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Bilingual 1: "When I'm around Anglo-Americans, I find myself awkward and unable to choose my words quickly enough ... When I'm amongst Latinos/Spanish-speakers, I don't feel shy at all. I'm witty, friendly, and ... I become very out-going." Bilingual 2: "In English, my speech is very polite, with a relaxed tone, always saying "please" and "excuse me."

This article is about the differences between the languages spoken in communities with small populations and in communities with large populations. Scientists from Cornell University found out that in larger populations, the vocabulary is more complex, but the grammar rules are simpler than in languages in small populations. The reason might be that words are much easier to learn than grammar rules. In small populations, each person interacts with a larger proportion of the community, and this makes it easier for new grammar conventions to spread. In larger populations, each person only interacts with a small proportion of the population, but since individual words are easy to learn, the vocabulary can still be complex.

It's an ethos so culturally ingrained in us that it's hard to see beyond: Self-reliance is paramount, and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to solve your own problems is a matter of character. Of course, that's not quite how the world works. All of us need help from time to time, and the ability to ask is a learnable skill we seldom think about but one that can have a monumental impact on our goals and lives. So, how to ask? 4 tips: 1. Make sure the person you want to ask realizes you need help. Thanks to a phenomenon called inattentional blindness, we're programmed to have the ability to take in and process only so much information, ignoring the rest. 2. Make a clear request. Otherwise your potential helper might fall victim to audience inhibition, or the fear of "looking foolish in front of other people," which can prevent people from offering help because they doubt their own intuition that you need help. 3. Ge specific with your request and make sure your helper knows why you're specifically asking him or her. This will make them feel invested in your success and actually want to help. 4. Make sure the person you're asking has the time and resources to help.

The key takeaways: 1. Ensuring rich, socially-contextualized language exposure in both languages. Pediatricians advise non-English-speaking parents to read aloud and sing and tell stories and speak with their children in their native languages, so the children get that rich and complex language exposure, along with sophisticated content and information, rather than the more limited exposure you get from someone speaking a language in which the speaker is not entirely comfortable. 2. Exposure has to be person-to-person; screen time doesn't count for learning language in young children - even one language - though kids can learn content and vocabulary from educational screen time later on. 3. It does take longer to acquire two languages than one, says Dr. Erika Hoff, a developmental psychologist who specializes in early language development. "A child who is learning two languages will have a smaller vocabulary in each than a child who is only learning one; there are only so many hours in the day, and you're either hearing English or Spanish," Dr. Hoff said. The children will be fine, though, she said. They may mix the languages, but that doesn't indicate confusion. "Adult bilinguals mix their languages all the time; it's a sign of language ability," she said. 4. If exposed to the target languages at a younger age, children generally will sound more nativelike. On the other hand, older children may learn more easily. Gigliana Melzi, a developmental psychologist and associate professor of applied psychology, states, "The younger you are, the more head start you have," she said. "The older you are, the more efficient learner you are, you have a first language you can use as a bootstrap."

Words have more meaning than just their definition, and the use of words can give off emotions and more. People often use words to describe situations before thinking if what they're saying is considerate and politically correct. This article shows how the use of words can affect people's mental illnesses, and by saying the wrong thing can cause the person to feel ostracized and refuse to get theraputic help.

Choosing a voice has implications for design, branding or interacting with machines. A voice can change or harden how we see each other. Research suggests that users prefer a younger, female voice for their digital personal assistant. We don't just need that computerized voice to meet our expectations, said Justine Cassell, a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. We need computers to relate to us and put us at ease when performing a task. "We have to know that the other is enough like us that it will run our program correctly," she said. That need seems to start young. Ms. Cassell has designed an avatar of indeterminate race and gender for 5-year-olds. "The girls think it's a girl, and the boys think it's a boy," she said. "Children of color think it's of color, Caucasians think it's Caucasian." Another system Cassell built spoke in what she termed "vernacular" to African-American children, achieving better results in teaching scientific concepts than when the computer spoke in standard English. When tutoring the children in a class presentation, however, "we wanted it to practice with them in 'proper English.' Standard American English is still the code of power, so we needed to develop an agent that would train them in code switching," she said. And, of course, there are regional issues to consider when creating a robotic voice. Many companies, such as Apple, have tweaked robotic voices for localized accents and jokes.

