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La historia de los Estados Unidos y Español 

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La historia de los Estados Unidos y Español 

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El idioma español ha sido parte de la historia de los Estados Unidos desde el principio. Diferentes eventos en la historia, como el colonialismo español, la guerra mexicano-estadounidense y las fluctuaciones de los patrones de inmigración han hecho que el idioma español se convierta en un elemento fijo en algunas partes del país.

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Spanish in the United States - Latino Studies - Oxford Bibliographies - obo

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The Spanish language has been a fixture of the United States for centuries. Florida and the southwestern states were first colonized by Iberian soldiers and missionaries, who brought the Spanish language with them from the Iberian Peninsula.

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Este artículo define la diferencia entre el cambio de código, spanglish y la publicidad bilingüe. aquí el cambio de código se define como la combinación de palabras de ambos idiomas en una sola oración, mientras que spanglish es la combinación de rasgos del inglés y el español para formar nuevas palabras.

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The growth in the U.S. born Hispanic population has meant that marketers can no longer target Hispanics solely in Spanish. According to Pew Research Center's 2013 National Survey of Hispanics, 62% of Hispanic adults are either bilingual or English dominant (Krogstad & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2015). One recommendation that has been made is to connect with multigenerational Hispanic families by blending Spanish and English in commercials.

In making decision to target Hispanics in both languages in a single commercial, marketers must first be able to understand the ways that Spanish and English can be used in ads. More importantly, there is an urgent need for marketers to understand that there is a big difference between Spanglish and code switching.

Code switching is the use of both Spanish and English in the same sentence, phrase or conversation by a single person.

Spanglish is the combination of an English word and a Spanish word to make a new word that does not technically have a meaning in either language. These are considered to be "hybrids" and can be problematic for organizations who use them in their marketing communications.

While the difference between the terms seems simple enough, many marketers continuously confuse the two. This may be a harmless error for the seasoned marketer, but for the young professional who is new to multicultural marketing, mistaking one term with the other can lead to disaster.

Code switching ads, properly done, can yield positive results for Hispanic marketing campaigns, but the use of Spanglish in ad campaign can be a veritable minefield. While Spanglish may be a reality among young Hispanic millennials, it is not safe to assume that all Hispanics are receptive to it. Older, more traditional Hispanics consider this "street language" and do not approve of its use. Additionally, since Spanglish is not universally understood across Hispanics, it can also be perceived as lazy or disrespectful.

To illustrate the different ways that Spanish and English can be used in Hispanic marketing campaigns, here are three campaigns that utilize them in different ways:
First Paycheck: An Example of Code Switching
Wells Fargo's " First Paycheck" is a very good example of code switching operationalized in a commercial. "Hola todos...I got my first paycheck today!" In the opening, the central character transitions from English to Spanish as she walks into her home, sharing the news of this personal milestone with her family. She continues to switch from English to Spanish in her conversations with her father, brother and grandmother, who also speaks in both Spanish and English in the commercial. This is code switching operationalized: that smooth, natural, organic transition between languages by a single person that is done so effortlessly.

Mucho Mejor: "Spanglish" at Work

The Wendy's " Mucho Mejor" campaign is the closest example of an ad that uses Spanglish. Roslyn Rojos and her non-Hispanic boyfriend bond over Wendy's pretzel bacon cheeseburgers (under the watchful eyes of Roslyn's entire family). The young couple are at either pole of the language spectrum in this ad: Roslyn describes her burger in Spanish, while her boyfriend describes his burger in English. Her boyfriend finishes his description of their burgers with his Spanglish phrase "pretzelicioso," a hybrid between the English word "pretzel", and the Spanish word "delicioso", which translates to delicious in English. While the commercial is mostly bilingual, the phrase "pretzelicioso" is neither english nor Spanish but rather Spanglish.

The use of Spanglish in this commercial may not have been controversial, partially because the actor using the Spanglish word is not Hispanic. It also helps that only one Spanglish word was used, and was directly related to the burger. Caution must be however be exercised by marketers if they wish to use Spanglish, it may very well backfire. As more hybrid words are introduced into a single commercial, the risk of that commercial being perceived as offensive increases.

Bilingual ads are even more common than code switching or Spanglish for targeting Hispanics. One of the more popular executions is Tide's "Ese Es Mi Tide" bilingual ad.

Ese Es Mi Tide: Bilingual Ad

Proctor and Gamble's " My Tide" campaign appeals to both the foreign and U.S. born Hispanics, and is a nod to the dual identities that Hispanic millennials negotiate. While the Hispanic abuela (grandmother) explains why she only uses Tide Vivid plus Boost, her millennial daughter translates. This was a masterful combination of appeals to the traditional, Spanish dominant, first generation Hispanic who migrated from his/her country of birth to the U.S. and the second or third generation Hispanic, who speaks and/or understands abuela's Spanish but communities with people outside the home in English. Spanish dominant, Bilingual and English dominant Hispanics can all relate to this execution.

The decision to target Hispanics in English and Spanish in a single ad depends on the product/service and the target audience(s) marketers wish to reach. The task of executing this strategy is made much easier when everyone understands how it can be done, and the key differences in executions.
Cited:
Krogstad, J,M. and Gonzalez-Barrera, A. (March 24, 2015), A majority of English-speaking Hispanics in the U.S. are bilingual. Pew Research Center Factank. Retrieved from: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/24/a-majority-of-english-speaking-hispanics-in-the-u-s-are-bilingual/

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There's A Difference: Code Switching, Spanglish and Bilingual Advertising

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El spanglish puede verse no solo como un nuevo idioma, sino también como una nueva cultura híbrida que se ve en las regiones hispanas. A veces se define como cambio de código, pero la definición no es muy clara. Este lenguaje se desarrolla donde hay un contacto fronterizo cercano o grandes comunidades bilingües.

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Spanglish is not only a new language that has recently become popular, but can be related to a new hybrid culture that is quickly emerging amongst Hispanic regions. It has become more and more common...

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Los hispanohablantes en Miami, FL pueden ser reconocidos por su acento distintivo. Su acento suena como una mezcla de español y cubano, pero la característica más grande es una cadencia única. Este ritmo especial incluso se escucha cuando estos hispanohablantes usan el inglés. También los hispanohablantes de Miami harán rodar la letra r cuando hablan inglés.

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To these Miami natives, they themselves do not have an accent, but to many outsiders, they do have particular pronunciation patterns. These outsiders who hear the Miami accent sometimes say it sounds similar to a Spanish or Cuban accent, however, it is really neither of the two. According to Norene Bini, a dialogue and dialect coach in Miami, the Miami accent does exist and "it's a cadence, a rhythm that's superimposed on the English language that is borrowed from Spanish-speaking, even if they're not speakers of Spanish."

Whether these natives grew up in Spanish-speaking homes or have been surrounded by Spanish speakers their whole lives, they have developed a way of speaking that incorporates Spanish pronunciation rules with American English. For example, some Miami speakers will utilize a rolled "r" sound in place of a standard American "r" in words such as throw or truck. The differences in pronunciation all stem from differences in movement of the primary articulators (lips, tongue and teeth).

Miami Accent Similar to Spanish Cuban Accent, but Not Really

As the case is for hundreds of regions and social classes across the country, Miami speakers also use particular dialects. An individual may find slang spoken on the streets of Miami and a completely different style of speech spoken on the beach or at clubs and bars. Dialect is all involved with the speaking style and vocabulary used during everyday speech. A myriad of accent dialects are found throughout the Miami, Florida area and surrounding cities. Some accents are barely noticeable, whereas others are almost unintelligible.

Like other regions throughout the country, Miami is one containing a particular accent and dialects from those who have resided there for quite some time. It doesn't matter where you live or where you're from, everyone has an accent or a particular style of speaking. The Miami accent and dialect is just one example of the many that exist. If you have a strong regional accent or dialect and you would like to learn to reduce your accent, try out our free accent reduction tutorials today in over fifty languages, or contact us to speak with an accent reduction specialist to help you meet your own speech goals.

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To these Miami natives, they themselves do not have an accent, but to many outsiders, they do have particular pronunciation patterns. These outsiders who hear the Miami accent sometimes say it sounds similar to a Spanish or Cuban accent, however, it is really neither of the two.

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Es imposible imitar un acento diferente.
a) cierto
b) falso
c) cierto para algunas personas

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En este artículo, el autor describe una de las razones por las que las personas desarrollan acentos. Como hablamos al principio del año, los bebés pueden escuchar cada sonido diferente pero eventualmente se enfocan solo en los sonidos que más escuchan. Mientras esto hace que sea más difícil replicar sonidos desconocidos, la capacidad se puede volver a aprender.

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Brave is coming out this weekend, so we can all spend our weekend with melifluous Scottish accents ringing in our ears. But where exactly do accents come from in the first place? How do we get them? What's the mechanism by which they evolve?

Here's our complete guide to the science of accented speech.

It's amazing how quickly and completely we can spot someone doesn't speak the same way we do. Accents have been used to distinguish one type of person from another since Biblical times. In the Bible, a victorious tribe used the fact that their enemies could not correctly pronounce the word "shibboleth" to identify and kill them. The consequences for mushmouthery have gotten less lethal since then, but accents still mark people out. Different groups of people talk, grunt, exclaim, and even laugh in different ways.

