He’s a native English speaker who’s fluent in Spanish. She grew up in Cameroon speaking French. They’re planning a family, and hoping to raise their children to speak all three. What are the best strategies for teaching children to speak more than...
Micah from Texas asks how to explain the difference between speak and talk to someone whose language uses one verb for both. Speak is often the more formal or one-way choice, as in Speaker of the House rather than Talker of the House, and it can...
If you master a second language by the age of ten, native speakers won’t recognize that it’s not your first. Even so, things like idioms or prepositions can often trip up even the most skilled second-language speakers, if their second language is...
When speakers of foreign languages try to adapt their own idioms into English, the results can be poetic, if not downright puzzling. A Dallas listener shares some favorite examples from his Italian-born wife, including “I can put my hand to the...
A native Japanese speaker is mystified by the expression “happy as a clam.” In Japanese, she says, if you had a good night’s sleep you might say you “slept like a clam” or “slept like mud.” So why do English speakers think clams are content? This is...
If you’re driving and need to turn 180 degrees, you make a U-turn. But what do you make if you speak a language that doesn’t include the letter “U”? If you’re a Hindi speaker, what do you call wearing a V-neck sweater in an A-frame house? This is...
