Reports poor scores for college students asked to define the meanings of ten foreign words placed in and out of context. Urges news writers to use words familiar to the audience, or else to provide parenthetical or other explanations of unfamiliar or foreign words. (RL)

Shows how Spanish may be used in the language arts classroom through vocabulary study, etymological study, literature translation, and the study of both language borrowing and code-switching in writing. (DD)

Enormous numbers of Spanish words are used by speakers of Tlaxcalan Nahuatl, an indigenous language of Mexico. The major function of the language is to support the speakers' self-identification. As speakers feel it more beneficial to improve their Spanish, relexification is contributing to the death of the language. (AMH)

This paper examines factors impacting the acquisition and use of the standard dialect by Australia's Aboriginal youth. It explains that acquisition of a second dialect has implications for the learner's cognitive-affective and sociocultural life and argues that preservation of an "insider" perspective (related to identity) is a key…

Nine general books on developing English vocabulary from Latin and Greek and three related books on medical terminology are listed and annotated. The texts are oriented to various groups from fifth grade through professional education levels and are for classroom and self-directed learning. (MSE)

Covering a 500-year span, this article traces the changes in and evolution of the Spanish language from its earliest written accounts in the eleventh century to the Spanish that was brought by the Conquistadores to the New World. (DS)

Based on the 1979 edition of the "Petit Larousse Illustre," English or American loan words are evaluated as to their actual usage in modern French. It is concluded that anglo-americanisms have a greater impact on technical French than on everyday French. A list of 57 words that have become part of French usage is provided for pedagogical…

Presents 41 German words and phrases that are used in Spanish today. Definitions are provided and examples of their use in Spanish texts are given. (NCR)

Discusses the history of the Spanish language in America and notes the influence of Caribbean languages, Nahuatl, and English on Spanish. Describes the archaisms in lexicon, phonology, and grammar of the Spanish of New Mexico and Colorado. Discusses Spanish language maintenance in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the United States. (SB)

Examines acculturation patterns in the language of Samoans in San Francisco. (AM)

Discusses points made in a previous paper, arguing that the presence of the basic word order Agent-Verb-Patient in the Basic Variety (BV) may reflect the salience of this word order in the target language as suggested by comparable data from creoles. Although the BV may serve the communicative functions of true languages, they may not fulfill…

Examines from a creolist perspective the claim that American Sign Language (ASL) has creole origins. Applying criteria based on the work of various creole researchers, the article concludes that the evidence for creole origins of ASL does not meet any usual definition of a creole. The article discusses lexical and morhosyntactic similarities…

Reports on a question by a law student of whether a correction of "sneaked" to "snuck" suggests misinformation and misguided rigidity in the context of better information about current legal usage and a perennial tendency to linguistic prescription. Explores attitudes to current borrowings from English into Japanese and French…

Re-examines research literature supporting the idea that infants and young children simultaneously learning two languages mix elements from the two languages. It is argued that, contrary to most extant interpretations, bilingual children develop differentiated language systems from the beginning and are able to use their developing languages in…

The history of Esperanto, a language created to promote international communication, is chronicled. Discussion focuses on the origins and development of the language, early attitudes toward its adoption, patterns of use and recognition, the development of a literature in and of Esperanto, the culture associated with the language. (Author/MSE)