Music is a great way to learn things. There’s nothing like a catchy tune to make things stick in your mind. For pint-sized kids wanting to learn Spanish, there's Dora. For everyone else, there's Lirica!

The English language was first spoken in early medieval England around 1400 years ago. This gradually gave rise to today's 'Modern English' which became the dominant form by the 1550s. Today I discovered some of the earliest English words that are still in common usage today.

If you feel awkward using gender-neutral pronouns - or avoid them because you don't know how to use them correctly - it's time to get up to speed. Language tends to shift towards inclusivity, and gender-neutral pronouns are becoming more widely used, so get in the habit now before you become one of those people who's communicating with outdated language.

For some of us, grade-school grammar lessons haven't stuck. I managed fairly well with my trusty Elements of Style until pretty recently, but the ongoing assault on grammar that is the Internet occasionally shakes my confidence.

(Every time I want to type rein, rain, or reign, for example, I need to close my eyes and meditate for a moment.)

Another hell week draws to a close. Let us go prepare for the next hell week. Let's relax with a shower, some Ritalin, a glass of whisky, and looking up our first names on Urban Dictionary.

Raising your children to be bilingual is easy if you’re fluent in a second language. For English-only parents, it requires more conscientious work — though it’s not impossible.

Whenever I travel abroad I always do my best to act like a local, including speaking the local language whenever I can. In some countries that works great, in others, I can't really avoid being a bumbling mess.

The best part of a textbook is the little cartoons they sprinkle throughout, to show that learning is fun: The silly illustrations in a primary school textbook, the New Yorker-style gags in a more adult text, or the angels and mammoths that play around in The Way Things Work. Malachi Ray Rempen’s Itchy Feet, a webcomic about travel, is like the cartoons-only version of those books.

Scrabble players can now play the word "OK," according to the latest update to the Scrabble dictionary released on Monday.
Experts are saying they new addition could change how Scrabble is played and lead to entirely new strategies.

One of my biggest frustrations with reading in one of the few foreign languages I’ve dabbled in is how long it takes to look up all the words I don’t know (which, admittedly, is a lot of them). It’s disruptive, and I’m likely to quit before I get all the way through an article or chapter or page.

Everyone's familiar with déjà vu - everyone would have experienced it at some stage in your life. It's a disconcerting flash of recognition of something you know you've never seen before, yet still feels all too familiar. Less people know about this term's sister, jamais vu: but it's a great descriptor for another weird mind trick that's just as trippy to experience.

English is a funny old language. There's a distinct lack of consistency between sounds, particularly when you look at words as they're written down. This can trip up anyone so what would happen if we approached English as a phonetically consistent language?

Decimated has historically meant to remove one tenth of something reflecting the Roman punishment of killing one in ten soldiers in under-performing legions. Today it is often used to describe something being significantly damaged or destroyed. Which usage is correct? Well, both.

Dictionary.com has updated its list of commonly mispronounced English words. We've included them below; along with links to the proper pronunciations.

When you're trying to learn a foreign language, there's no better way than being immersed in it. Language immersion, after all, is how most of us learned our first language as kids. When everything around you is written in a particular language, you're probably going to work to figure things out.

Words are pronounced however people pronounce them, and to insist otherwise is to fight a losing battle. This is why “giff” and “jiff” are equally valid. But for those who care, according to a new Nintendo 3DS game, NES (the classic Nintendo Entertainment System) is pronounced “ness”.

Before my daughter learned to speak she learned to sign, and the first sign she mastered was “more”. More meant more — as in, “Give me more milk before I scream-cry in 5-4-3-2-1...” — but for her, it also meant “again”. Sing that song again. Push the toy cash register button again. Make that funny sound with your armpit again, again, again.

Even though information about other countries is available with a just few clicks online, the best way to truly understand a different culture is through mastering its language.

Learning a foreign tongue is especially useful if you’re traveling and want a fully immersive experience, but finding the time to take a language class can be tough.

That's where Mondly and its AI-powered curriculum come into play.

Google Translate is an app that's been critical to my success when travelling in other countries. When you don't speak the language (or don't speak the language well) somewhere you're travelling, being able to quickly look something up, or speak into the phone to create a translation you can use to chat with that guy on the street can be a lifesaver.