Language is Music. Songs help Rep. Gabrielle Giffords regain speech
Language and Music. Language is Music. Music helps you learn language.
It's so simple. Yet sometimes it feels like I am talking to the wall when I tell people how lyrical songs can help people...
Learning a Foreign Language Can Help You Live Longer
In his book, Healthy Aging, Dr. Andrew Weil recommends learning a foreign language as a way to prevent Alzheimers.
From the ABC News story, "Learning a Foreign Language Can Help You Live Longer":
"Weil believes that...
Education: It’s the music, stupid!
While politicians bicker about how to re-organize and finance schools, parents worry about their children’s academic performance and low-performing students struggle to follow lessons, we are forgetting about a free, fun and extremely powerful...
Learn Portuguese: The joy of just “being” in Portuguese and not speaking
(Photo is of Lisbon, Portugal.)
Feeling like I am in Portugal without leaving the United States
I ventured into the Little Portugal area of San Jose, California, where the local immigrant population from the Azores islands...
Learn Portuguese with Brazilian songs
I am not the only one singing the praises of Brazilian music as a way to learn Portuguese!
On September 29, 2011, I attended an event of the San Francisco Brazilian Portuguese MeetUp and asked...
Russia through French eyes: Experiencing life anew in a different language
Rare is the book which envelops my attention, delights me in its prose, makes me re-read passages both for the joy of the flow of the sentences and for the content and strikes a...
Accents matter. Which one to choose?
Learning a language with various regional varieties or dialects means choosing which accent(s) to learn. In this video with Richard Simcott and Luca Lampariello, we talk about how we chose which accent to learn...
How Russian speakers can sound harsh in English without realizing it
Jon Stewart of The Daily Show made a funny and correct assessment of why Russian speakers sound "evil" in English, although they may not have any bad intentions.
"I wonder if Russia has been our...
Learning Portuguese with rap and Brazilian music, Don Blanquito and Idahosa Ness
I interviewed (Don Blanquito) and Idahosa Ness about how they, as native English speakers, create rap, funk and hip hop music in Spanish and Portuguese. They also discuss how music helps people get into the...
Need an alarm clock to remember who you are? Music awakens our brains, “Music...
As I’ve written before, I wouldn’t have realized that there's a link between learning languages and music if it weren’t for Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Dr. Sacks’ books,(Musicophilia, The Mind’s Eye, etc.) have shown me and...
