Experiencing different cultures and languages is one of the most exciting elements of living in a globally connected world. If you enjoy cross-cultural adventures or have lived in multiple cities or countries, you are probably familiar with processing English spoken in a variety of accents. In fact, next time you watch a movie, pay careful […]
Bilingualism
Everyday scenes in bilingual cities can be simultaneously perplexing and fascinating when experienced for the first time. Imagine sitting in a café and eavesdropping on a casual conversation between two friends at a nearby table. They can both speak in a different language, and do so smoothly and naturally, engage in code-switching where they transition from one to […]
How many U.S. presidents can you name? (Apologies to our international audience.) Regardless of how many you can recall, I would bet that among the ones you did remember are Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Trump, Obama, and Bush. I would also bet that among the ones you did not remember are McKinley, Hoover, and Cleveland. Don’t […]
Hearing other people speak a foreign language can be dizzying. How can they speak so fast? Why don’t they pause between words, like we do? Actually, foreign-language speakers do pause: but despite how it sounds to us in our native tongue, spoken language is not neatly broken up by silence between words. Not convinced? Take […]
Currently the EU is officially working and speaking in 24 different languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. Growing up in such an environment by necessity leads to a great number of people speaking more than just […]
There are some 40,000,000 foreign-born people living in the United States today. Most of those people hail from Asia or Latin America and the Caribbean, and their native language is therefore most likely not English. And indeed, it is not uncommon for people in the U.S.—and also the U.K., Canada, and Australia—to speak English with a […]