Learning Languages

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Ojibwe Language Into Modern Day

by Richard Kazandjian December 2, 2011 Education

The Ojibwe language is the fourth most common Native American language spoken in North America, with a total of approximately 56.531 speakers in the US and Canada. Even so, like most native languages, it is in some danger of dying out as most of the speakers are elderly. However, steps are being taken to preserve [...]

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New York Garbage Grant to Study Gaelic

by Richard Kazandjian November 1, 2011 Environment

It’s amazing how much learning another language has the potential to change your life. For example, check out this New York Times article on Ed Shevlin, a garbage collector born and bred in New York.  He’s perhaps one of the last people you’d expect to speak fluent Gaelic, but actually he’s been studying the language [...]

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A Second Language May Delay Alzheimer’s

by Richard Kazandjian October 27, 2011 International

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most heart-breaking diseases of the elderly, and one of the  most poorly understood.  The causes are unclear; while scientists believe that genetics are part of the picture, they also believe that environmental factors have a role to play in how and when a person develops the disease. Also unclear [...]

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10-year-old Speaks Ten Languages

by Richard Brooks October 24, 2011 Learning Languages

Proof positive it pays to start learning languages young: Northwest England’s newest top young linguist is only ten years old, but she can already speak ten different languages, one for each year she’s been alive! Sonia Yang was born in Taiwan, but her family moved to England before she began primary school. By that time, [...]

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Brain of a Bilingual Baby‎

by Richard Kazandjian September 8, 2011 Education

New parents are bombarded by well-meaning advice about how their parenting techniques could affect their child’s developing brain. A lot of this advice is exaggerated, like the potential benefits of showing your tots “Baby Einstein” videos. However, there’s a scientific consensus that infancy and early childhood is the best time to become bilingual, and that [...]

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Cuts Threaten Italian Academy‎

by Richard Kazandjian August 26, 2011 Education

Across the globe, government services are being slashed in the name of austerity. In many countries, language services are not exempt from the chopping block– and in Italy, the damage may go so far as to include the Italian language academy itself, the Accademia della Crusca. The academy was established in either 1582 or 1583. [...]

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How Far Would You Go?‎

by Richard Kazandjian August 16, 2011 Education

As babies grow up and develop language skills, they lose the ability to hear and produce sounds that aren’t used in their native language. This typically happens between 8 and 10 months, and it’s one of the things that makes it so difficult to learn a new language as an adult. However, with practice, most [...]

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iPhone App Helps Troops

by Richard Kazandjian August 11, 2011 Learning Languages

When it comes to Afghanistan, winning the all-important “battle of hearts of minds” has proven to be quite difficult…especially when soldiers don’t speak the language. Now, a new, free iPhone app is available to help soldiers learn Dari, one of the local languages. The app, TripLingoDari, was recently profiled on CNN.com. Dari, the Afghan dialect [...]

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Learning Language With a Game

by Tanguy June 24, 2011 Learning Languages

Have you always dreamed of learning a new language? Make a game of it! That’s the idea behind Memrise, a new language learning website that focuses on building your foreign language vocabulary with social games, quizzes and mnemonic devices. To help you learn new words more quickly, Memrise introduces them with clever pictures or mnemonic [...]

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Akkadian Dictionary Finally Published

by Tanguy June 13, 2011 Languages

Over 4,000 years after the death of Sargon the Great, scholars have finally finished compiling a dictionary for the Akkadian language. The Akkadian language is probably the first language in the world that was written down, using a set of small, stylized pictures called cuneiform. From its origins in the ancient city-state of Akkad in [...]

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