from self-comparison. The insights garnered from the interactive survey further illuminate the dynamic between learners’ mindset, their engagement with new technologies, and their time management adeptness. The research results emphasize the need for targeted strategies and interventions in the ever-evolving digital learning landscape.

This article presents a sociological study aimed to determine the differences in the perception of foreign languages by students who are considered polyglots and those who are not. The aim of the study is to identify the differences in the attitude of these groups of students to the language learning process in order to draw conclusions that could be useful in both teaching and learning foreign languages. The researchers used the focus group method. As a result, it was found out what reasons are behind the students’ choice of foreign languages they study, what difficulties arise when learning languages, why some students give up learning a particular language, and what can serve as a motivation to learn foreign languages. The object of the study is MGIMO students who, due to the traditions of the university, are characterised by “unconscious polyglottery”, a phenomenon associated with multilingualism as part of the daily life of this social group. The object was divided into three groups: polyglot students, non-polyglot students and the so-called intermediate group (those who are not polyglots, but can be regarded as students taking joy in learning languages). The results showed that the examined students from all the three groups face the same challenges in the language learning process: fatigue from routine tasks, an excessively voluminous curriculum, general workload at the university, and lack of time. The key difference is that the polyglot students have inner motivation to keep up their studies. The intermediate group has also managed to find non-external motives in the course of language learning, such as career prospects, a personal interest in culture, and personal beliefs. However, those considered non-polyglots did not succeed in finding an internal motivation of this kind and decided to give up studying their second foreign languages.

The status of language varieties as dialects or distinct languages has long been a controversial topic, as the distinction is often coloured not only by objectively measurable linguistic data, but also by history, speakers’ attitudes, prejudices, metalinguistic awareness and general education. It is the author’s belief that one could establish criteria for differentiating a language from a dialect by asking the speakers of a majority language directly in a survey-based blind test, thus accounting for the complex interaction of factors that affect language perception, but mitigating the biases of socio-cultural influences. This study proposes a simple method for checking one-way intelligibility in lieu of a mutual intelligibility test. Another issue that this article is concerned with is polyglots. Polyglots are known for being able to study languages efficiently, presumably, due to their increased language aptitude and awareness. Can this awareness have an effect on a polyglot’s propensity for perceiving dialects as languages? Answering this question is the second task of this paper. The results of the study show a rather weak positive correlation between the number of languages that a person knows and his tendency to identify an unknown speech sample as a language rather than a dialect; however, they do not refute this idea outright. Additionally, the author found setting a criterion for differentiating a language from a dialect difficult due to an unexpectedly high intelligibility rate of a lect that was known to be a distinct language. This implies that further testing of this sort needs to be done. It was, however, established that speakers of Russian tend to see a dialect as a lect that only differs in phonetics, while a language, in their perception, is a lect that differs in phonetics as well as vocabulary.

La introducción al sistema de comunicación mesoamericano en códice, concretamente de las culturas Tlaxcalteca, Mexica y Cholulteca, implica el uso del idioma náhuatl tanto en su forma “clásica” como en sus variantes modernas dependiendo de la región, para lograr una mejor comprensión. Se empleará como base de estudio códices anteriores al siglo XVI, ya sean precoloniales o correspondientes al inicio del periodo colonial mexicano, y códices coloniales propios del siglo XVI, XVII y XVIII. Los ejemplos aquí presentados son de diversa índole, tanto de significado como de materiales y proporciones (ciertos en piedra, otrora en papel o a modo de pintura mural). Aunque las ciudades-estado, naciones y culturas en tiempos prehispánicos desarrollaron sus propios atributos de representación plástica e iconográfica, entre las culturas de habla náhuatl se compaginó una manera de “escribir pintando” que comparte una lógica común tanto de escritura como de interpretación – lectura. Esta compaginación de trazos culturales se da por regiones e incluso, en ciertos casos, se observa marcada influencia de culturas distantes entre sí al momento de plasmar su historia en códices. Existe una relación de la identidad y del idioma náhuatl con los códices muy fuerte hasta nuestros días. Se mostrarán componentes de los “amoxme”, libros de códices, junto con su significado desde la etimología nahua. Por tanto, en el presente escrito se hace hincapié en la relación del náhuatl con el sistema de escritura – pintura en códice. Fuera de los periodos mencionados, existen códices de uso moderno y cotidiano, sobre todo en temas de oficialidad e identidad nacional, notablemente en los símbolos de alta preponderancia, como el escudo de la bandera mexicana o los escudos representativos de las municipalidades en la región central del país, donde florecieron el idioma náhuatl y las ciudades-estado que se abordarán. Se pretende un análisis descriptivo de la escritura en códice para sumar a su reconocimiento y comprensión que si bien es paulatina, no deja de ser constante.

The linguistic diversity of Nepal is a treasure house of both wildlife and human culture in the Himalayan range. Languages are the vast resources for the prosperous and dignified life of the human world. The writing systems, in their turn, capture and preserve the language in time and space, thus accumulating the experience and knowledge of individuals and communities. Language and culture are intertwined, and without a writing system both cannot exist. Language is also one of the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples. This paper attempts to explore the writing systems of the indigenous languages of Nepal. The study applied the “armchair” method for the collection of data. The authors critically examined the journals, books, government documents, magazines, official papers and other materials from museums, libraries and other agencies working in the fields relevant to the present study. The findings show that the linguistic diversity exists and sustains only on condition that the exploration, codification, recognition, appreciation, and celebration of the existing languages are properly carried out. In this regard, public awareness is a must, while prevailing government efforts to date have not been enough. To prevent language loss, the government of Nepal needs to work intensely to explore this issue, and both the national and international community should also show prime concern for this rich cultural and traditional heritage preserved by writing systems as national and local cultures are part of the world patrimony. The study also indicates that further in-depth research into the scripts of indigenous languages is necessary.