And it's not just people. Goats say bahhhh with different accents, depending on where they live. Gibbons sing different songs, depending on which groups they're raised in. There are even researchers who specialize in pigeon accents. Language pronunciation simply drifts apart, when groups are isolated from each other, even for just a few years, or by just a few miles. But when does it begin?

Babies are born with the ability to form any kind of sound. Put a kid in the right environment, with two different spoken languages, and they'll be able to flawlessly speak them both, no matter how different and contradictory they are. An ornithologist even noted that, because she played bird calls in the car, her child was able to imitate different birds, and identify them by sound. At some point, though, we lose the ability to make certain sounds. And before that happens, we lose the ability to hear them.

Scientists at the University of Washington recently performed experiments on babies from six months to a year old, trying to figure out what these babies can hear. These particular experiments were done on babies from English-speaking and Japanese-speaking households. The scientists were testing how babies heard the English "l" and "r" sounds. While the two sound different to English-speakers, Japanese speakers, even ones who speak English perfectly, have a harder time distinguishing the sounds. (English speakers, meanwhile, are known for their trouble with the Spanish "p," "b," and "v" sounds, and the Chinese "shee" and "chee" sounds. Every language edits out certain distinctions in noises.)

The experiment is simple. A baby sits on its mother's lap. A speaker to its side plays the sound of someone saying "la la la la la la," until, at some random point, the "la" is replaced by a "ra." At that point, a bear near the speaker beats on a drum and a light flashes. The baby only knows to look for the amusing little show if it can hear the difference between the sounds. At six months, babies in either household were equally likely to look at the speaker. At a year, eighty percent of kids in English speaking houses turned, but only fifty-nine percent of kids from Japanese speaking houses turned. That's not much better than random chance. By one year old, the Japanese kids had lost the ability to distinguish the sounds.

But that doesn't mean they're necessarily lost forever. The ear can be trained, often as naturally as when babies do it. Many people find that, when they move to new areas, they lose their accents. This happens especially if they are fluent in the language to begin with. I know a short trip to England when I was a kid had me talking like Madonna within two weeks. Most of the kids at my college put their accents on and took them off unconsciously, depending on whether they were talking to someone back home or at school.

And there's a reason for this. Studies have shown that imitating an accent makes it easier to hear what the person is saying to you. Establishing a common ground between two people, even if one person is "putting an accent on" helps people from mixing up similar-sounding words and identify words that might otherwise be pronounced unrecognizably. If one person has gotten a feel for the differences in pronunciation, it takes less processing power in their brain to understand what's being said to them, and the verbal exchange is more fluid.

Can an accent be changed completely? It's tough, even for native speakers. We all know people who think they can do accents - generally when they get on screen. I can't judge the performance of Americans who try to put on other accents (although any overseas io9 reader is welcome to talk about which Americans can pass in the comments), but I've heard a few jaw-droppingly great American accents in my day. Idris Elba can do not only generic American but regional accents. Hugh Laurie is perfect, as far as I can tell. Minnie Driver and Robert Pattinson had me fooled. Then there's Eddie Izzard, who is a talented and intelligent man, but who would have been slaughtered by any American asking him to say "shibboleth," despite starring in a TV series in which he was supposed to be American. How does one acquire a new accent?

Imitation only goes so far, apparently. When people imitate, they rely on the memory of how someone speaks. An accent is more about holding the mouth and tongue in a certain position and letting the accent go from there. Apparently, as an American, I flap my mouth wider, get more nasal, and let my tongue slip away from the ridge of my teeth in a way that any self-respecting English person wouldn't. Beyond that, it's just about time, attention, and practice with someone who will tell you when you sound ridiculous. You can train your brain to hear the right sounds, and train your mouth to make them.

But then again, go and listen to the Brave trailer. Why would anyone try to sound American when they can sound Scottish? Anyone got tips on that?

Ear Image: Darwin Online

Via Smithsonian, Psychological Science, and DWP.

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Brave is coming out this weekend, so we can all spend our weekend with melifluous Scottish accents ringing in our ears. But where exactly do accents come from in the first place? How do we get them? What's the mechanism by which they evolve?

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Esta lista describe los diferentes acentos en los países hispanohablantes de todo el mundo. A pesar de que hay muchos más acentos, este artículo enumera los acentos "principales" de mexicanos, castellanos, argentinos, Sudamérica septentrional, América Central, el Caribe y Chile. Habla de los diferentes sonidos y vocabulario escuchados en estas diferentes regiones.

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Fluent in 3 months - Language Hacking and Travel Tips

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by Dalton Brewster

Do all Spanish accents sound the same?

Of course not!

Like most languages, Spanish is diverse and can vary significantly, even in the same country. Even within Spain there are many Spanish dialects and accents (along with four official languages!).

Being able to understand a range of dialects is part of what takes you from intermediate to expert Spanish speaker - which is why it's important to learn the differences between the main Spanish dialects.

There are TONS of Spanish dialects, so for the purpose of this article I will focus on the main Spanish accents including Mexican, Spanish, Argentinian, Northern South American, Central American, Caribbean and Chilean.

Let's get started!

The Mexican Spanish Accent

If you've ever visited the Southwestern US, you will likely have heard Mexican Spanish.

There are two big influences on Mexican Spanish: Indigenous languages such as Nahuatl and Tzotzil, and American English.

As an example of indigenous influence many common Spanish words such as chocolate (same meaning in English) and aguacate ("avocado") come from Nahuatl. And it's worth noting that there are many Mexican communities that are purely Indigenous and don't speak Spanish.

Mexican Spanish also features many English loan words. For example, Mexicans would say computadora for "computer," while Spaniards use ordenador. Another case of this is the verb rentar, meaning "to rent", while other countries use alquilar.

Lastly, Mexican Spanish has many interesting slang words and phrases, such as the common word güey. In colloquial usage, güey means "dude" or "homie" and an example of this is Que pedo güey? or "What up dude?" However, güey literally means "castrated bull". Another phrase that is common in Mexican vernacular is chingar and its variations. Chingar means "f*ck ", but it has many variations such as chingón, meaning "badass".

The Castilian Spanish Accent

Ah, Spain, the birthplace of Castellano, or Castilian Spanish.

Within Spain, the main Spanish dialect is Castilian Spanish, and it has different verb conjugations from other Spanish speaking countries.

A key example of these differences is that Spaniards use the vosotros verb form. Vosotros is an informal second person conjugation, which is used to address a group of people. This form is used with friends, while the ustedes form is a second person conjugation used to convey respect when speaking with groups of elders or people in positions of authority. For example, cómo estáis?, or "how are you guys?", uses the vosotros form. On the other hand, cómo están ustedes?, is the ustedes translation of "how are you all?". The vosotros form is only used in Spain, and rarely in other Spanish-speaking countries. Thus, students who learn Latin American Spanish will have little exposure to the vosotros verb form.

Spaniards also have unique grammatical forms, most notably the imperfect subjunctive. The imperfect subjunctive is an important Spanish grammar tense used to talk about uncertainty in the past. Most Spanish-speaking countries use -ra endings, while Spaniards frequently use -se endings. llegara, "to arrive", is one of llegar's imperfect subjunctive forms, and Spaniards would use llegase instead. Despite the spelling differences ( ra/ se endings) these words mean the same thing.

The imperfect subjunctive can be a tricky tense, but it becomes easier to use with practice. The following phrase, Espero que llegaras ayer meaning "I hope you arrived yesterday", uses the imperfect subjunctive form of llegar. This tense is used in many uncertain situations, especially those regarding emotion and doubt. Many Spanish learners would be tempted to say Espero que llegaste ayer, which would be grammatically incorrect.

Castellano is famous for its unique accent, which sounds like a lisp. For example, if a word has a z, ci, or ce, these make a th- sound. So if you want to pronounce Barcelona authentically, you would say bar-the-lona. Likewise, Zaragoza would be thara-go-tha. To do make this lisp sound, stick your tongue between your teeth and let the air pass through the small gap.

Rioplatense Spanish

Argentina and Uruguay have unique Spanish dialects with tons of distinct phrases. Since Argentina and Uruguay border the Rio de la Plata, their variation of Spanish is known as Rioplatense.

Both countries experienced a high influx of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century, and as such Rioplatense is strongly influenced by Italian. For example, for "goodbye", people in these countries rarely use the traditional hasta luego. Instead, they'll say chau, which is derived from the Italian ciao. Neighbouring Brazil was also influenced by Italian immigrants in this time period and Brazilians use tchau to say goodbye.

Argentinians typically use the vos form for the informal "you". Some other countries that use vos include Paraguay, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Vos is not an Italian word, but rather an archaic Latin word meaning "you". French and other Romance languages have their own versions of "you" derived from vos. For example, vous is used in French as a formal "you".

Vos has its advantages, especially by having fewer stem-changing verbs in comparison to the standard tú form conjugations. Here are some examples of vos conjugations compared to tú conjugations:

An easy way to conjugate verbs in the vos tense is to use the below patterns:

-ar verbs: remove ar and add ás

-er verbs: remove er and add és

-ir verbs: remove ir and add ís

Another benefit of using vos, is that commands are much easier than the traditional tú form: To conjugate vos commands, all you need to do is drop the r and add an accent on the last letter. Better yet, there are no irregulars with the exception of ir (to go) which would be andá.

Examples:

Finally, Argentinians and Uruguayans pronounce y and ll as a sh- sound. So yo me llamo would be "sho me shamo." Unlike Castilian Spanish, Argentinian Spanish has standard pronunciation of z, c, and s, although the "s" at the end of words can be aspirated in certain regions. So, más cerveza ("more beer") would be "ma cerveza."

