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Is Language Line for Sale?
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Got a billion dollars?
Want to buy a language company?
Language Line Solutions might be up for sale, and this is huge news in the field (at least in the U.S.). Not only is Language Line historically the largest provider of telephone interpreting services in the world. It's also the "big guy" for medical interpreting by phone.
Apparently a private equity firm bought Language Line for $720 million in 2004. Typically such firms sell after a few years, but the timing apparently was never right. Now it might want to sell for one billion even though Language Line "only" made $ 358 million last year.
Language Line launched telephone interpreting in the U.S in 1982. It is so famous that to this day in the U.S., people often talk about a "language line" when they mean telephone interpreting.
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Where You Live Shapes Your Language
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Do you live in Hawaii? Your language loves vowels. If you live in Germany, consonants rule.
Recent research suggests this phenomenon is no accident. It has to do with how sound travels. Vowels slip through hot, humid forests more audibly. Consonants are easier to hear in northern climes. Birdsong has similar attributes.
So it's all about "acoustic adaptation." Even here in the U.S. If you compare a southern drawl to a northern clipped pace of speech, the differences are audible.
The land you live in affects how language evolves.
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