Latest English language Stories

A foreign accent undermines a person's credibility in ways that the speaker and the listener don't consciously realize, new research at the University of Chicago shows.Because an accent makes a person harder to understand, listeners are less likely to find what the person says as truthful, researchers found. The problem of credibility increases with the severity of the accent."The results have important implications for how people perceive non-native speakers of a language, particularly...

MONTEREY, Calif., June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The debate over Arizona's new immigration law, SB 1070, continues to boil and create worry for Spanish-speaking residents who have been the focus of the bill. At the same time, a new report from Language Line Services revealing a surge in demand for interpretation for the more than 170 different languages currently spoken in the United States gives insight into the difficulty of relying on "reasonable suspicion" to question and detain possible...

Despite the fact that the African languages in Rwanda and Uganda are marginalised in most formal domains in society, they are used far more extensively than commonly believed. This is one conclusion reached in a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.Sub-Saharan Africa is characterised by a large number of indigenous languages that are not appointed official languages. In fact, Westerners often find the vast linguistic diversity difficult to comprehend.By comparing...

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagine having your own personal creative editor who feeds you great phrasing suggestions as you type. Imagine still that he's multilingual, with impeccable grammar and spelling - Oh, and imagine he works for you pro bono, not charging you a thing. What you're actually imagining is a software called eType. (Sorry, most real editors just aren't this debonair.) Launching today with six available languages, this international software of mystery will...

CINCINNATI, May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- When Bee Week kicks off Monday, May 31, the Scripps National Spelling Bee will welcome 273 spelling champions to Washington, D.C., for the 83rd installment of the prestigious academic showcase. The Bee long ago expanded to include sponsors from all corners of the world, but the growing popularity of the program in the United States is underscored by the attendance this year of 266 American spellers, surpassing last year's record of 265. Bee Week The...

Population Speaking a Language Other than English at Home Increases by 140 Percent in Past Three Decades WASHINGTON, April 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The number of people 5 and older who spoke a language other than English at home has more than doubled in the last three decades and at a pace four times greater than the nation's population growth, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report analyzing data from the 2007 American Community Survey and over a time period from 1980 - 2007....

POMPANO BEACH, Fla., Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Cash4Gold (www.cash4gold.com), the world's #1 gold buyer from consumers, has rapidly increased the number of foreign language speakers employed in its call center at its state-of-the-art 40,000 square-foot headquarters in Pompano Beach, Fla. During its European expansion, Cash4Gold has added dozens of international workers who speak various foreign languages to provide support for customers around the world who are utilizing the mail-in gold...

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Nov. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Mango Languages today announced the official launch of its newest product, "Mango Basic". The first installment of what are planned to be numerous additions to the Mango suite of products, Mango Basic will cater to the individual who seeks an elementary understanding of a new language to engage in simple conversations. The announcement was made by Beverly Cornell, Director of Marketing for Mango. An abridged version of many of Mango...

Do you speak English as a second language well, but still have trouble understanding movies with unfamiliar accents, such as Brad Pitt's southern accent in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds? In a new study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE, Holger Mitterer (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and James McQueen (MPI and Radboud University Nijmegen) show how you can improve your second-language listening ability by watching the movie with subtitles"”as long as...

HOBOKEN, N.J., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Faster, lighter, more, NOW...the new generation of tools and toys in the Digital Age is a global obsession. And today, it may also be a crime. Distracted driving - what many are guilty of when they use digital devices on the go - is rapidly entering law books around the world and earns the 2009 Word of the Year choice at Webster's New World® College Dictionary. The competition had several worthy contenders, with cloud computing and wallet biopsy as...