Spanish in Northern Latin America

In this section, I am referring to Spanish spoken in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. These dialects are often considered easier to understand, and the Colombian accent has been called the "most neutral Spanish accent." That's because in this region, people speak Spanish more slowly and don't cut words.

As with Mexico, many of these countries (especially Peru and Bolivia) have a high concentration of indigenous tribes. In fact, indigenous languages such as Quechua and Aymara are official languages in these regions and have influenced their Spanish accents. The word chullo, a type of hat, derives from the Quechan word ch'ullu, which has the same definition.

The Spanish Accent in Central America

Central America is comprised of the Spanish-speaking nations of Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador. While each country has its own unique dialect, proximity to North and South America play a special role here. Guatemalan Spanish is closely related to Mexican Spanish, while Panamanian Spanish shares parallels with Colombian Spanish.

As mentioned above, many countries in this region such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica, use vos instead of tú, as in Argentina.

Costa Rican culture, meanwhile, can be epitomized by its usage of the phrase Pura Vida, "Pure Life". Pura Vida reflects the pure natural resources like rainforests, volcanoes and beaches within Costa Rica. Pura Vida can also be a response to a question, and means "ok" or "cool". In response to como estás ("how are you?"), Pura Vida means "I'm great".

Caribbean Spanish Accents

Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic have unique Spanish dialects, but they're all categorized as Caribbean Spanish.

Puerto Rico is unique because it's not a country, but a territory of the US. Thus, English greatly influences Puerto Rican Spanish. Like English speakers, Puerto Ricans emphasize "r" sounds at the end of words. For instance, they pronounce the word matar as matar, while most Spanish countries will softly pronounce the final "r". What's more, the letter "r" is treated very differently depending on where it is in the word. If an "r" comes at the end of a syllable (not followed by a vowel) it's typically converted to an "l" sound, so "Puerto Rico" becomes "Puelto Rico".

Dominican Spanish is influenced by both indigenous tribes and the history of African slavery. Before the Spanish conquered the Caribbean, many native tribes of the Taíno people lived there. Common Spanish words of Taíno origin include maracas (the musical instrument) and hamaca ("hammock").

Like other dialects such as Puerto Rican Spanish, Dominicans like to cut words. As shown above, está becomes ta, which can make words run together. While this change might appear minor, Dominicans are infamous for their rapid speech along with word cutting, making it hard for even native Spanish speakers to understand it.

The Chilean Spanish Dialect

Like Caribbean Spanish, Chilean Spanish is unique and difficult.

In a similar way, when a word ending with the letter "a" is immediately followed by another word beginning with the letter "d", the "d" sound is removed. So, the phrase dónde está la biblioteca becomes "'onde esta la biblioteca". Another example is persona del espacio, which would be said as "persona 'e espacio". Likewise, words ending in "von" drop the "v" sound, so the common word huevón ("dude") becomes "hue-ón".

In addition, para el plus a masculine word is shortened to pa'l and sounds like PAL in palm. With para la plus afeminine word it becomes pá la and and can been seen in the phrase el regalo es para la maestra or "el regalo es pá la maestra", which both mean " the gift is for the teacher." Since para is a very commonly used word, cutting words and merging syllables can make it tough to understand. Thus, it's crucial to get accustomed to this quirk if you're trying to learn Chilean Spanish.

Conclusion

Spanish is a diverse language with many unique dialects, each of which has its own quirks.

As you become more proficient in Spanish, it's fun to distinguish where someone is from based on their slang and accent.

Have you heard other Spanish dialects that I missed in this article? Please share about them in the comments. Don't be shy!

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Spanish Accents and Dialects Around the World

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by Dalton Brewster Do all Spanish accents sound the same? Of course not! Like most languages, Spanish is diverse and can vary significantly, even in the same country. Even within Spain there are many Spanish dialects and accents (along with four official languages!).

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La sociedad lingüística de América escribió un artículo sobre por qué algunas personas tienen acento. El artículo define la diferencia entre un acento extranjero y un acento local, y explica parte de la ciencia detrás de la dificultad para decir ciertos sonidos. También hablan un poco sobre cómo, si un idioma es muy diferente, será más difícil aprenderlo y hablarlo sin acento.

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Download this document as a pdf. Broadly stated, your accent is the way you sound when you speak. There are two different kinds of accents. One is a 'foreign' accent; this occurs when a person speaks one language using some of the rules or sounds of another one.

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Este reportaje habla sobre las quejas de algunos colombianos sobre los acentos escuchados en el programa Narcos. Debido a que el elenco se reunió en todo el norte y sur de América, hay muchos acentos diferentes en el espectáculo. El actor principal brasileño que interpreta a Pablo Escobar ni siquiera sabía español antes del espectáculo.

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The Netflix drama Narcos has won critical acclaim for its unflinching depiction of the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, and its generally sympathetic depiction of the police officers and politicians who dared to take on the world's most famous drug lord.

The documentary-style series was praised as " devastatingly addictive" by the Telegraph, while Slate called it " exactly the portrayal of the drug war we needed", and the Hollywood Reporter mused that it could be the " critically acclaimed international breakthrough " that Netflix has long sought.

But the reception has been much cooler in Colombia, where audiences have been bemused by the stars' ropey accents, irritated by its portrayal of the country's recent history, and - in some cases - simply bored by yet another narco-drama.

Much of the show's dialogue is in Spanish, but the cast has been drawn from across North and South America, and the actors' attempts to adopt a Colombian accent have not always been successful.

Colombian audiences have been irritated and amused by the show's hodgepodge of accents. A character based on Escobar's wife is played by Paulina Gaitán (Mexican) , his partner Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha by Luís Guzmán (Puerto Rican), while his rival Jorge Ochoa is played by André Mattos (Brazilian).

Escobar himself is played by Brazilian actor Warner Moura, who speaks with a distinctly Brazilian accent - unforgivable for Colombians who expected to hear the distinctive lilt of the people of Antioquia, known as Paisas.

To a non-native speaker, the accents may not make a difference: the actors speak Spanish and you can read the subtitles. But many Colombians have felt their teeth set on edge by the sound of Escobar offering the choice of " plata o plomo" - silver or lead - with a strong Brazilian accent.

"It's like having someone with a strong southern American accent play Sherlock Holmes," said Orlando González, a Bogotá interior designer who watched the first episode.

Tamara Cervantes (@tamaraaax0)
Is it only me or does it bother anyone else that the guy that plays Pablo Escobar in Narcos has a fake ass Colombian accent...

Stephy Camila (@Stephy_Camiii)
If you're Colombian and you're ok with Pablo's accent in Narcos then I don't wanna know you 😂😴

The decision to have Spanish-speakers in the show speak Spanish came three months before the first shoot, and Moura is reported to have moved to Medellín in order to perfect his accent.

Colombian TV critic Omar Rincón was unconvinced by the result. "He tries hard but neither his role not his accent are similar to Escobar or other local narcos," Rincón wrote in a review of the series, which he concludes offers a worldview not far from that of US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

"Narcos is the Miami and US vision of NarColombia - something like Trump's idea of us: the good guys are the gringos ... and the narcos are comically dysfunctional or primitives with bad taste."

"Narcos may do well outside Colombia," he concludes. "But here it produces anger and laughter."

Many Colombians say they are simply fed up of yet another semi-fictional retread of the country's bloody and painful recent past. Narco-soap operas have become a staple genre of television production in the country, detailing the ins and outs of the drug trade.

Previous series have included El Capo and "El Patrón del Mal (The Boss of Evil") a 2012 Telemundo production which starred Colombian actor Andrés Parra, as a thoroughly convincing Escobar (and is also available on Netflix).

Paula Benítez, a chemical engineer, says she's had enough and has no interest in seeing Narcos. "They're all sort of the same and show the ugliest part of our country," she says. "I'd rather watch something more uplifting."
Topics

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Narcos is a hit for Netflix but iffy accents grate on Colombian ears

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The Netflix drama Narcos has won critical acclaim for its unflinching depiction of the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, and its generally sympathetic depiction of the police officers and politicians who dared to take on the world's most famous drug lord.

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En un estudio reciente, los científicos investigaron cómo los hispanohablantes, los angloparlantes and los bilingües se desempeñaban de manera diferente en diferentes tareas semánticas. Mientras los tres grupos se comportaron de la misma manera en comparación, el examen destaca cómo los niños bilingües pueden tener diferentes conocimientos semánticos que solo los exámenes bilingües revelarían.

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Comparison of Spanish, English, and Bilingual Children's Performance Across Semantic Tasks | Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools

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Method: Six semantic tasks (associations, characteristic properties, categorization, functions, linguistic concepts, and similarities and differences) were developed in Spanish and English. The tasks contained comparable items but were not direct translations of each other.

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Este artículo discute las formas en que los tiempos verbales en español e inglés difieren. Generalmente, los tiempos verbales en un idioma pueden transmitir un elemento de tiempo que no suele estar asociado con ese tiempo verbal en el otro idioma. El español tiene un tiempo de espera para un futuro suposicional que no existe en inglés.

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Spanish speakers and English speakers think of their verb tenses in much the same way: The present tense of English functions much like the present tense of Spanish, and the same can be said of other tenses.

