If you need to hit a nail, what tool do you ask for? If you say "hammer," do you pronounce the "r"? Do you drop the "h"? Different people pronounce the same English words in different ways. People ...

Despite the fact that most of America speaks one language, there are distinctive sayings that are nearly incomprehensible to people from different parts of the country. In the South, there are phrases ...

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 ...

Parents in bilingual and multilingual families can wrestle with when and how to expose infants and toddlers to words in ...

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 4: Jumpin’ Salty in the O Mike Vuolo Mike Vuolo is a radio and podcast producer and the host of Lexicon Valley. Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in ...

English spelling is crazy. Even people born and raised in English-speaking societies who speak no other language still often have a lot of trouble with English spelling. You may think that English is ...

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 ...