Modern innovation revitalizes endangered language
Recent technology has proven useful to language acquisition in many ways. Whether it’s practicing speaking with target language natives via Skype or reviewing vocabulary with one of the myriad smartphone language apps, the various innovations have diversified and streamlined the learning process. For some, though, such technologies have even deeper potential. Many Native American […]
Singing is the best way to learn a new language
Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net If you want to learn a language, music is the answer. According to a study, carried out a few years ago by French investigator Daniel Schön and his team, singing and listening to songs helps people to learn new languages. The study went a long way to proving that foreign […]
History of the letter eñe
Most people associate the letter eñe with the Spanish language. Yet it is actually present in no less than nine different alphabets spanning the globe, including the modern Latin alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Filipino alphabet and Guarani alphabet, among others. Additionally, it is currently used to represent the [ŋ] in the Tartar and Crimean […]
The Origin of the Word “Carnival”
The term Carnival (or Carnaval, in Spanish), has an etymology that can find little accord among those who explain its origins. Perhaps beginning with the question of whether the roots of the word date back to latin, and which terms they seem to derive from, several theories about the origin of Carnival persist, each with […]
The Origin of Hashtag
This week we’re starting a new blog series called “The Origin of …” In it, we’ll be discussing the origin of a new word each week, including it’s translations or adaptations in other languages. We begin the series with a word that has become widely recognized among Internet parlance in a short amount of time: […]
Cocoliche and the origins of a regional dialect
Regional differences in the way Spanish is spoken can usually be attributed to either the influence of native languages that exist in a particular area or the languages brought by immigrants that blend with Spanish to create a unique regional dialect. The Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, as we have discussed in our series on […]
A Call to “Erase” Racism from Spanish
A new campaign is picking up steam to eradicate instances of racism in the Spanish language. The contentious phrase, “trabajar como un negro” (“to work like a black person”), is unifying musicians, famous athletes, and officials in a call to Spain’s Real Academia Española (RAE) to eliminate the phrase for being discriminatory and outdated. The […]
Do Children Benefit From Language Mixing?
More information continues to come out about the challenges and benefits of young children learning two or more languages simultaneously. Studies in recent years have largely focused on how early bilingualism or multilingualism affects learning in other areas, as well as the effect on a child’s vocabulary both short-term as well as long-term. A […]
Spanish Is Second Most Used Language On Twitter
According to Spain’s Cervantes Institute, Spanish has officially become the world’s second most used language on Twitter after English. With the most speakers of any language globally, Chinese is in third place. And while China does have its own version of Twitter, Weibo, it is undeniable that Spanish is currently seeing a growing presence on […]
Meaning of “la migra”
Following the last post on US Border Patrols, we’re taking a look at a term widely used in immigration contexts – La Migra. The term is more often heard in states along the border with Mexico than any other region of the U.S., although it can be heard just about anywhere that Spanish slang is […]