But there are some differences you'll come across as you get past the beginner's level of Spanish. Here are some of the most significant ones:

It is possible in both languages to discuss the future while using a present tense, but you can do so more flexibly in English.

In English, you can use either the simple present or the present progressive to refer to the future. For example, you could say either "The bus arrives at 2" or "The bus is arriving at 2." In Spanish, however, you must use the simple present:

The present progressive in Spanish suggests that something is happening now. " El bus está llegando" means something like "The bus is in the process of arriving," so it doesn't make sense to add a future time element.

You could also use the future tense in either language for these situations.

In both languages, the simple present is used to refer to something that happens continuously, regularly, or repeatedly. Thus " Los elefantes comen raíces" can mean "Elephants eat roots," and " Hago muchos errores" can mean "I make many mistakes."

In Spanish but not English, however, the simple present can also be used to refer to something that is happening now, a concept that in English is expressed using the present progressive. Thus " Los elefantes comen raíces" can also mean "The elephants are eating roots," and " Hago muchos errores" can also mean "I am making many mistakes." To determine what the Spanish means, you need to look at the context.

You could also use the present progressive in Spanish to indicate that something is happening now (such as " Los elefantes están comiendo raíces"), but that verb form isn't used nearly as much in Spanish as in English.

The idiom in Spanish for indicating when an activity began is " hace + time period," the equivalent of " ago" in English. If the event is completed, both languages use the preterite:

If the action is still continuing, however, Spanish typically uses the phrase " hace + time period + que" followed by a simple present-tense verb, while English usually uses a "have" or "has" verb form followed by "for" and the time period:

Although the future tense in both languages is mostly used to indicate what will happen, in Spanish it can also be used to indicate that something seems probable. There is no English equivalent to this "suppositional future" based on verb tense:

In a question, the suppositional future is often used to express lack of knowledge or wondering:

In Spanish, use of the preterite tense rather than the imperfect tense can indicate when the verb's action began. English may use a different word or sentence structure rather than tense to convey the same thing. For example, often refers to knowing someone. To say you knew someone, you'd use the imperfect in Spanish but the preterite in English: Yo conocía a Gabriela. (I knew Gabriela). Using the preterite in Spanish would usually be understood as referring to when the knowing began: Conocí a Gabriela. (I met Gabriela.)

In this way, the choice of verb tense can affect how a Spanish verb is translated to English:

In both languages, the present perfect can refer to events that happened at some unspecified time in the past:

But in some areas, especially Spain, the Spanish present perfect is used primarily to refer to events that occurred in the very recent past.

But in other areas, the preterite or some construction other than the present perfect would be preferred:

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5 Ways Spanish and English Verb Tenses Are Different

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Spanish speakers and English speakers think of their verb tenses in much the same way: The present tense of English functions much like the present tense of Spanish, and the same can be said of other tenses. But there are some differences you'll come across as you get past the beginner's level of Spanish.

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En este cómic, el estudiante engañoso trata de convencer a su maestro de que no está rompiendo las reglas al reformular sus acciones. Ilustra cómo, aunque las connotaciones de las palabras tienen efectos poderosos, a menudo son solo una parte de todo el mensaje. Concluye diciendo que la semántica es inútil.

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En el éxito de verano de 2014, los guardianes de la galaxia, uno de los personajes, un árbol sensible, se comunica con el resto del elenco con solo tres palabras: I am groot. Este es un ejemplo de cómo el contexto, la inflexión tonal y el lenguaje corporal pueden alterar el verdadero significado de las palabras.

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I am Groot! Compilation - Guardians of The Galaxy Movie

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A medida que estudiamos el pasado, podemos comenzar a predecir el futuro de nuestros idiomas. Debido a que el inglés juega un papel similar al latín como lingua franca, podemos predecir que se formarán nuevos idiomas similares al latín vulgar. El futuro del inglés es muchas variaciones del inglés que combinan elementos de otros idiomas.

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Ever evolving. Feng Yu/www.shutterstock.com

One way of predicting the future is to look back at the past. The global role English plays today as a lingua franca - used as a means of communication by speakers of different languages - has parallels in the Latin of pre-modern Europe.

Having been spread by the success of the Roman Empire, Classical Latin was kept alive as a standard written medium throughout Europe long after the fall of Rome. But the Vulgar Latin used in speech continued to change, forming new dialects, which in time gave rise to the modern Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Italian.

Similar developments may be traced today in the use of English around the globe, especially in countries where it functions as a second language. New "interlanguages" are emerging, in which features of English are mingled with those of other native tongues and their pronunciations.

Despite the Singaporean government's attempts to promote the use of Standard British English through the Speak Good English Movement, the mixed language known as "Singlish" remains the variety spoken on the street and in the home.

Spanglish, a mixture of English and Spanish, is the native tongue of millions of speakers in the United States, suggesting that this variety is emerging as a language in its own right.

Meanwhile, the development of automatic translation software, such as Google Translate, will come to replace English as the preferred means of communication employed in the boardrooms of international corporations and government agencies.

So the future for English is one of multiple Englishes.

Looking back to the early 20th century, it was the Standard English used in England, spoken with the accent known as " Received Pronunciation ", that carried prestige.

But today the largest concentration of native speakers is in the US, and the influence of US English can be heard throughout the world: can I get a cookie, I'm good, did you eat, the movies,_ "skedule"_ rather than "shedule". In the future, to speak English will be to speak US English.

US spellings such as disk and program are already preferred to British equivalents disc and programme in computing. The dominance of US usage in the digital world will lead to the wider acceptance of further American preferences, such as favorite, donut, dialog, center.

What is being lost?

In the 20th century, it was feared that English dialects were dying out with their speakers. Projects such as the Survey of English Dialects (1950-61) were launched at the time to collect and preserve endangered words before they were lost forever. A similar study undertaken by the BBC's Voices Project in 2004 turned up a rich range of local accents and regional terms which are available online, demonstrating the vibrancy and longevity of dialect vocabulary.

But while numerous dialect words were collected for "young person in cheap trendy clothes and jewellery" - pikey, charva, ned, scally - the word chav was found throughout England, demonstrating how features of the Estuary English spoken in the Greater London area are displacing local dialects, especially among younger generations.

The turn of the 20th century was a period of regulation and fixity - the rules of Standard English were established and codified in grammar books and in the New (Oxford) English Dictionary on Historical Principles, published as a series of volumes from 1884-1928. Today we are witnessing a process of de-standardisation, and the emergence of competing norms of usage.

In the online world, attitudes to consistency and correctness are considerably more relaxed: variant spellings are accepted and punctuation marks omitted, or repurposed to convey a range of attitudes. Research has shown that in electronic discourse exclamation marks can carry a range of exclamatory functions, including apologising, challenging, thanking, agreeing, and showing solidarity.

Capital letters are used to show anger, misspellings convey humour and establish group identity, and smiley-faces or emoticons express a range of reactions.

Getting shorter

Some have questioned whether the increasing development and adoption of emoji pictograms, which allow speakers to communicate without the need for language, mean that we will cease to communicate in English at all? ;-)

The fast-changing world of social media is also responsible for the coining and spreading of neologisms, or "new words". Recent updates to Oxford Dictionaries give a flavour: mansplaining, awesomesauce, rly, bants, TL;DR (too long; didn't read).

Clipped forms, acronyms, blends and abbreviations have long been productive methods of word formation in English (think of bus, smog and scuba) but the huge increase in such coinages means that they will be far more prominent in the English of 2115.

Whether you 👍 or h8 such words, think they are NBD or meh, they are undoubtedly here to stay.

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What will the English language be like in 100 years?

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One way of predicting the future is to look back at the past. The global role English plays today as a lingua franca - used as a means of communication by speakers of different languages - has parallels in the Latin of pre-modern Europe.

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The tower of Babel story is one of the saddest and most significant stories in the Bible. It is sad because it reveals the widespread rebellion in the human heart. It is significant because it reshaped the development of future cultures.

The story is set in Babylon, one of the cities founded by King Nimrod, according to Genesis 10:9-10. The location of the tower was in Shinar, in ancient Mesopotamia on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River. Bible scholars believe that the tower was a type of stepped pyramid called a ziggurat, common throughout Babylonia.

Up until this point in the Bible, the whole world had one language, meaning there was one common speech for all people. The people of the earth had become skilled in construction and decided to build a city with a tower that would reach to heaven. By building the tower, they wanted to make a name for themselves and also prevent the people from being scattered:

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4, ESV)

God came to see their city and the tower they were building. He perceived their intentions, and in his infinite wisdom, he knew this "stairway to heaven" would only lead the people away from God. The goal of the people was not to glorify God and lift up his name but to build a name for themselves.

In Genesis 9:1, God told humankind: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth." God wanted people to spread out and fill the whole earth. By building the tower, the people were ignoring God's clear instructions.

God observed what a powerful force their unity of purpose created. As a result, he confused their language, causing them to speak many different languages so they would not understand each other. By doing this, God thwarted their plans. He also forced the people of the city to scatter all across the face of the earth.

What was so wrong with building this tower? The people were coming together to accomplish a notable work of architectural wonder and beauty. Why was that so bad?

The tower was about convenience, not obedience. The people were doing what seemed best for themselves and not what God had commanded.

The tower of Babel story emphasizes the sharp contrast between man's opinion of his own achievements and God's point of view on man's accomplishments. The tower is a grandiose project -- the ultimate man-made achievement. It resembles the modern masterstrokes humans continue to build and boast about today, such as the International Space Station.

