Is it ok to learn a language from a non-native speaker tutor? Lately, I’ve been working on reviving my Indonesian language abilities, so I called up an old tutor.
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How to Pronounce the Names of Indian Languages (If You Don’t Speak Any)
Ready to learn, once and for all, how to pronounce the names of the Indian languages we hear so much about? After all, 7 of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world are Indian languages …
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Linguistics 101 Series: Why You Need to Master Prosody to Speak a Foreign Language
When you learn a foreign language, you usually study pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. Maybe even a new alphabet. But how many of your language teachers have ever mentioned prosody? Prosody is the “music” of language. In spoken …
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The History of Malaysian Sign Language (and Yes, There Is More Than One Sign Language)
I get this question a lot: “You mean, there is more than one sign language?”And don’t feel bad, before I studied linguistics and started doing research on Nicaraguan Sign Language, I hadn’t thought about sign languages much …
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Irregular English and How It Got That Way
Happy International Mother Language Day!My mother language, or “mother tongue” as we say in the US, is English. This is fitting for a linguist. Not because it is currently a so-called lingua franca, but because it is …
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