How language evolved is a question that has puzzled scientists and sociologists for decades. It is generally accepted that groups of ancient people who shared a language and culture would split up into smaller tribes in search of fresh land. Over time these smaller tribes would change, with outside influences causing them to develop different languages. However, a new study shows that migration [...]
On a hot summer day last year, I was stuck in the middle of a party supplies shop in Barcelona. I had exchanged smiles with a small girl in the shop, and now she wanted to become friends. I wanted to, too. The problem was that I couldn’t speak her language, and she couldn’t speak mine. After a long, awkward conversation of hand [...]
Like many other people, I have experienced times when a sarcastic comment has flown right over my head. The thing about these moments, though, is that when you don’t pick up on sarcasm, you tend to miss a lot. Who knew? A big reason why it’s so important to be able to recognize sarcasm is because of how common it is in our society [...]
Rather than take French or Spanish, I took Latin for four years in high school. I loved it, but people would always ask me why I was learning a “dead” language. You’re never going to speak Latin, they would tell me. Why learn it? I could always name plenty of reasons. The English language relies on Latin words and conventions (which definitely came [...]
Traveling can be stressful, especially if you visit a place in which the native language does not match your own. But now you can use your phone to translate what you are saying or seeing in real time. In January 2015, Google released a new feature of the Google Translate app, which allows users of iOS and Android devices to speak to the app, which [...]
When I was six years old, I moved from Massachusetts to Texas. I’ll never forget balking every time I heard some phrase foreign to my New Englander ears. The accent, I was prepared for—I knew my family dropped our r’s, while our new neighbors would likely emphasize them—but the idea of different geographic areas having their own sets of words was entirely new [...]
During my junior year of college I took a course on the history of the English language in which I was one of about five students. When we got to the lesson on phonology, we spent over an hour saying different words and trying to decipher their origins based on how we said them. Since there were only a few of us, we [...]
Last semester I completed an introductory course to Shakespeare’s plays, and I remember struggling with the language, hating that the relationships between the characters were even more complicated than the plot of the film Inception and laughing at the famous stage direction from The Winter’s Tale that read “Exit, pursued by a bear.” But it is the variety of reactions and emotions in the audience that make [...]
After a lively discussion in the office about how the sounds of certain words make us cringe (moist anyone?) and others are music to our ears (my personal favorite: tabernacle; other office suggestions: mellifluous, resplendent and epiphany), I decided to investigate more examples. In doing so, I hit the jackpot: a word about words! As a language lover, I’ve always delighted in discovering new terms. But there’s something extra [...]
Globally, nonnative English speakers now outnumber native English speakers 3 to 1. English has become a global language, leading to more nonnative speakers learning English as a second language (ESL). Teachers are turning to apps, both mobile and on the web, to engage this new generation of English language learners (ELLs). Apps can satisfy all kinds of learning needs, sometimes in ways that a classroom [...]