To build the tower, the people used brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar. They used "man-made" materials, instead of more durable "God-made" materials. The people were building a monument to themselves, to call attention to their abilities and achievements, instead of giving glory to God.

God said in Genesis 11:6:

"If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." (NIV)

With this, God pointed out that when people are unified in purpose, they can accomplish impossible feats, both noble and ignoble. This is why unity in the body of Christ is so important in our efforts to accomplish God's purposes on earth.

By contrast, having unity of purpose in worldly matters, ultimately, can be destructive. In God's viewpoint, division in worldly matters is sometimes preferred over great feats of idolatry and apostasy. For this reason, God at times intervenes with a divisive hand in human affairs. To prevent further arrogance, God confuses and divides people's plans, so they don't overstep God's limits on them.

When God speaks in this story, He uses the phrase, "let us go," referencing the Trinity.

Some scholars believe that this marks the point in history where God divided the earth into separate continents.

Are there any man-made "stairways to heaven" you are building in your life? If so, stop and reflect. Are your purposes noble? Are your goals in line with God's will?

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Tower of Babel Story: The Perils of Unity, Pride, and Purpose

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The tower of Babel story is one of the saddest and most significant stories in the Bible. It is sad because it reveals the widespread rebellion in the human heart. It is significant because it reshaped the development of future cultures. The story is set in Babylon, one of the cities founded by King Nimrod, according to Genesis 10:9-10.

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Si bien la evolución del lenguaje hablado es bastante compleja, la historia del lenguaje escrito es más clara. La necesidad de un lenguaje escrito surgió como negocios necesarios para el registro de transacciones. A medida que la sociedad se extendió, la idea del lenguaje escrito se transmitió entre culturas y los escritos se adaptaron a cada idioma

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Anthropologists and archaeologists love to get together to talk about the different characteristics that make up a civilized society. While the finer points are debated, there are a number of things that most researchers agree are necessary to draw such a distinction. In the mid-1930s, an archaeologist named V. Gordon Childe wrote a book called "Man Makes Himself," which named a few components that marked civilization. Among them are sailing ships, plows, wheels and draft animals, an irrigation system, standards of measurement and writing.

Most of the things that Childe and other researchers list are related in some way to the nuts and bolts of survival, or at the least, how to survive efficiently. Standards of measurement and writing both stand out as more cultural in nature. While you don't need writing to survive, it may draw the most distinct line between a civilized and an uncivilized society. In fact, some argue that writing became a necessity as a result of the advancement of civilization and then helped to drive that advancement after its evolution.

As populations made advancements in areas like agriculture and hunting, they began to trade with each other. Only so much business can take place without any system of recordkeeping. Trade survived for a while on a limited basis until man learned to write down transactions. It was the recording of business transactions that allowed trade to flourish and rise to the next level. The more people traded, the more writing had to advance to keep up. Most experts agree that the earliest writing was used largely for economics and accounting. But writing didn't stop there.

As populations grew and societies formed, writing became a useful tool to help people keep track of things. As rulers of these populations came into prominence, they demanded that their customs, laws and rituals be recorded. Once a system of recording history was put into place, there was no looking back. Man learned that having an official record of something was important to ensure its legitimacy, and as a result, writing is now regarded as the dividing line between pre-history and history. After writing became standard for recording history, accounting and keeping track of trade, literature was born, with the inscription of oral stories.

Toward the end of the fourth millennium B.C., the first true city was born: Uruk, in Sumer, part of Southern Mesopotamia and today's Iraq, known as the cradle of civilization. The complexity of a society that numbered as many as 60,000 to 80,000 required a standardized system of writing, again mainly for recordkeeping. Uruk is divided into 18 phases that span about 2,100 years. In phases three and four, we begin to see writing evolve from "proto-writing" to cuneiform, which has long been regarded as the first form of true writing.

For years, researchers largely agreed that because of the interaction between the two societies, writing spread from Mesopotamia to Egypt. The first examples of writing on clay tablets from Mesopotamia date to 3000 B.C. However, in 1995, the archaeological world was turned on its ear when an Egyptologist from Yale University found a clay tablet with the story of King Scorpion written on it. Dr. John Coleman Darnell unearthed the 18-by-20-inch tablet in the desert west of the Nile River. The tablet dates to 3250 B.C., some 150 years earlier than the first writings in Uruk. The symbols that made up the history of King Scorpion were likely scratched into the wet clay and then baked in the sun. Darnell and many of his colleagues believe this is proof that the first writing came from Egypt and not Mesopotamia. Some archaeologists theorize that writing may have evolved nearly simultaneously in both Egypt and Mesopotamia, instead of one society teaching the other. Curiously, near the site of the King Scorpion tablet, Dr. Darnell also found what may be the first example of alphabetic writing, dating to 1800 B.C.

Related Articles

Sources

"Cunieform." Ancientscripts.com. 2010.http://www.ancientscripts.com/cuneiform.html

"The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution." Edsitement.neh.gov. 2010.http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=622

"What is Civilization?" Historyguide.org. 2010. http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture1b.html

Palmer, Kendra. "Writing: A Necessary Undertaking in Advanced Society." Studentpulse.com. 2010.http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/92/writing-a-necessary-undertaking-in-advanced-society

T.N. and T.D.H. "The Evolution of Cuneiform." Richeast.org. 2010. http://www.richeast.org/htwm/cune/cune.html

Wilford, John Noble. "Carving of a King Could Rewrite History." The New York Times. April 16, 2002. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/science/carving-of-a-king-could-rewrite-history.html

Williams, Sean. "Cuneiform - the Birth of Writing." Heritage-key.com. July 13, 2009. http://heritage-key.com/world/cuneiform-birth-writing

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Anthropologists and archaeologists love to get together to talk about the different characteristics that make up a civilized society. While the finer points are debated, there are a number of things that most researchers agree are necessary to draw such a distinction. In the mid-1930s, an archaeologist named V.

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A pesar de que las lenguas nativas de América del Norte y América del Sur a menudo se agrupan, en realidad son considerablemente diferentes en distribución y similitud. Ahora más de la mitad de estos idiomas tienen menos de 1,000 hablantes cada uno. Lo más interesante es que la mayoría de estos idiomas sí comparten un único stock históricamente interrelacionado, a diferencia de los idiomas europeos.

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American Indian languages: American Indian languages, languages spoken by the original inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere and their modern descendants. The American Indian languages do not form a single historically interrelated stock (as do the Indo-European languages), nor are there any structural features (in

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Al estudiar idiomas, los lingüistas dividen los idiomas en grupos de origen común. Este enlace presenta mapas y clasificaciones basadas en el libro de Merritt Ruhlen Una guía de los idiomas del mundo que está muy influenciada por el trabajo del lingüista Joseph Greenberg. Ver idiomas de esta manera nos ayuda a comprender la interconectividad de diferentes idiomas.

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The single largest language family, Indo-European has about 150 languages and about three billion speakers. Languages include Hindi and Urdu (400 million), Bengali (200 million), Spanish (300 million), Portuguese (200 million), French (100 million), German (100 million), Russian (300 million), and English (400 million) in Europe and the Americas.

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¿Cual orden habla Yoda?
a. SVO
b. SOV
c. OSV

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El mes pasado, el Instituto Max Planck de Antropología Evolutiva comenzó un experimento para ver cómo la palabra el orden de un idioma afecta a la memoria de sus usuarios. La hipótesis es que los idiomas donde los modificadores vienen antes de que la cabeza en la oración conducirá a una mejor memoria de trabajo.

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Memory plays a crucial role in our lives, and several studies have already investigated how we store and retrieve information under different conditions. Typically, stimuli presented at the beginning and at the end of a list are recalled better than stimuli from the middle. But are these findings universal and generalizable across languages and cultures?

The group, including psychologists, linguists and biologists from five different countries, traveled across the world to run memory tests in eight different human cultures speaking different languages. "The best part of this project was to cross deserts and seas to reach amazing people speaking the most wonderful languages ever, from Sidaama, to Khoekhoe and Khmer," says Amici, "and know that these languages may provide them with a unique vision of the world."

The relationship between language and thought is controversial. One hypothesis is that language fosters habits of processing information that are retained even in non-linguistic domains. Languages, for instance, vary in their branching direction. In typical right-branching (RB) languages, like Italian, the head of the sentence usually comes first, followed by a sequence of modifiers that provide additional information about the head (e.g. "the man who was sitting at the bus stop"). In contrast, in left-branching (LB) languages, like Japanese, modifiers generally precede heads (e.g. "who was sitting at the bus stop, the man"). In RB languages, speakers could process information incrementally, given that heads are presented first and modifiers rarely affect previous parsing decisions. In contrast, LB structures can be highly ambiguous until the end, because initial modifiers often acquire a clear meaning only after the head has been parsed. Therefore, LB speakers may need to retain initial modifiers in working memory until the head is encountered to comprehend the sentence.

By providing participants with a series of classic memory tasks, the research team could compare their performance when recalling words, numbers and spatial stimuli. "The main finding of the study is that left-branching speakers were better at remembering initial stimuli across verbal and non-verbal working memory tasks, probably because real-time sentence comprehension heavily relies on retaining initial information in LB languages, but not in RB languages," says Alejandro Sanchéz Amaro, currently in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego.

