Joey from Orono, Minnesota, has been learning Italian and its many idioms, which makes him wonder if there are other languages that can simply be learned in a classroom without input from a larger cultural context of new and evolving expressions...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
Several years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts devoted a whole issue of its magazine to the topic of “The Art of Failure: The Importance of Risk and Experimentation.” Writers, artists, and musicians all shared their insights about their...
Elia lives in northern Arizona, alongside the Navajo Nation. He grew up in France and learned English as a second language, but he knows very little Navajo. When he overhears Navajo being spoken, he has a hard time picking up any emotional tones at...
Scott in Everett, Washington, has been trying to learn Klingon using the Goldlist Method, but he’s struggling to commit it to memory. What are some tips for learning another language, whether a conlang such as Klingon or one that evolved naturally...
The new play English by Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi powerfully evokes the challenges and rewards and changes involved in struggling to gain fluency in another language. Reviewing the play in the The New Yorker, Alexandra Schwartz...