This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post, and I reposted it on my Psychology Today blog, “The Will to Plasticity.”

At home, we speak English, except for a few Spanish words for sneaking around toddler ears. But in my life, my brain and tongue have been touched too [...]

Americans are often told that in today’s globalized world, we are at a competitive disadvantage because of our lazy monolingualism. “For too long, Americans have relied on other countries to speak our language,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said at the Foreign Language Summit in 2010. “But we won’t be able to do that in [...]

“Awesome dump truck!” my son said, holding up his prize, his eyes shining with admiration. He was 21 months old, very into wheeled things. I had to admit, the truck was cool: chrome parts, a working dumper, even hinged cab doors. He and I were at the beach, where he found the truck unattended, and [...]

The following originally appeared in Science, April 17, 2009, vol. 324. Copyright 2009 Michael Erard.

After a long day in the field, deep in the mountains of southwestern China near the border with Vietnam, retired environmental health professor Gary Shook was surprised to meet another American, Jamin Pelkey, staying in the same government guesthouse. [...]

Remember Joe, my old friend from Alpine? He would be 80 years old this year, but he’s long gone. Survived cancer long enough to see the truth of God—he’d finally asked to see a priest after a lifetime of avowed atheism—and watch the twin towers fall. A month later I was driving to Midland for [...]

Words are the most familiar part of language, because it’s words we’re most conscious of learning and forgetting. Only certain words, though. Your word-of-the-day calendar will never list “the” or “but.” You boast about knowing French numbers, not the pronouns. What draws our fascination is the words for things, actions, properties and the other stuff [...]