The main novelty of this study is that the link between language and thought might not be just confined to conceptual representations and semantic biases, but rather extend to syntax and its role in our way of processing sequential information. The language we speak affects the way we process, store and retrieve information. The fact that branching and word order may be linked to such a fundamental cognitive process like memory opens up new exciting avenues for psycholinguistic research towards expanding the pool of languages and populations investigated. "What about the working memory of speakers of languages with mixed branching or free word order? Would we find people who are equally good at remembering initial and final items? And maybe at remembering the items in the middle?" says Federico Rossano, from the University of California, San Diego. With more than 7,000 languages in the world, we have a uniquely rich pool to study the relation between language and cognition. Preserving and investigating the wealth of this diversity is not only ethical, but also scientifically crucial to ultimately understand which factors shape the way we think and better comprehend the relation between language and thought.

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language acquisition; memory; child development; dyslexia; intelligence; learning disorders; literacy; dementia

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Word order predicts a native speakers' working memory: The language we speak affects the way we process, store and retrieve information

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Memory plays a crucial role in our lives, and several studies have already investigated how we store and retrieve information under different conditions. Typically, stimuli presented at the beginning and at the end of a list are recalled better than stimuli from the middle. But are these findings universal and generalizable across languages and cultures?

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En este gracioso cómic, el creador demuestra los efectos drásticamente diferentes que un signo de puntuación puede tener en el significado de una frase. Mientras una frase le dice a la abuela que empiece a comer, la otra frase dice literalmente comer a la abuela. Entender la puntuación y la sintaxis al aprender un idioma es obviamente muy importante.

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La mayoría de las personas que han visto cualquiera de las películas de Star Wars pueden recordar la forma única en que Yoda habla. Mientras que su estilo no es muy consistente, Yoda generalmente habla usando un orden de palabras de OSV, una estructura rara. Esta simple reestructuración, especialmente en comparación con los idiomas de SVO como el inglés y el español, ayuda a Yoda a sonar misterioso.

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Las lenguas sintéticas son lenguajes que utelizan muchos morfemas para transmitir significado. Lo opuesto, un lenguaje aislante como inglés o español utiliza varios pronombres y artículos para aclarar el significado. Mientras que los morfemas son una parte generalmente de la morfología, la necesidad de pronombres, artículos u otros cambios necesarios puede afectar en gran medida la sintaxis de un idioma.

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@rugbygirl - I got confused by the same thing when I was in library school and learned about "synthetic" systems of subject cataloging. (Don't ask.)

"Synthetic" doesn't actually mean "fake" -- it means something more like "made" or "put together." Synthetic rubber is, indeed, fake in the sense that it does not come from rubber trees -- but the more salient point is that it is made by people. not made by trees.

So in a synthetic language, you have words that are put together from different morphemes. English has a mix of words of the different types; Anglo-Saxon words like "break" tend to be just one morpheme while words that come from Latin, French, etc. often have more.

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@rugbygirl - I got confused by the same thing when I was in library school and learned about "synthetic" systems of subject cataloging. (Don't ask.) "Synthetic" doesn't actually mean "fake" -- it means something more like "made" or "put together."

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Al clasificar el lenguaje por la formación de la palabra, hay generalmente tres categorías: aislando o analítico, inflexión o fusión, y la aglutinación. El español se denomina generalmente un lenguaje inflexión, lo que significa que las palabras no suelen cambiar en función de cómo se utilizan en una oración, y que la relación de palabras entre sí se transmite principalmente por el uso del orden de palabras o con ciertas partículas que indican relación.

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Ask a linguist what kind of a language Spanish is, and the answer you get may depend on that linguist's specialty. To some, Spanish is primarily a language derived from Latin. Another may tell you that Spanish is primarily an SVO language, whatever that is, while others may refer to it as a fusional language.

Spanish is classified as either an Indo-European or Romance language based on its origins.

Spanish is classified as a mostly SVO language because of its commonly used word order.

Spanish is classified as somewhat inflectional because of the extensive use of word endings used to indicate attributes such as gender, number, and tense.

All these classifications, and others, are important in linguistics, the study of language. As these examples show, linguists can classify languages according to their history, as well as according to the language's structure and according to how words are formed. Here are three common classifications that linguists use and how Spanish fits in with them:

Genetic Classification of Spanish

The genetic classification of languages is closely related to etymology, the study of the origins of words. Most of the world's languages can be divided into about a dozen major families (depending on what is considered major) based on their origins. Spanish, like English, is part of the Indo-European family of languages, which includes the languages spoken by around half the world's population. It includes most of the past and current languages of Europe (the Basque language being a major exception) as well as the traditional languages of Iran, Afghanistan, and the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. Some of the most common Indo-European languages today include French, German, Hindi, Bengali, Swedish, Russian, Italian, Persian, Kurdish and Serbo-Croatian.

Among Indo-European languages, Spanish can be further classified as a Romance language, meaning that it is descended from Latin. Other major Romance languages include French, Portuguese, and Italian, all of which have strong similarities in vocabulary and grammar.

Classification of Spanish by Word Order

One common way of classifying languages is by the order of the basic sentence components, namely the subject, object, and verb. In this regard, Spanish can be thought of as a flexible subject-verb-object or SVO language, as is English. A simple sentence will typically follow that order, as in this example: Juanita lee el libro, where Juanita is the subject, lee (reads) is the verb and el libro (the book) is the object of the verb.

It should be noted, however, that this structure is far from the only one possible, so Spanish can't be thought of as a strict SVO language. In Spanish, it is often possible to leave out the subject entirely if it can be understood from the context, and it also is common to change the word order to emphasize a different part of the sentence.

Also, when pronouns are used as objects, the SOV order (subject-object-verb) is the norm in Spanish: Juanita lo lee. (Juanita reads it.)

Classification of Spanish by Word Formation

In terms of how words are formed, languages can be classified in at least three ways:

As isolating or analytical, meaning that words or word roots don't change based on how they are used in a sentence, and that the relationship of words to each other are conveyed primarily by the use of word order or by words known as particles to indicate the relationship among them.

As inflectional or fusional, meaning that the forms of the words themselves change to indicate how they relate to the other words in a sentence.

As agglutinating or agglutinative, meaning that words are frequently formed by combining various combinations of morphemes, wordlike units with distinct meanings.

Spanish is generally viewed as a somewhat inflectional language, although all three typologies exist to some extent. English is more isolating than Spanish, although English too has inflectional aspects.

In Spanish, verbs are nearly always inflected, a process known as conjugation. In particular, each verb has a "root" (such as habl-) to which endings are attached to indicate who is performing the action and the time period in which it occurs. Thus, hablé and hablaron both have the same root, with the endings used to provide more information. By themselves, the verb endings have no meaning.

Spanish also uses inflection for adjectives to indicate number and gender.

As an example of the isolating aspect of Spanish, most nouns are inflected only to indicate whether they are plural or singular. In contrast, in some languages, such as Russian, a noun can be inflected to indicate, for example, that it is a direct object rather than a subject. Even names of people can be inflected. In Spanish, however, word order and prepositions are typically used to indicate the function of a noun in a sentence. In a sentence such as " Pedro ama a Adriana" (Pedro loves Adriana), the preposition a is used to indicate which person is the subject and which is the object. (In the English sentence, word order is used to inidicate who loves whom.)

An example of an agglutinative aspect of Spanish (and of English) can be seen in its use of various prefixes and suffixes. For example, the difference between hacer (to do) and deshacer (to undo) is in its use of the morpheme (a unit of meaning) des-.

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3 Ways Linguists Classify the Spanish Language

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Ask a linguist what kind of a language Spanish is, and the answer you get may depend on that linguist's specialty. To some, Spanish is primarily a language derived from Latin. Another may tell you that Spanish is primarily an SVO language, whatever that is, while others may refer to it as a fusional language.

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La tira cómica Calvin y Hobbes con frecuencia se ve la complejidad de la lengua para el material cómico. En este ejemplo, Calvin está describiendo el proceso de Verbing, convirtiendo sustantivos u otras partes de la voz en verbos con el uso de afijos o la estructura de oración contextual.

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Lenguaje y la flexibilidad de la mente humana

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Lenguaje y la flexibilidad de la mente humana

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Una de las muchas diferencias entre el lenguaje humano y la comunicación entre los animales es la flexibilidad ilimitada para expresar pensamientos. La construcción de palabras (por ejemplo, el uso de afijos), el contexto de la oración y la connotación social influyen en el significado dado a una palabra en un momento determinado.

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To understand human nature, I focus on human language and what it can reveal about how we think. Unlike other animals, humans can communicate an infinite number of thoughts through language. And one reason that language is powerful is because we can use each of our words flexibly, with several different meanings.

For example in English, ​"chicken" can label an animal or meat, ​"hammer" can label a tool or an action, and ​"glass" can label a material or an object made from that material. And these are just examples of more general schemes through which we can communicate many thoughts using a smaller set of words.

So these schemes reveal how we think, and how we can perceive the very same thing in different ways. So for instance, when we call these chickens ​"hungry," we are thinking of them as animals. But when we refer to them as ​"tasty," we're thinking of them in terms of their meat. So in this way, flexible uses of words can reveal how we are construing a particular situation.

By framing our perspectives, flexible words can even shape how we behave. So for instance if we're told that this patient is ​"battling" cancer, the language of war might encourage us to consider aggressive treatments for the cancer. In contrast, hearing that the patient is on a ​"journey" might actually discourage short‐term invasive treatments.