This article answers the question of why sarcasm is hard to detect in texting and email conversations. It depends on things like context of the person like the relationship you have with the person you are using sarcasm with. Also, with texting, you can't convey your emotions with facial expressions like you do in face-to-face conversation. Emojis help a little bit with that, but it isn't the same as a face-to-face interaction.

There's a Czech proverb that says, "As many languages you know, as many times you are a human being." Like other multilingual speakers, people often think of themselves as a different person whenever they speak a different language. But that feeling has less to do with the structure of the languages themselves than with the personal associations they have with each one.

For anyone who's ever dated, or maintained any kind of relationship, in the digital age, you have probably known a breadcrumber. They communicate via sporadic noncommittal, but repeated messages - or breadcrumbs - that are just enough to keep you wondering but not enough to seal the deal (whatever that deal may be). Breadcrumbers check in consistently with a romantic prospect, but never set up a date. They pique your interest, of that prospective job, perhaps, by reminding you repeatedly that it exists, but never set up the interview. Breadcrumbers are one step shy of ghosters, who disappear without a trace, but are in more frequent contact than a person giving you the fade. On the hierarchy of digital communication, the breadcrumber is the lowest form. "It really is a cousin of the 'friend zone,'" said Rachel Simmons, an author and leadership coach at Smith College. "It's about relegating a person to a particular dead end, but one that still keeps them hanging on in some way."

This article is about how emojis are changing the way that we think/communicate with each other. Emojis are changing our brains -- scientists discovered that when we look at a smiley face emoji online, the same parts of our brain are activated as we look at a real human face. Later on in the article, it talks about how to use emojis to promote whatever message you are trying to get across a person or party, or how to use emojis according to the kind of personality you have.

This guide gives a run-down of tips for greater happiness. Some Words R Us related items: 1. Conquer negative thinking by acknowledging and challenging your thoughts. 2. Rewrite your story: we all have a personal narrative that shapes our view of the world, but sometimes our inner voice doesn't get it right. By (literally) writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of our personal well-being. 3. Practice optimism: thinking positive thoughts and surrounding yourself with positive people really does help. 4. Kindness and compassion towards others and yourself

In this article, it talks about Trumps language compared to past political officials. In analyzing Trumps language, linguists from University of Pennsylvania saw that one of Trumps thirteen used used words were often one and two syllabled words, with the exception of Mexico being three syllabled. Linguists were analyzing Trumps way of answering questions, and saw that he diverts this answer is a much different way than other politicians. Most politician, when diverting their answer from the question would start with "well", "now", and "what". But, Trump would usually start with the word "I". In public speakings, politicians would used stories to put a personal connection on answering questions, but with Trump his stories often start out of nowhere.

This study examining the online identity and language use of teens who maintain personal blogs. Expression of gender, identity, and use of language were examined in terms of disclosed personal information (sexual identity, emotive features, and semantic themes).

Essayist Ligaya Mishan (one of my best friends from Punahou!) examines "cancel culture"--the practice of publicly ostracizing a person, whether it's professionally, personally, or in the digital/social media world--historically contextualizing the phenomenon, which is not recent, but something that has existed in many cultures, past and present, and examining the reasons behind it. This essay is also a Words R Us special in its use of etymology: examining the origins and evolution of different words related to cancel culture.

So basically you'll get into college if you write interesting stuff and you establish yourself as an individual. How hard can that be if we're all different people?

This article talked about how UC system used to not read the college essays. However, now that they do, it seems that a strong college essay could be the "edge" needed to make it into some of the more popular and more difficult to get accepted to UC schools. The main point that this article makes is, stand-out essays that represent the applicant's individuality can be much more beneficial than an essay that sounds like everyone else's.