This paper is an in-depth discussion of the diversity of counting systems developed by different peoples, which manifests itself both in lexical differences/similarities of the terms used for numerals, and in diverse operational schemes for the abstract numbering of things. The goal of the study was to bind together and clarify the variety of the counting systems that were found. During communication, speakers of languages with different counting systems face the difficulty of translating words which describe quantity, i.e. numerals. The widely used decimal system is also not devoid of surprising features. The present study focused on analysing various complex systems of counting in terms of both vocabulary and conceptual methods used by different peoples. The research data collected from academic literature provide numerous examples. The comparative method is used to show how extraordinarily inventable different civilizations were in approaching the problem of defining quantity. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenon of using specific things, such as hands, fingers, and animal names, to create counting systems. A case study of the numerals of some Austronesian languages demonstrates that a whole associative row can be traced, revealing that long ago respective peoples solidified the abstract concept of quantity into simple and clear definitions based on real things. The main result of the study is a comparison of more than 20 counting systems. The abundance of examples substantiates the idea of how many unexpectedly different and original numbering methods were used by the ancestors of different peoples and how many of them are still supported by their descendants and even unwittingly ensconced in the modern technological civilization. This paper is also supplemented by a review of the systems of birth-order names for children in several languages of the Indo-Pacific region and America.

One of the main structural units of the political discourse of any language is its socio-political vocabulary, which is an integral part of the lexical system of the language reflecting a combination of the political and social characteristics of society. Such a complex of lexical units is designed not only to convey to the audience the views of any politician, but also to affect the society through vibrant and clear speech patterns determined by existing ideological values. The socio-political vocabulary is inevitably transformed following the changes in the domestic and foreign policy of the country. This evolutionary process brings neologisms, some of which are firmly fixed in the language. This article is an attempt to evaluate the influence of the historical context on the evolution of the socio-political vocabulary of the Italian language through the examination of a number of its key features which reflect certain milestones of the country’s development and history. It considers the most vivid and widely used political terms, which are products of the linguistic creativity of statesmen in various periods of Italian history since the emergence of the single state in 1861 to the present day. The paper analyzes the factors that had a direct impact on the formation of these lexical units and the connection between personal characteristics of certain Italian politicians with their choice of terms intended to appeal both to their supporters and opponents. The article describes some aspects of the transformation process of the political language into popular language designed to ensure effective communication with the electorate.

The subject of this study is precedent names in the English-language cinematic discourse. The focus is placed on determining the functional potential of precedent names in this type of discourse. In this work, precedent names are considered as a kind of precedent phenomena: names of personalities, events and works of fiction. The study of precedent names has significance within the framework of cultural linguistics, cognitive science and intertextuality theory, as precedent names contain information about important cultural and historical phenomena, give insights into the mechanism of metaphorization, and serve to create intertextual connections. The frequency of their use in different types of discourse, especially in cinematic discourse, is steadily increasing, which explains the relevance of research in this field. Using the methods of discourse analysis, functional-semantic analysis, inductive analysis and continuous sampling, we examine the types of precedent names, source spheres and the functions that these lexical units perform in cinematic discourse. Such analysis makes it possible to establish the cultural significance of personalities, events, and other phenomena, as well as their reflection in such a mass art form as cinematography. Due to its mass appeal and depiction of various social groups, cinematic discourse is of particular interest within the framework of sociolinguistics in regard to such culturally significant units as precedent names. The analysis of the functions of precedent names allows one to establish their role in cinematic discourse, their artistic value, semantic potential and cultural significance. The analysis revealed which types of precedent names are most frequently used in the English-language cinematic discourse (anthroponyms and names of works of art); identified productive sources of precedent names (the sphere of art and the social sphere); and introduced a list of characteristic functions that precedent names perform in cinematic discourse (among which ludic and evaluative functions are especially prominent).

The article is devoted to the use of various means of expressing the functional-semantic field of condition by reference to the Turkish press of the 20^th – 21^st centuries, which is considered the most “democratic” and flexible style of standard language. The structure of complex sentence in modern Turkish has not been so far in the focus of researchers, which determines the topicality and scientific novelty of this paper. The aim of the study is to determine the basic tendencies in Turkish syntax in the diachronic aspect during the last century, using the methods of comparative and quantitative linguistics. The research results show that in the newspaper journalistic style of the modern Turkish language preference is being given to morphological (forms of conditional mood and, less frequently, conditional modality) and lexical-syntactic (constructions made with verbal forms and auxiliary words) means of expressing condition. It is noted that periphrastic forms of conditional mood and modality are not used in the 21^st century. There is a decrease in number of lexical means originating from Arabic and Persian, which can be the result of the evolution of the Turkish mass media language; moreover, writers refuse to use conjunctions due to them being optional in a Turkish conditional sentence. In addition, in the Turkish press of the 21^st century, means that express substantival instead of adjectival meaning and do not contain temporality are used with higher frequency. Previous studies carried out on the topic of sentences of concession, reason and comparison in the Turkish press show similar results.

Following the tradition of the previous special issues of Linguistics & Polyglot Studies, in the present one, articles are supplemented by a round table discussion (by way of a written exchange of ideas, as in 2022). This time it addresses the topic of writing systems. Our esteemed experts are:

• Minoru Ohtsuki, PhD, Professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Daito Bunka University (Tokyo, Japan);
• Olga V. Popova, PhD, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia);
• Osvaldo Alexis Zúñiga Elizalde, Lecturer in Nahuatl at the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (Cholula, Mexico).

Publishing the results of this discussion, the editors hope that it will attract more public and research attention to the productive topic of writing and reading practices in different languages and cultures.