So because language reflects how we think, it can reveal how we frame important issues. So by understanding how people around the globe talk about terrorism, climate change, or economic policy, we can better understand their underlying assumptions and biases. And this could lead to greater international consensus.

But to use language to reveal different cultural perspectives, we really must first understand how languages vary. There are roughly 6,500 languages spoken in the world today, many of which have distinct lines of ancestry. And so, these different languages could have very different systems of flexibility than English.

So, interestingly, work from my lab shows that although languages do differ from English in interesting ways, they nonetheless share many of the same patterns of flexibility. This suggests that despite geographic and cultural differences, speakers of all languages may share a common cognitive framework, making it possible for us to understand one another's perspectives.

And this cognitive framework, interestingly, is visible not just in similarities across languages, but also in the evolution of a single language. For example work from my lab has traced how English words have developed new meanings through computational analyses of archives dating back a millennium to Old English.

And our models show that words have developed new meanings in systematic ways that could reflect how we think. For example words that described concepts in the external world, like words for water, have been extended throughout history to describe more abstract concepts, as seen with ​"streamline," ​"gush," or ​"cascade."

Now that we see the systematic flexibility across languages and throughout history, we can ask whether this reveals something very fundamental about how we think. And if it does, it might even be present in young children. Even young children might find it intuitive to use words flexibly with these different meanings. And so to study children's understanding of flexible language, my lab uses eye‐tracking technology which monitors where children look as they're listening to language. So the red lines here indicate where the child is looking.

And this method can give us insight into what children are thinking in real time as they're listening to language. Using methods like this, my lab has shown that children anticipate the different uses of flexible words from a very young age. So after learning that an action involving a tool is called ​"daxing," children expect the tool itself to be called ​"a dax." This is similar to how we can hammer with a hammer, or shovel with a shovel.

Our studies show that children understand many of the different patterns of flexibility employed across languages. They creatively use words to label animals and their meats, they use words to label objects and their materials, space and time, and many more. And childrens' early mastery of these schemes suggests that it might be natural for the mind to link concepts in these ways.

This cognitive flexibility, critically, could be foundational to our sophistication as a species. Our ability to redefine the role of an object in different contexts allows us to see problems in new ways and to come up with insightful solutions.

So to close, the study of flexible language and thought paves the way for many real‐world applications. We can better understand the perspectives of one another. We can find ways of promoting children's open‐mindedness and creativity. One day, we could even build artificial intelligence that's capable of using and understanding creative uses of language. Thank you, and I look forward to discussing this with you all.

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Language as a Signature of the Flexible Human Mind - Mahesh Srinivasan | Open Transcripts

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To understand human nature, I focus on human language and what it can reveal about how we think. Unlike other animals, humans can communicate an infinite number of thoughts through language. And one reason that language is powerful is because we can use each of our words flexibly, with several different meanings.

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A medida que evolucionan las lenguas, a menudo se forman nuevas palabras a partir de la combinación de sustantivos, verbos, adjetivos y adverbios existentes. Esto no es sólo una manera intuitiva para que los idiomas se adapten, sino también un ejemplo de la tendencia de las personas a construir nuevas cosas a partir de los materiales existentes.

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Palabras compuestas. Ejemplos de palabras compuestas

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Son palabras que se forman por la unión de dos o más palabras simples, es decir, por la unión de dos o más lexemas. Por ejemplo: "abrebotellas", "puntapié", "baloncesto". Excepcionalmente las palabras compuestas se forman por la unión de dos morfemas. Por ejemplo: "conque", "porque".

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Usted puede haber oído hablar de la expresión “ser lengua atada", pero es una condición médica real, literal. La Anquilloglossia afecta hasta el 10% de los bebés, y se produce cuando el rango de movimiento de la lengua es inusualmente restringido por el frenillo lingual, el tejido que se mueve la punta de la lengua al piso de la boca.

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Being Tongue Tied Is a Real Medical Condition-And It Affects Up to 10% of Babies

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A 6-year-old boy had his life changed by a quick visit to the dentist, who noticed he had tongue-tie-a common and treatable medical problem.

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Por una serie de razones, las personas pueden necesitar una largotomía, la eliminación de la caja de voz. A pesar de que perderán su voz al principio, hay maneras de recuperar la capacidad tal como prótesis de voz, discurso esofágico, o una electrolaringe. sin estas técnicas, las personas no podían recrear funcionalmente ningún sonido usando los acordes vocales.

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Speaking after a laryngectomy | Laryngeal cancer] | Cancer Research UK

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Learn about the different ways to communicate after having your voice box removed (laryngectomy) and losing for voice.

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A medida que los lenguajes han evolucionado con el tiempo, es difícil ver cómo era el idioma al principio de la evolución humana. Al rastrear a través de la “árbol genealógico humano’’, los lingüistas han concluido que los idiomas de clic en el sur de África pueden estar conectados a un posible lenguaje raíz.

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All human groups are equally old, being descended from the same ancestral population. But geneticists can now place ethnic groups on a family tree of humankind. Groups at the ends of short twigs, the ones that split only recently from earlier populations, are younger, in a genealogical sense, than those at the ends of long branches. Judged by mitochondrial DNA, a genetic element passed down in the female line, the Ju|'hoansis' line of descent is so ancient that it goes back close to the very root of the human family tree.

Most of the surviving click speakers live in southern Africa. But two small populations, the Hadzabe and the Sandawe, live near Lake Eyasi in Tanzania, in eastern Africa. Two geneticists from Stanford, Dr. Alec Knight and Dr. Joanna Mountain, recently analyzed the genetics of the Hadzabe to figure out their relationship to their fellow click speakers, the Ju|'hoansi.

The Hadzabe, too, have an extremely ancient lineage that also traces back close to the root of the human family tree, the Stanford team reports today in the journal Current Biology. But the Hadzabe lineage and that of the Ju|'hoansi spring from opposite sides of the root. In other words, the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi have been separate peoples since close to the dawn of modern human existence.

The Stanford team compared them with other extremely ancient groups like the Mbuti of Zaire and the Biaka pygmies of Central African Republic and found the divergence between the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi might be the oldest known split in the human family tree.

Unless each group independently invented click languages at some later time, that finding implies that click languages were spoken by the very ancient population from which the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi descended. ''The divergence of those genetic lineages is among the oldest on earth,'' Dr. Knight said. ''So one could certainly make the inference that clicks were present in the mother tongue.''

If so, the modern humans who left Africa some 40,000 years ago and populated the rest of the world might have been click speakers who later lost their clicks. Australia, where the Damin click language used to be spoken, is one of the first places outside Africa known to have been reached by modern humans.

But the antiquity of clicks, if they are indeed extremely ancient, raises a serious puzzle. Joseph Greenberg of Stanford University, the great classifier of the world's languages, put all the click languages in a group he called Khoisan. But Sandawe and Hadzane, the language of the Hadzabe, are what linguists call isolates. They are unlike each other and every other known language. Apart from their clicks, they have very little in common even with the other Khoisan languages.

That the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi differ as much in their language as in their genetics is a reflection of the same fact. They are extremely ancient, and there has been a long time for both their language and their genetics to diverge. The puzzle is why they should have retained their clicks when everything else in their languages has changed.

Dr. Knight suggested that clicks might have survived because in the savanna, where most click speakers live, the sounds allow hunters to coordinate activity without disturbing prey. Whispered speech that uses just clicks sounds more like branches creaking than human talk. Clicks make up more than 40 percent of the language and suffice for hunters to convey their meanings, Dr. Knight said.

Dr. Anthony Traill, an expert on click languages at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, said he did not find the hunting idea very plausible.

''Clicks are acoustically high-impact sounds for mammalian ears,'' Dr. Traill said, ''probably the worst sounds to use if you are trying to conceal your presence.''

But he agreed that it was a puzzle to understand why clicks had been retained for so long. He has found that in the ordinary process of language change, certain types of click can be replaced by nonclick consonants, but he has never seen the reverse occur. ''It is highly improbable that a fully fledged click system could arise from nonclick precursors,'' Dr. Traill said.

Because languages change so fast, it is difficult for linguists to measure their age. Indeed, most think that languages more than a few thousand years old can rarely be dated. But if Dr. Traill is right, that clicks can be lost but not reinvented, that implies that clicks may be a very ancient component of language.

Dr. Bonnie Sands, a linguist at Northern Arizona University, said click sounds were not particularly hard to make. All children can make them. Dr. Sands saw no reason why clicks could not have been invented independently many times and, perhaps, lost in all areas of the world except Africa.

''There is nothing to be gained by assuming that clicks must have been invented only once,'' she said, ''or in presuming that certain types of phonological systems are more primordial than others.''

Dr. Traill said that although a single click was not difficult, rattling off a whole series is another matter, because they are like double consonants. ''Fluent articulation of clicks in running speech is by any measure difficult,'' he said. ''It requires more articulatory work, like taking two stairs at a time.''

Given the laziness of the human tongue, why have clicks been retained by click speakers while everything else changed? ''That is a major problem,'' Dr. Traill said. ''All the expectations would be that they would have succumbed to the pressures of change that affect all languages. I do not know the answer.''

A leading theory to explain the emergence of behaviorally modern humans 50,000 years ago is that some genetic change enabled one group of people to perfect modern speech. The new power of communication, according to an archaeologist, Dr. Richard Klein, made possible the advanced behaviors that begin to be reflected in the archaeological record of the period.

