by Steven Blum I’ll never forget how distracted I felt when I tried to learn German at a Berlin-based language school. As I strained to listen to my teacher discuss accusatives and datives, I couldn’t help but marvel distractedly at the UN-esque diversity of our classroom, filled with newly minted Berliners from Spain, South Korea, […]

Next time you receive a perfectly cheeky answer from Siri after asking her if she loves you, you might want to consider sending a thank you card to Max Liberman, professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Liberman is on a quest to make linguistic data more accessible to the public, which could help […]

Unless you’re a rap artist or poet, chances are you don’t pay much attention to the “invisible pulses” that form the foundation of your sentences. But the truth is that our speech is made up not so much of words as sounds, grouped together acoustically by syllables. Although syllables are vital to the construction of […]

As we get older, simple skills such as making a cup of tea or reading a book – our cognitive abilities – start to deteriorate. For some people this happens more rapidly and severely than others and can lead to dementia; a condition that affects around 36 million people worldwide. A common way to increase […]