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

If you need to hit a nail, what tool do you ask for? If you say "hammer," do you pronounce the "r"? Do you drop the "h"? Different people pronounce the same English words in different ways. People ...

Despite the fact that most of America speaks one language, there are distinctive sayings that are nearly incomprehensible to people from different parts of the country. In the South, there are phrases ...

The ability of children to speak any two dialects -- two closely related varieties of the same language -- may confer the same cognitive advantages as those reported for multilingual children who ...

Listen to Lexicon Valley Episode No. 4: Jumpin’ Salty in the O Mike Vuolo Mike Vuolo is a radio and podcast producer and the host of Lexicon Valley. Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in ...

English spelling is crazy. Even people born and raised in English-speaking societies who speak no other language still often have a lot of trouble with English spelling. You may think that English is ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Conditions in rural England around the turn of the 20th century offer a case study for cultural evolution researchers. Heritage Images/Hulton Archive via Getty Images If you need to hit a nail, what ...