This article promoted writing unique essays that establish you as an individual. This article talked about how they wanted to see more character within these essays rather than reading the same essays over again. I think that the point of this article was to stand out by being yourself and by adding some of your own personality to you essay.

Researchers have noticed that in Philly, signers have a distinct accent just like the language spoken there. The sign language in Philly is so different from ASL that it would be almost impossible for a person who uses ASL and a person who use Philadelphia sign language to communicate with each other. This is because Philadelphia sign language is similar to French Sign Language. As more advancements are made to help deaf people hear, the less people are learning how to sign and slowly the usage of the unique Philadelphia sign language decrease. Researchers are trying to find ways to help preserve this unique way of signing.

An app called Duolingo is the top app to learn a new language. The site includes learning vocab and grammar and doing exercises that are tailored to what the person learns quickly and what the person need to repeatedly review. Teaching language has changed from early "grammar translation" (learning grammar rules and translating sentences) to "audiolingualism" (learn rules and patterns by repeating sentences over and over) after World War II to other methods in the 60s and 70s that turned into a general "communicative approach" which focuses on the function of language as communication not the rules and structure. The app is mostly "audiolingual" because it drills users to repeat words and phrases over and over, but it also helps users learn a lot of words, reminds them to practice, and keeps them practicing with virtual rewards so can be effective.

The Latin word anathema has evolved over time. Today, it means "a strongly disliked person or thing," e.g. "bullying is anathema to me." In medieval times, however, "anathema" means "an excommunicated person, also the curse of excommunication." In medieval, pre-printing press times, books were highly valued and rare, as they were laboriously handwritten by monks, and sometimes took years to produce. Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures. They did not hesitate to use the worst punishments they knew-excommunication from the church and horrible, painful death. Steal a book, and you might be cleft by a demon sword, forced to sacrifice your hands, have your eyes gouged out, or end in the "fires of hell and brimstone." "These curses were the only things that protected the books," says Marc Drogin, author of Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses. "Luckily, it was in a time where people believed in them. If you ripped out a page, you were going to die in agony. You didn't want to take the chance."

This blog post explains the relatively new history of 她, the female third-person, or "she." Originally, with standardized writings of Mandarin Chinese, the only third-person pronoun was 他. It was used regardless of the subject's gender. In 1917, linguist Liu Ban Nong proposed "她," but it wasn't until feminist movements and media coverage gained force that the Chinese Government claimed it. Its usage is still being debated today, with people questioning whether or not there needs to be a gendered "them" at all.

Emotional contagion is the phenomenon of "catching" other people's emotions and moods. According to Elaine Hatfield, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii, humans are hard-wired "to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotionally." Primitive emotional contagion is a basic building block of human interaction. It helps us coordinate and synchronize with others, empathize with them, and read their minds-all critical survival skills. When we mimic, the body gets feedback about the expressions we've taken on; we then feel what the other person is feeling. Gary Slutkin, a physician, epidemiologist, and founder and CEO of the nonprofit Cure Violence, says that emotional contagion, specifically anger and violence, springs from four mechanisms involving the brain: 1. Engagement of the cortical pathways for copying, a behavior related to mimicry. The most contagious behaviors are the most emotionally engaging, as well as the ones carried out by the people who are most relevant to you. 2. Activation of the brain's dopamine system, which works in anticipation of a reward. "Activation of that system puts you down a pathway toward what is important socially and for survival," he says. If you anticipate being rewarded for responding to someone with anger or violence, you are more likely to get on that behavioral track. 3. The brain's pain centers activate from veering off or being shut out from getting a reward. "A sense of I can't stand it lights up in the context of disapproval." 4. Serious injuries or abuse cause the limbic system and amygdala in the lower brain to become hyperreactive. "This causes you to be less in control, which accelerates violent behavior," Slutkin says. It also makes you more likely to get angry and be quick to react. "Then there's hostile attribution, another part of what happens with the limbic sy