 Yes, but does it protect Sweden?
I spent my Junior Year Abroad in France, which means that it was a year full of heroic linguistic triumphs as well as embarrassing (but funny) linguistic gaffes. I was with a group of other American university students in the city of Tours, in the Loire Valley, and in between visiting castles, museums, vineyards, and, oh yeah, classrooms, we had to meet daily mundane needs like getting around, eating, and shopping.
One day, a friend of mine, Jen, bought a pair of suede boots, and if you're familiar with winters in northern France you know that suede is not the ideal material.
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Turn up your radio!
Music is a language nearly everyone can understand, and you'd be surprised how great it can be for language learning. Find an online radio station, or scan the dial. (You have it made if you're studying Spanish in the United States: there's a Spanish language radio station to be found in nearly every part of the country.) Browse your local music store for CDs by artists native in the language you're learning. Find a song you like and put it on repeat. Many CDs have liner notes with printed lyrics, and if they don't appear in the liner notes, chances are someone has posted the lyrics online.
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The Financial Times recently published an interesting article about English as a global language. My attention was caught by the following point: The preferred global status of standard English as spoken by (the shrinking number of) native speakers may be ensured, at least for a while, through its dominant presence on the Internet and the widespread appeal of English-language music, film and TV programs.
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Also on the blog this month:
What dude, punk, hokum, and twerp have in common. The Irish origins of New York City slang.
Complex words in other languages. Are certain words untranslatable?
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 When babies get "habituated"
Like the rest of us, babies get bored when they hear things over and over. The pervasive feeling that overwhelmes them when they are repeatedly exposed to the same stimulus is technically called habituation. But if, after a series of old sounds, they hear a new one, babies perk up, just like us. In such experiments, researchers have learned that babies have remarkable language skills long before anyone is taking them seriously.
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