Los Angeles Times

Column: Armenian is my first language. What happens if I can longer speak it?

I knew Armenian, my first language, before I knew anything else. I knew the language before I discovered my hobbies and passions. I knew the language before I knew how to do simple addition and ...
The Baltimore Sun

The power of language to shape reality

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” observed philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1922. We might ask, accordingly, how does language shape reality, arbitrating human experience of ...
The Michigan Daily

On language and belonging: a mother tongue’s link to cultural community

Although I now speak and think in English, my first words were not in this language. I was raised by a village of relatives; as a result, I grew up speaking in a patchwork of Cantonese, Mandarin and ...
The Conversation

Learning a language? Four ways to smash through the dreaded ‘intermediate plateau’

How can I improve my English? This was a question frequently posed by my students in South Korea. My initial advice was straightforward – dedicate time and effort. However, both my students and I ...