While we celebrate the richness of English vocabulary, we also often complain about its weird spelling rules (or the many exceptions to those rules). However, compared to some other languages around the world, English speakers actually have a pretty easy … Continue reading…
In a fascinating study published last month in the journal of the Public Library of Science, researchers found that they could track a person’s neural activity while they were speaking and “map” the shapes of the words as they appear … Continue reading…
In the early stages of learning to speak, infants and young children focus on a person’s face when that person is talking to them. They get as much information from the way the person’s face looks and moves as from … Continue reading…
Sometimes there’s a connection between numbers and words other than the fact that we use words to give names to numbers. The concept of one is meaningless unless there’s a commonly-understood word that can be used to refer to that … Continue reading…
One of the major sources of frustration for people learning English is the frequent disconnect between the way a word is spelled and the way it’s pronounced. All languages evolve over time, of course, but English has come a very … Continue reading…
It’s time once again to check in with the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary to see what new words they’ve officially added to the English language … Well, as it turns out, one of the new words they’re adding … Continue reading…
A simple technique, but one that’s often overlooked, is to increase vocabulary by reading. If you make an effort to pick up one new piece of reading material each day, you’ll find that the words you come across in this … Continue reading…
As linguists and language teachers know, there are two main types of vocabulary in daily use: the first is vocabulary we know in a “receptive” way, where we understand the general sense of a word when we read it or … Continue reading…
The English language has always borrowed words from other languages and incorporated them into its vocabulary, a process that started thousands of years ago and continues today. In the United States, the acquisition of words from Spanish dates back to … Continue reading…
With the June 2011 update to the Oxford English Dictionary, the English language officially added words for strange creatures too small to be seen without a microscope, and amazing rock sculptures too large to be seen without a telescope. Focus … Continue reading…