Backpfeifengesicht may join other German words that have found a place in English, like Weltschmerz (world-weariness) and Zeitgeist (spirit of the time).

How important is our choice of words? A study of 40 million tweets reveals the true nature of being Canadian. So, are Canadians nicer than Americans? It would be nice to think so. But our tweets tell us only that we are happier. And that’s pretty nice, too.

A new look at “the Russian Blues” demonstrates the power of words to shape perception

A new study “The effect of accent exposure on children’s sociolinguistic evaluation of peers” from the American Psychological Association and published in Developmental Psychology says that kids tend to befriend other kids who speak like them. This proved true even in diverse communities. The researchers say this shows that our tendency to discriminate based on the way others talk is rooted in the preferences we have as children.

For a number of years now, the provision of languages in British schools and universities has been in decline. Yet, as Brexit looms largely on the horizon, there has been much talk in the media and from politicians about the need for a “global Britain”. Arguably, a country can only really be global and outward looking if language skills are considered essential for its citizens.

Usually, a minor language will adopt words from a dominant language, but NZ English bucks this trend. It has been borrowing a growing number of Māori words, not always to add meaning but to mark identity.

I recently had the honor of meeting an award-winning literary sort, a man wry and restrained and overall quite utterly mature, who casually referred to having gone through a phase in his 20s when he’d been “pilly”—that is, when he’d taken a lot of recreational drugs. The word had a wonderfully childish sound to it, the tacked-on y creating a new adjective in the style of happy, angry, and silly. My writer-acquaintance, I recognized, was not alone in bending language this way.

We think that everything can be talked about. Yet, from metaphors to the mystical, there are many things we seem unable to directly express. Should we accept that some things transcend our conceptual grasp? Are the most important things in life beyond language? Or can we find the right words for everything, even if we don't yet know what they are?

I knew I’d never sound like a native. But shouldn’t I be much better than this?

In this report, The Conference Board of Canada seeks to build a portrait of bilingual workers in Canada and to quantify their contribution to GDP, with reference mainly to those outside Quebec.

Scott Chacon is CEO of the online language learning company Chatterbug.

A great deal of communication is based on metaphor.

The personal papers of one of World War II’s earliest historians reveals an obsession with how Nazis distorted the German language.

The manipulation of the odd symbols we call letters and punctuation lend themselves to the discovery of greater truths, guideposts to a type of paradise.

9. CRUMPSY: Short-tempered and irritable.

So said then-candidate Donald J Trump during a US presidential debate in 2015. Trump may have strong feelings on the matter, but he’s not alone. “Dozens of articles are written about political correctness every month in [US-based] media outlets spanning the political spectrum,” note the authors of a new paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Seriously...the English language is insane.

In an essay published on Monday, New Republic Senior Editor Noam Scheiber—who grew up speaking both Hebrew and English—explains why he stopped speaking only Hebrew to his three-year-old daughter. “My Hebrew self turns out to be much colder, more earnest, and, let’s face it, less articulate," he writes. "In English, my natural sensibility is patient and understated. My style in Hebrew was hectoring and prosecutorial.”

Most of the news about minority languages is that they’re endangered or dying off, and the only new languages we hear about are those created for Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters. But sometimes, linguists find a previously unrecorded language — and when they do, it’s a sign language.

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