Aman from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, grew up in a region of India where an e– sound was added to English words beginning with consonant clusters, such as scooter and school. Later he noticed the same pattern in Spanish. The sound-sequencing...
Destiny from Huntington Beach, California, speaks German proficiently, plus some Spanish. She’s now learning Russian, but finds herself frustrated as she reaches instead for Spanish words for the same thing. This phenomenon is so common among...
A teacher in Dallas, Texas, is trying to learn Spanish in order to chat casually with some of his students. He’s having some success with the smartphone app DuoLingo. But an app won’t necessarily give him the slang vocabulary he needs. A...
A listener from Concord, North Carolina, sent along an example of why learning English as a second language can be so challenging: “Yes, English can be weird. It can be understood through tough, thorough thought though.” This is part of...
When it comes to proper grammar, “Where you at?” ain’t where it’s at. A mother is concerned that her child will pick up such malapropisms as “Where you at?” and “My mother and me went to the store.”...
A new transplant to Dallas wants to assimilate into the Texan way of speaking without offending the locals or forcing any new vocabulary. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Texas Talk” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Good...