How could something so Plain Jane and American as apple pie like standard American English be controversial? Well, it’s because declaring that anything is standard or normal implies that everything else is not standard, and people tend to take issue with that, no matter what the topic. Standard English in the original thirteen colonies was what we would now [...]
Researchers and the medical team at UC Berkeley recently completed a remarkable study involving 29 patients with epilepsy who were undergoing brain surgery. During their procedures, they played a Pink Floyd song – A Brick In the Wall (Part 1) – while using electrodes to record patients’ brain activity while hearing the track. They recorded the patients’ brain activity [...]
As babies enter the important 6-to-12-month period, it may seem like they've already decided to only communicate via crying for the rest of their lives. Fear not, however, as a fun phase is rapidly approaching. This is a time when the crying usually only occurs for emergencies (though for babies this can mean being hungry or sleepy), and a [...]
Beautiful Boston figures prominently in US history and continues to stand tall as one of the East Coast’s major metropolises. Outsiders may traditionally know it for the food, beer, and passionate sports fans, but Boston has also gained a bit of recent notoriety for its unique accent. The Boston accent is of course nothing new, but it has enjoyed [...]
Just as some old-fashioned librarians and teachers decry the fact that the new generations no longer read (although people are reading MUCH more than previous generations, just usually online), some people also lament the increasing use of emojis, viewing it as a sort of regression back to the days of cave paintings. Is the internet not only shortening our [...]
While it may seem that infants care about nothing more than milk, sleep, and the colors on their mobiles, they are constantly absorbing information from all directions. Their environment is rich with intriguing language and sounds, all of which are new and potentially useful to them. These sounds of course include all your loving praise and goofy baby talk, but [...]
Los neoyorquinos presumen sin pudor de su acento nativo, y con razón. Es potente, directo y encantador a su manera, como la propia ciudad. A menudo se presenta a Estados Unidos como un crisol de razas, y no hay mejor ejemplo que Nueva York. Algunas de las comunidades más numerosas de Nueva York son la dominicana, la puertorriqueña, la coreana, [...]
Pocas cosas pueden estresar tanto a unos padres como la creencia, por fugaz que sea, de que su hijo se está quedando atrás en alguna etapa crucial de su desarrollo y que, por tanto, está condenado a una vida de angustia. Incluso antes de nacer, los niños son inspeccionados, examinados y comparados con millones de compañeros en un esfuerzo por [...]
Cuando uno piensa en cómo habla la gente en la Big Easy, probablemente se imagina un acento sureño con un elegante toque francés, pero el acento de Nueva Orleans y el acento cajún son en realidad dos cosas muy distintas. La mayor sorpresa para los visitantes de N'awlins es que el acento de Nueva Orleans puede sonar muy parecido al [...]
Si se le pidiera que diera un ejemplo de una palabra nativa americana, el estadounidense medio de hoy probablemente tendría dificultades para dar mucho más que "tee-pee" o quizás "mocasín", pero Estados Unidos guarda un secreto sobre la lengua nativa americana, a saber, que más de la mitad de nuestros estados fueron nombrados originalmente por nativos americanos. Desde Alabama hasta [...]
