Language Learning & Music

I just got Aniruddh Patel's book, Music, Language, and the Brain because I am keenly interested in learning more about the relationship between music, language and our complex neurological system. Patel is a neuroscientist and musician who...

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...

Although I agree with the premise of the research findings that adults can learn languages, and perhaps even faster than children, I don't like the way language acquisition is measured by creating an artificial...

A super expensive Ivy League education at Harvard may still deprive students of the knowledge they need to get ahead in this world. According to the article, Colleges come up short on what students need to...

January not only brought in a new year, it brought in three new books! First, I updated Language is Music with about 30 new tips on language learning using music, TV, radio, movies and other...

USA Today and Higher Ed report in the article, Colleges strive to make foreign languages relevant, that one college is finally getting it right and making foreign language education be more than just grammar and...

So you're not from a bilingual family and you live in a monolingual area where there's no one who speaks the language you're learning, you can still learn a new language. Aaron Myers and I...

The film, Saved by Language about how Moris Albahari saved his life in World War II in Bosnia by using the Ladino language is now available to the public! You can rent it for $7 to watch online as many times as you like in a three-day period or you can buy the DVD for $25 and watch it whenever you want. You can order the DVD in either the PAL or NTSC format. Both the DVD and the online rental have subtitles in English, Ladino, Spanish, Portuguese and Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian.

Another TV interview about the awesome power of music! Songs, TV and other media help us learn foreign languages. Hip-hop music can keep at-risk kids in school and out of trouble. Susanna Zaraysky and Anthony Pineda...

  One missing digit    One missing digit (not a finger!) almost kept me from going to India. En route to Chennai (Madras), I had a rude awakening at the Frankfurt airport: my passport number in my...