Birth certificates, passports, driving licenses, social security cards, and on and on. There is a seemingly endless stream of legal documents that one is obligated to create through their lifetime to prove their personhood, citizenship, and privileges. One document that holds special legal import not just while you’re alive, but even after, is your will and testament. As you’re [...]
Over two centuries ago, Paul Revere rode on horseback across the Massachusetts countryside declaring, “The British are coming.” That, of course, was a warning about an impending war. Today, the British are making an altogether different kind of incursion into the US: with their language. That’s the claim that Ben Yagoda makes in his latest book, Gobsmacked! The British [...]
Why Study Music and Speech Together? Researchers have long wondered how human language developed into the state in which it currently exists, and few considered how a culture’s music might provide insight into its language as well. Music and speech are intrinsically linked—both as a means of communication and a manner of self-expression. Thus, researchers posited that discovering what [...]
Why Was the Deseret Alphabet Created? The Deseret alphabet was the brainchild of Brigham Young and his colleagues. Young, one of the foundational members of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, sought to create an alternative to English so that adherents of Mormonism could separate themselves from their surrounding culture. In fact, it was Young’s [...]
Non-verbal communication is a universal language that transcends spoken words, conveying emotions, thoughts, and intentions through gestures, facial expressions, and body language. While we may rely on speech to articulate ideas, much of what we communicate is expressed through non-verbal cues. These unspoken signals are powerful, yet their meanings often vary from culture to culture. What might be considered [...]
Code switching is the practice of adjusting one’s speech or writing depending on the circumstances or audience. While some code switching can occur between languages, more often, it arises in variances of dialect or even slang. For instance, imagine a lawyer speaking before a judge. People generally understand that this lawyer would do well to speak formally and politely [...]
Suppose that a young woman from Argentina immigrated with her family to the United States. She has always dreamed of being a psychologist, but upon enrolling in university education to start her training, she discovers that many of the classes (taught in English) are moving at a pace too fast for her to enthusiastically engage with because English is [...]
Indigenous languages have a precarious existence in contemporary times. Although so many local, vernacular languages have been spoken and transmitted for hundreds of years, most find themselves at the threat of extinction today. The severity of the crisis can be aptly conveyed with this one statistic by the United Nations: an indigenous language goes extinct once every two weeks. [...]
Whether you’re a native speaker of American English or you’re just starting to pick it up, you’ve likely noticed how common it is to hear references to sports in conversations regardless of whether the conversation was casual, formal, or even business-related. Americans who reference sports in conversations usually do so through the use of idioms – a phrase or [...]
Can Adults Learn a Second Language? The short answer is yes—adults can (and should!) pick up more than one language. The idea that a student is most receptive to information at a young age, and that the brain hardens against learning new information later, is largely a myth. What actually occurs is that adults leave environments such as schools [...]
