The ability of children to speak any two dialects -- two closely related varieties of the same language -- may confer the same cognitive advantages as those reported for multilingual children who ...

A great deal of emphasis has been placed recently on the fact that the approaches to second language teaching and second dialect teaching are so similar that the instructor of standard English can ...

What’s the difference between a language and a dialect? Is there some kind of technical distinction, the way there is between a quasar and a pulsar, or between a rabbit and a hare? Faced with the ...

Large language models such as GPT-5 and Llama systematically rate speakers of German dialects less favorably than those using Standard German. This is shown by a recent collaborative study between ...

YESTERDAY'S post on Cantonese touched a few nerves. A blog post is a very compressed medium, and I said some things briefly that I still stand by but which deserve a bit of elaboration. My calling ...

The story of languages is, by and large, one of extinction. Some estimate that in a hundred years only a few hundred languages will survive, as urbanization, globalization, and international media ...

The vast majority of people, if asked what language is spoken in China, would say: That’s a no-brainer: Chinese, of course! Some might know enough to differentiate between Mandarin Chinese and ...

Slovakia is a small country, but the variety in its language is great. Indeed, much of the nation's history concerns the struggle to identify, codify, and agree upon a common language to support the ...

In last week’s column, I discussed Sarah Bunin Benor’s recent book, “Becoming Frum,” which dwells largely on the process whereby American Jews who have become religiously Orthodox adjust to the ...

As more and more key aspects of daily life migrate online, language inclusion can be a key component of ensuring equal access for all in digital spaces. However, many African languages lack the ...