Songs can elicit a range of emotions, and deliver a meaningful message in their lyrics. In whistled languages, the sound may be pretty, but the message is all business. Instead of speaking words phonetically, they are, of course, whistled. Their...
October 18-20 in St. Paul, Minnesota will mark the fourth-annual Conference on Language Immersion Education. An offshoot of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota, this conference brings together academics, professionals, students, and...
Knowing foreign languages can help people get their dream jobs, make important business deals, or even meet the loves of their lives. For much of European history, being proficient in other tongues was a no-brainer for the educated classes. It...
A newly-instated elective course for high school students in the Gaza Strip may have an unpredictable effect on Israeli-Hamas relations. Beginning this fall, Hebrew will be added as an elective for ninth-graders in a handful of Gaza schools. If deemed...
The famous case of French journalist and editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was paralyzed after a stroke and left unable to speak, brought to public attention the condition known as locked-in syndrome. Though unable to speak or write, Bauby dictated his...
During this election season, American presidential hopefuls will raise and spend some 6 billion dollars, according to experts. No less important, the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will spend countless words to woo the electorate, relying on...
Does it seem arbitrary to prefer typing certain letters on a keyboard over others? A new study out of the University College of London suggests that a predilection for keys found on the right side of the keyboard is not...
A recent study conducted by University of Pennsylvania psychologists Elika Bergelson and Daniel Swingley may show that the first signs of language recognition in infants occur earlier than has initially been believed. The study tested language comprehension in 6- to...
Among the most divisive regional differences in the United States are dialect and vocabulary, revealing the outsider at the drop of a syllable. When addressing an individual (a “you”) in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvanians say “yins,” but in Georgia “y’all” is the...
Language and its origins have been a heated source of debate for centuries, with the end result being that there’s no clear consensus on its origin or even its age. In fact, many scholars have flat out avoided the subject,...
Although northern Ukraine is considered by many linguists to be the point of origin of the Slavic people, the country itself has, for centuries, been politically overshadowed by its behemoth neighbor to the east. From Tsarist times – which saw...
What are the factors that both motivate and impede us from learning foreign languages? A recent study by Alastair Henry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden examines Swedish students’ decreased interest and success rate in learning languages besides English....
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