Can you really learn a second language from watching television? Yes. Will you develop full fluency in just a few seasons? Probably not. Diving into a thrilling TV series allows you to focus on language comprehension in a motivating context. But what you pick up from those episodes depends on your level of familiarity with […]

When I began learning French in the 1990s, I carried around an arsenal of reference materials: a French-English dictionary, Le Petit Robert (a French dictionary), a Bescherelle (for verb conjugations), a notepad to store my personal vocabulary list, and a pencil and eraser for underlining and in-text note taking. Today, I can manage with just […]

Motherland, fatherland, or homeland? The mothership’s maiden voyage. The forefather’s brotherhood. Have you noticed how our words are littered with gender? Gender is even more pronounced in some languages that divide their nouns into masculine and feminine categories. For example, in French, la roue (wheel) is feminine while le pneu (tire) is masculine. Use of […]

Sometimes we communicate ideas figuratively and express our ideas through comparisons. So last week, we celebrated Valentine’s day not just with our beloveds, but also with our sweetie pies, sweet things, and honeys. Have you noticed that many figurative terms of endearment relate to sugary food? Linguists explain this similarity through conceptual metaphors that serve […]

Storybooks can serve as useful language learning aids. The text of a book reinforces vocabulary and syntax. Dialogue between characters models the appropriate ways to use language (i.e., pragmatics). So, when my friends started having children and raising them bilingually, I thought dual language storybooks would make nice gifts. And so began my foray into […]

Note: You’ll need your volume up for this post. We communicate with more than words. Sometimes we use other sounds to express ideas. If someone asks, “do I really have to be there by 8am?”, you might produce a sound like mm-hmm ( ) to confirm yes. Or, if you drop your lasagna on the […]

When multilingual speakers come together, how do they decide which language to use? Do they use the dominant language of their environment? Do they try to guess what language the other speaker is most comfortable using? Does it depend on the topic of discussion? Given the immediacy of conversation, their choices probably occur at a […]