Often looked down upon as "pidgin German," dialects are an important part of cultural memory and diversity. Researchers say the vibrant spectrum of regional variations of German is under threat. One ...

As we gather around the table over the holidays, listen to the words that come out of your relatives’ mouths. More importantly — listen to how they’re pronounced. Do you have any plans to go “dahntahn ...

As far back as George Bernard Shaw’s fictional professor Henry Higgins, language experts have argued that low-income students who learn to switch from speaking a dialect to using standard English have ...

Linguists concerned as regional languages dwindle amid push to strengthen uniform national identity Two years ago, Qi Jiayao visited his mother’s hometown of Shaoxing in eastern China. When he tried ...

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 ...

With at least 350 million speakers, Arabic is the fifth most spoken language in the world after English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish and French. However, the kind of Arabic you hear on the streets of the ...

Laura Molles is so attuned to birds that she can tell where birds of some species are from just by listening to their song. She’s not a real-world Dr Doolittle. She’s an ecologist in Christchurch, New ...