The rich history of African American Vernacular English has endured and flourished, undoubtedly leaving an indelible mark on America and how it speaks, but AAVE’s origin, core features, and even very existence continue to be debated by professional linguists and everyday people alike. Despite the debate, and at times controversy, over what exactly AAVE is, there is a very [...]
While parents certainly love all the cooing and cute sounds infants make, they often start getting antsy to move past the squeaking and gurgling into some real words, especially a “Mama” or a “Dada.” This will come in time, and that time generally lands somewhere in the period of 12 to 18 months. Structured Babbling and a Baby’s First [...]
How could something so Plain Jane and American as apple pie like standard American English be controversial? Well, it’s because declaring that anything is standard or normal implies that everything else is not standard, and people tend to take issue with that, no matter what the topic. Standard English in the original thirteen colonies was what we would now [...]
Researchers and the medical team at UC Berkeley recently completed a remarkable study involving 29 patients with epilepsy who were undergoing brain surgery. During their procedures, they played a Pink Floyd song – A Brick In the Wall (Part 1) – while using electrodes to record patients’ brain activity while hearing the track. They recorded the patients’ brain activity [...]
As babies enter the important 6-to-12-month period, it may seem like they've already decided to only communicate via crying for the rest of their lives. Fear not, however, as a fun phase is rapidly approaching. This is a time when the crying usually only occurs for emergencies (though for babies this can mean being hungry or sleepy), and a [...]
Beautiful Boston figures prominently in US history and continues to stand tall as one of the East Coast’s major metropolises. Outsiders may traditionally know it for the food, beer, and passionate sports fans, but Boston has also gained a bit of recent notoriety for its unique accent. The Boston accent is of course nothing new, but it has enjoyed [...]
Just as some old-fashioned librarians and teachers decry the fact that the new generations no longer read (although people are reading MUCH more than previous generations, just usually online), some people also lament the increasing use of emojis, viewing it as a sort of regression back to the days of cave paintings. Is the internet not only shortening our [...]
While it may seem that infants care about nothing more than milk, sleep, and the colors on their mobiles, they are constantly absorbing information from all directions. Their environment is rich with intriguing language and sounds, all of which are new and potentially useful to them. These sounds of course include all your loving praise and goofy baby talk, but [...]
People from New York City unabashedly show off their native accent, and rightfully so. It’s powerful, straightforward, and charming in its own gruff way, just like the city itself. The US is often portrayed as a melting pot, and there is truly no bigger example than NYC. Some of the largest communities in New York City include Dominicans, Puerto [...]
Few things can stress parents out like the belief, however fleeting, that their child is falling behind in some crucial stage of development and is therefore doomed to a life of anguish. Even before they are born, children are inspected, examined, and compared to their millions of peers in an effort to discover and head off any potential issues. [...]
