Are you planning on learning a new language? If so, don’t trust anything you find online that says you can become fluent in a flash – like days, weeks, or even months (barring one or two uncommon scenarios[1]). Getting past the beginner stage with a new language takes considerable time and effort. However, there are…
Following part I and part II, this will be the last in my three-part series. I had intended to finish the post in October, but life was consumed by a big move from West Coast to East, so writing had to pause for a while. For our final exploration of a preschooler’s mind via language,…
I’ll admit, I struggle daily with impatience and frustration when taking care of my son Ryden. He has a BIG personality, and the energy of a thermonuclear bomb. Of course it’s rewarding in countless ways as well – and when comical or interesting language drops from his mouth, I collect each word like it’s a…
Ever wondered what goes through the mind of a 3-year-old? To adapt that old eyes are the windows to the soul cliché – for me, language is the window to those marvelous little brains. As mentioned in this post, I have been keeping a journal of my son Ryden’s language development and environment since he…
Have you ever experienced something from the written page come to life? I have. No, I didn’t see the purple dragon from my teen fantasy novels, or communicate with an unfolded-refolded nine-dimensional sophon from Trisolaris (hey…it’s been forever since my last post, I’m way overdue for a bit of nerding out). No – I’m talking…
Perusal through the material on this blog will quickly show that my interests trend towards words and language acquisition. This post combines the two topics: the first section has some interesting morsels on word learning from a book (that I’m reading) by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, called How children learn the meanings of words; the…
Recap: What is “baby sign language”? I made an attempt at defining this concept in the last post, which I’ll reproduce here: baby sign language is signing between (hearing) parents/caregivers and young children, where the signs are either from a real sign language like ASL, are idiosyncratic inventions of the family using them, or are…
September was National Deaf Awareness Month. I tried to post this piece before the month ended, but alas! Better late than never. I’d like to discuss and dispel some of the many misconceptions around signed languages. Here are a few of the most common: Sign language is universal – there is only one Sign languages…
Why, hello there! It’s been ages since I’ve posted, but I’ve been pretty busy with a tiny new experiment. Ryden was born in October (the photo was taken at not-quite-two-months) and is now emphatically ingesting solids, crawling (but only backwards), and beginning to babble. Now that my life has gone from hallucinatorily topsy-turvy to relatively…
Can animals have language the way humans have language? From recent news headlines about a famous ape and her passing, one might conclude: yes. Titles such as “Koko: Gorilla who mastered sign language dies in California” and “Koko, the Gorilla Who Knew Sign Language, Dies at 46” imply that non-human primates, at least, can learn and use…
