There comes a uniquely emotional moment for American Hispanics who register for a freshman year of college: Is it a good idea to sign up for the formal study of Spanish?

Mental agility can be boosted by even a short period of learning a language, a study suggests. Tests carried out on students of all ages suggest that acquiring a new language improves a person's attention, after only a week of study. Researchers also found that these benefits could be maintained with regular practice.

The Irish language, like its people, has suffered. Listen to the Story. It has been used and abused by many: British colonialists, by the Catholic Church, and by Irish revolutionaries. The first two discouraged its use, associating it with poverty and primitive wildness.

Words painted on backdrops, words read to us with zest, words falling from the sky, words (and noises) streaming from the gleeful Children's Theatre of Charlotte audience. Books filling countless shelves, books that release cyclones when opened, books whose torn or trimmed pages can be turned into beards and lions' manes and even a scruffy little black dog named Toto.