The Stanford team calculated a date of 112,000 years, plus or minus 42,000 years, for the separation of the Hadzabe and Ju|'hoansi populations. If this means that modern speech existed that long ago, it does not appear to fit with Dr. Klein's thesis.

But Dr. Knight said the estimate was very approximate and added that he believed the new findings about click language were fully compatible with Dr. Klein's theory. Clicks might have been part of the first fully articulate human language that appeared among some group of early humans 50,000 years ago. Those with the language gene would have outcompeted all other groups, so that language become universal in the surviving human population.

That would explain why the metaphorical Adam hit it off with Eve. They just clicked.

Correction: March 20, 2003

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In Click Languages, an Echo of the Tongues of the Ancients

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New genetic study underlines extreme antiquity of click languages of southern Africa, raising possibility that their distinctive feature was part of ancestral mother tongue; about 30 click languages survive, spoken by people like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and Khwe, who include hunters and herdsmen; each language has set of four or five click sounds, which are essentially double consonants made by sucking tongue down from roof of mouth; outside of Africa, only language known to use clicks is Damin, extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was taught only to men for initiation rites; photo (M)

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Mientras que la mayoría de los idiomas en el mundo utilizan un alfabeto fonético, lenguajes pictográficos como el mandarín tienen una dificultad única en la transmisión de los sonidos reales de cada palabra. Pinyin, un alfabeto fonético que incluye marcadores para los diferentes sonidos tonales del mandarín, fue creado para ayudar a enseñar a niños y estudiantes extranjeros.

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Pinyin, short for Hanyu Pinyin, means 'phonetic symbols'. Pin means 'spell(ing)' and Yin means 'sound(s)' is a system of phonetic transcriptions of standard Chinese. As the saying goes, Chinese Pinyin is a kind of Chinese pronunciation.

Chinese Letters

There are 26 letters which are important parts in Chinese Pinyin as follow : ɑ, o, e, i, u, ǖ, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, ɡ, k, h, j, q, x, z, c, s, r, y, w.

The Chinese language is a monosyllabic language, meaning each character has only one syllable. Chinese syllables consist of initials and finals, which are made up of 26 letters, sometimes only one and occasionally a few. As the name implies, an initial is used at the beginning of a syllable while a final is the following parts in that syllable. For instance, 我 (wo) consists of an initial "w" and a final "o"; 上(shang) consists of an initial "sh" and a final "ang". Most finals are complete syllables in themselves, which are called whole-syllable, e.g. a (啊), o (哦).

Based on the pronunciation, Chinese Pinyin can be divided into vowels and consonants. While pronouncing a vowel, the air stream comes from the lungs and meets with no obstruction. Conversely, if it is obstructed in one way or another, it becomes a consonant. Vowels include a, o, e, i u, ü, ê i-, -i, er and consonants include b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, ng.

Chinese Tones

Chinese language is also a tone language. It consists four basic tones, indicated by the tone graphs:

Some syllables are pronounced both light and short, which is called the neutral tone and lacks a tone-graph representation in writing, e.g.

Different tones may indicate different meanings. e.g.

Mā (妈mother) má (麻hemp) mǎ (马horse) mà (骂to curse)

When there is only one vowel in a syllable, the tone-graph is put above the vowel, such as wǒ (我). While there are two or more vowels in the final of a syllable, the tone-graph falls on the main vowel, as in luò. If the graph is above the vowel i, the dot of i is omitted, e.g. nī, ní, nǐ, nì.

When the two 3rd tones come together, the first tone changes into 2nd. e.g.

你好 (nǐ hǎo) is actually pronounced as ní hǎo

When a syllable in the 3rd tone proceeds a syllable in the 1st, 2nd, 4th or neutral tone, it is pronounced in the half 3rd tone, that is , the tone only falls and doesn't rise, e.g.

Whilst most Chinese characters have only one Pinyin, there are however some with more than one. They are called polyphones. Their pinyin differs as the meaning differs

便 is pronounced as "biàn" in 方便 (convenient)
and "pián" in 便宜 (cheap)

乐 is pronounced as " lè" as in 快乐(happy)
and "yuè" in 音乐 (music)

Next: Chinese Characters

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Chinese Pinyin, Phonetics, Learn the Letters and Tones

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Pinyin, short for Hanyu Pinyin, means 'phonetic symbols'. Pin means 'spell(ing)' and Yin means 'sound(s)' is a system of phonetic transcriptions of standard Chinese. As the saying goes, Chinese Pinyin is a kind of Chinese pronunciation.

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Aprender un idioma altera el desarrollo cerebral

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Aprender un idioma altera el desarrollo cerebral

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La edad a la que alguien aprende un segundo idioma puede tener un impacto significativo en la estructura del cerebro de la persona. El desarrollo cerebral es similar a los temas monolingües si la segunda lengua se aprende de niño, pero el aprendizaje de un segundo idioma más tarde reestructura la corteza frontal inferior.

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Learning a new language alters brain development

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The age at which children learn a second language can have a significant bearing on the structure of their adult brain, according to a new study.

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Aprender un segundo idioma protege contra el Alzheimer

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Aprender un segundo idioma protege contra el Alzheimer

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No sólo es aprender un idioma una habilidad útil para tener, también puede ayudar a proteger su cerebro de ciertas enfermedades. Debido al desarrollo físico del cerebro que el aprendizaje de otro lenguaje crea, los pacientes bilingües con la enfermedad de Alzheimer son más resistentes a los efectos del deterioro.

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Credit: Dreamstime.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Want to protect against the effects of Alzheimer's? Learn another language.

That's the takeaway from recent brain research, which shows that bilingual people's brains function better and for longer after developing the disease.

Psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues at York University in Toronto recently tested about 450 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Half of these patients were bilingual, and half spoke only one language.

While all the patients had similar levels of cognitive impairment, the researchers found that those who were bilingual had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four years later, on average, than those who spoke just one language. And the bilingual people reported their symptoms had begun about five years later than those who spoke only one language.

"What we've been able to show is that in these patients... all of whom have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and are all at the same level of impairment, the bilinguals on average are four to five years older - which means that they've been able to cope with the disease," Bialystok said.

She presented her findings today (Feb. 18) here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Some results of this research were published in the Nov. 9, 2010 issue of the journal Neurology.

CT brain scans of the Alzheimer's patients showed that, among patients who are functioning at the same level, those who are bilingual have more advanced brain deterioration than those who spoke just one language. But this difference wasn't apparent from the patients' behaviors, or their abilities to function. The bilingual people acted like monolingual patients whose disease was less advanced.

"Once the disease begins to compromise this region of the brain, bilinguals can continue to function," Bialystok said. "Bilingualism is protecting older adults, even after Alzheimer's disease is beginning to affect cognitive function."

The researchers think this protection stems from brain differences between those speak one language and those who speak more than one. In particular, studies show bilingual people exercise a brain network called the executive control system more. The executive control system involves parts of the prefrontal cortex and other brain areas, and is the basis of our ability to think in complex ways, Bialystok said.

"It's the most important part of your mind," she said. "It controls attention and everything we think of as uniquely human thought."

Bilingual people, the theory goes, constantly have to exercise this brain system to prevent their two languages from interfering with one another. Their brains must sort through multiple options for each word, switch back and forth between the two languages, and keep everything straight.

And all this work seems to confer a cognitive benefit - an ability to cope when the going gets tough and the brain is besieged with a disease such as Alzheimer's.

"It's not that being bilingual prevents the disease," Bialystok told MyHealthNewsDaily. Instead, she explained, it allows those who develop Alzheimer's to deal with it better.

Moreover, other research suggests that these benefits of bilingualism apply not only to those who are raised from birth speaking a second language, but also to people who take up a foreign tongue later in life.

"The evidence that we have is not only with very early bilinguals," said psychologist Teresa Bajo of the University of Granada in Spain, who was not involved in Bialystok's research. "Even late bilinguals use these very same processes so they may have also the very same advantages."

This article was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience.

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Learning a Second Language Protects Against Alzheimer's

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Want to protect against the effects of Alzheimer's? Learn another language. That's the takeaway from recent brain research, which shows that bilingual people's brains function better and for longer after developing the disease. Psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues at York University in Toronto recently tested about 450 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

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Los Estados Unidos carecen de habilidades lingüísticas

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Los Estados Unidos carecen de habilidades lingüísticas

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El aprendizaje de idiomas en las escuelas americanas se está convirtiendo en una rareza a pesar de que el mundo sigue globalizando. Sólo el 7% de los estudiantes universitarios están inscritos en un curso de idiomas y menos del 1% de los estadounidenses son competentes en un idioma que aprendieron en una clase americana.

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Budget cuts, low enrollments, and teacher shortages mean the country is falling behind the rest of the world.

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Chica rusa de 4 años puede hablar en 7 idiomas

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Chica rusa de 4 años puede hablar en 7 idiomas

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En 2016 en un programa de juego en Rusia, una chica rusa llamada Bella mostró al mundo su capacidad para comunicarse en siete idiomas, inglés, español, francés, Chino, árabe, alemán, y su ruso nativo. Aunque bella es obviamente muy inteligente, no es una niña prodigio. Como todos los niños pequeños, ella tiene una poderosa capacidad para aprender nuevos idiomas, y sus padres se aprovechan de eso mientras pueden.

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4 years Old Bella surprised the world - Speaks 7 languages