“Despite all the fuss that has been made about the ‘bilingual advantage’, most researchers have moved on from the simplistic ‘is there an advantage or not’ debate. Rather than asking whether bilingualism per se confers a cognitive advantage, researchers are now taking a more nuanced approach by exploring the various aspects of bilingualism to better understand their individual effects.”
Category: words
The Protest Novel Is Back
Brexit and Trump have goosed the inevitable re-rise of the protest novel. For instance, novelist Ali Smith’s “gaze fell on those Googling how to apply for an Irish passport, the graffiti of swastikas, the flag-waving, the disappearance of money, and the constant appearance of lines.”
What Writers Should, Or Could, Do During This Age Of Trump
One thing would be not to pretend that everything was perfect before. “Ms. Eltahawy expressed exasperation at the end over the number of people during the event, most of them white, who made claims of exhaustion and asked the panelists for advice on how to keep up unflagging opposition. Ms. Eltahawy suggested in the firm tone that she used all night that those people realize how privileged they have been to have not felt besieged by politics before now.”
Reading Jane Austen’s Final, Unfinished Novel
Anthony Lane: “Although – or precisely because – Sanditon was composed by a dying woman, the result is robust, unsparing, and alert to all the latest fashions in human foolishness. It brims with life.”
Indie Bookstore In Detroit Sees Its Facebook Page Suddenly Deleted, Evidently At Swedish Conglomerate’s Request
Simon Reichley tells the odd story of The Book Beat in Oak Park, how its Facebook page and all the content on it disappeared without warning, and how the page was restored.
Comic Sans Font Is Actually A Public Good, And Here’s Why
In response to the well-known quip that “Using Comic Sans is like turning up to a black-tie event in a clown costume,” Lauren Hudgins argues that “hating Comic Sans is ableist.” Drake Baer explains why.
Why So Many Words Die
Of the Oxford English Dictionary’s 231,000 entries, at least a fifth are obsolete. They range from “aa”, a stream or waterway (try that in Scrabble), to “zymome”, “that constituent of gluten which is insoluble in alcohol”. That is surely an undercounting.
How Writers Work An Idea On The Page
“What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which she’s already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we’re adjusting that which is already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs.”
How Language Impacts Reason Impacts Reality
“Language is a tool used to describe the world in which we live. However, don’t confuse the map with the territory! There is one major difference between the world we live in and language: Whereas the real world is free of contradictions, the man-made linguistic descriptions of that world can have contradictions.”
Does Learning Other Languages Make You More Empathetic?
Even though it’s largely accepted that our spoken languages don’t completely determine what we think, they do influence how we think (and feel and behave) in subtler ways–including how and when we experience empathy.