The new book Bye Bye I Love You: The Story of Our First and Last Words (Bookshop|Amazon) by linguist Michael Erard is a deeply researched, often intensely personal exploration of the ways people communicate at both the beginning and end of life...
When you’re distracted by trying to get the perfect photo at a wedding or fiddling with your camera during a solar eclipse, you’re missing out on some of the experience itself. There’s a term for this: It’s called overshadowing. Plus one of Lionel...
What’s a word for the act of being so focused on documenting an important event, such as a wedding or an eclipse, that your effort to capture it distracts from experiencing the event itself? The A Way with Words Facebook group has some creative...
John Colapinto’s book This is the Voice (Bookshop|Amazon) is a fascinating look at the miracle of the human voice and how it distinguishes our own species from others. The book is an invigorating mix of science, history, linguistics, and personal...
We’ve received plenty of feedback about language immersion schools, and many who’ve attended say that not only did they learn both English and another language fluently by third or fourth grade, but often the whole family picked up some of the new...
Kids often imitate French or Chinese speakers without knowing the language. But have you ever tried to imitate the English language or speak fake English? There are lots of YouTube videos that give an idea of what English sounds like to native...