February is all about preparing for the coming spring. From Groundhog Day to Lent, the focus of this short month is readying ourselves for the glory of springtime (or at least reminding ourselves that it is coming so we can...
Getting through day-to-day life requires a multitude of shortcuts and heuristic devices. Consciously or subconsciously, we save time by skimming pages, half-listening to lectures, and multitasking whenever possible. Similarly, our processing of language demands glossing over certain semantic variations in...
Many of the sports we play and watch today have fascinating etymological histories. Below you will find some of the freaky, funny, intuitive, and counterintuitive roots in the world of sport. The word “sport” itself has been around in the...
Legalese – the bone-dry and tortuous language of the law – can be as mystifying as it is ubiquitous. To help our readers parse some of the more common and curious legal terms, below are their Latin roots. a posteriori:...
Just as linguists drew from the field of biology to apply the terms “living”, “endangered”, “dead”, and “extinct” to languages, so, too, do other fields dip into linguistics, either to develop models based on concepts popularized in that field or...
Three centuries ago, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke examined the idea of linguistic and psychological categories by juxtaposing them with a hypothetical language in which every object that exists would have its own name. Instead of using...
It’s long been observed that children are often blessed with a propensity to learn new languages easily. When children are raised in bilingual households, they often master both languages spoken at home. If you’re an adult who’s attempted to learn...
The most coveted and difficult-to-attain result of studying a foreign language is native or near-native fluency. A recent joint study out of the Georgetown University Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Chicago suggests that certain approaches may help...
If we trace the history of any word diligently enough, we are sure to experience the uncanny sensation of how truly interconnected world languages of the past and present are. Perhaps no word better evokes that idea than the word...
What do iPhones, cigarettes, and the floppy disk icon we click on to save a file have in common? All of them contain examples of skeuomorphism – design elements that are not functional or necessary, but that mimic older designs....
Joining a small cadre of U.S. universities that offer graduate degrees in Translation and Interpretation, the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland (College Park) has launched its Graduate Studies in Interpreting and Translation Program (GSIT). The program is...
What do popular English colloquialisms like “long time no see”, “lose face”, and “no can do” have in common? Far from neologisms, these simple, staccato utterances all originated centuries ago as a means of facilitating trade between the English and...
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