Penn State Professor of German and Linguistics Michael Putnam has spent a good part of his career thinking about language attrition, or "language loss," among bi- and multilingual speakers. Now, it's ...

If you define "knowledge" to be the deeply rooted fundamental structure of the language which allows you to produce and understand it in the first place, and "use" as any concrete instance of it, such ...

Bilingualism has always been a major part of my identity. I grew up in Madrid, so Spanish is my native language, but my father enrolled my brothers and I into a school that spoke predominantly English ...

Last fall, University junior Lindsey Dombras spent more than three months studying in Morelia, Mexico, speaking almost entirely Spanish during her time there. She became fluent in her second language, ...

Bilingualism and second language acquisition (SLA) represent dynamic areas of research that elucidate how individuals acquire, develop and maintain proficiency in more than one language.

When did humans first begin to speak, which speech sounds were uttered first, and when did language evolve from those humble beginnings? These questions have long fascinated people, especially in ...

In the early 20th century linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf thrilled his contemporaries by noting that the Hopi language, spoken by Native American people in what is now Arizona, had no words or grammatical ...

Over the years, I have written several posts on the impact that major life changes can have on the languages of bilinguals. Events such as changing schools or employment, moving to another region or ...