How to Keep Up With a Foreign Language
If this article has caught your attention, there are great chances that you love learning new languages and that, in fact, you can speak and write in a couple of foreign languages quite fluently. But, unless you live in a multilingual city in which you need to be constantly putting your language skills to the […]
The Meaning of the Lunfardo Word ‘Bacán’
Although not much in use these days, it may still be possible to hear people in their fifties or sixties using the word bacán in their conversations, especially when referring to somebody who seems to have a good economic position. It was a very popular term during the sixties and seventies amongst the hippies. What […]
Should NYPD Officers Speak Spanish?
The NYPD seems to have some trouble with Spanish speaking people. Just a few days after nine Hispanic officers were issued memos for chatting in Spanish amongst themselves and violating the department’s unofficial English-only policy, their intolerance with Spanish speakers has made it to the press again. image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net Five Latina women in […]
The Origin of the Word Chévere
If you have had the chance of spending some time in Venezuela, or Cuba or in any other Caribbean country or if you have watched any Venezuelan soap opera on TV, there are great chances that you have heard at least once the word chévere (meaning good, cool). And in fact it is quite likely […]
English-Only: Past, Present and Future of a Controversial Movement
The Whole Food’s incident, in which two employees accused the company of encouraging an English-only policy in the working environment and suspending them for speaking Spanish during the working hours, seems to have opened Pandora’s box in relation to a long-standing and unresolved issue that reaches deep into the American society: the use of English […]
Career Opportunities for Multilingual People
Being multilingual is usually considered as the key to landing more attractive and well-paid jobs than the ones that people that speak only one language can aim at. However, when people think about what positions multilingual people can look for, in general they limit themselves to teaching a foreign language or translating, without taking into […]
Spanish Language in USA: Flourishing or Declining?
With a solid and consolidated Latin American community, the United States of America has the second largest Spanish speaking population outside Spain, being the first one in Mexico. According to the North American Academy of the Spanish Language (ANLE, Spanish acronym), over 50 million people speak Spanish in the USA. That said, is the Spanish […]
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 […]
Online language learning: a mixed innovation
Foreign language acquisition and multilingualism have been influential human phenomena for centuries, with the most popular and supposedly successful methodology being a combination of formal study and cultural-linguistic immersion. As any foreign language learner can attest, the statement “in order to really learn a language, you must live where it is spoken” is a common […]
Spanish Spelling Bee May Reflect a Rising Acceptance of the Language in the U.S.
The National Spelling Bee is a competition that is believed to have originated in the early 20th century in the United States, wherein a number of young contestants are required to a orally spell various words of increasing difficulty. The first official Bee was held in 1925, and the first champion was eleven years old. […]
