Listen & Learn Blog

Thinking in a foreign language leads people to make more rational decisions, according to researchers at the University of Chicago.

Featured in the current issue of Psychological Science, the study found that people have less emotional ties to a foreign language, meaning they have a more rational thought process. Their emotional ties to their native language impedes logical thought, according to the study’s authors.

The study, titled “The Foreign Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases”, used previous research showing that people are naturally risk-averse. In one experiment, researchers asked college students to make their decision in (recently learned) Spanish; the test showed that the students were more likely to take a bet in Spanish than in English. This result has potential benefits:

“People who routinely make decisions in a foreign language might be less biased in their savings, investment and retirement decisions, as they show less myopic loss aversion,” the authors wrote. ”Over a long time horizon, this might very well be beneficial.” (Source: Huffington Post)

Another reason to learn a second language!

Feeling a little lazy with your language learning? Can’t be bothered to brush up on the local lingo for your summer holiday? Help is at hand.

This phrasebook t-shirt could be the solution to all your problems! No need for that pesky phrasebook or trying to make yourself understood through complicated hand signals. Just point at your chest, and the easy-to-understand, international airport style graphics will tell the locals what you need right now.

Sadly the t-shirt is no longer for sale, so you’ll just have to struggle through. Would you buy one if it was for sale?

(Source: Gizmodo)

Mark this on the list of “things I didn’t know”: Full moons have names!

According to a post on Space.com, this tradition dates back a few hundred years, to Native Americans of what is now the northern and eastern United States, who gave names to moons in order to keep track of seasons. The name given to the moon was applied to the full month in which it appeared. European settlers followed this custom, and also created their own names.

Here are the names and times for the next couple of months:

May 5, 11:35 p.m. EDT – Full Flower Moon.  Flowers are abundant everywhere at this time. May’s full moon was also known as the Full Corn Planting Moon or the Milk Moon. The moon will also be at perigee just 25 minutes after turning full, at 12:00 a.m. EDT on May 6, at a distance of 221,801 miles (356,955 kilometers) from Earth. Very high ocean tides can be expected from the coincidence of perigee with the full moon.

Jun. 4, 7:12 a.m. EDT – Full Strawberry Moon.  Known to every Algonquin tribe, Europeans called it the Rose Moon. A partial eclipse of the moon will be visible chiefly favoring those living around the Pacific Rim. Observers in Japan and Australia for instance, can see it at, or soon after, moonrise, while those in the western United States and western Canada see it at, or just before, moonset.  At maximum, about 37 percent of the moon’s diameter will be immersed in the dark umbra shadow of the Earth.

What would you name the moon for the month of your birth?

Full moon image from netlancer2006 under the Flickr Creative Commons Licence.

I’ve often been accused of having selective hearing, particularly when it comes to being asked to do things I’d rather not do.

Scientists have now explained how selective hearing works – the real kind though, not the type I practice! Selective hearing is the way in which people can tune out a noisy environment and just listen to a single speaker – your date in a crowded bar, for example. It’s also known as the “cocktail party effect”.

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) worked with three patients who were undergoing brain surgery for severe epilepsy. They took brain recordings and decoded them using an algorithm, which showed that the cortex has the ability to reflect just what we really want or need to hear.

The findings help scientists understand how the human brain processes language, which could have some major effects for other research.

An average person can walk into a noisy room and have a private conversation with relative ease — as if all the other voices in the room were muted. In fact, said Mesgarani, an engineer with a background in automatic speech recognition research, the engineering required to separate a single intelligible voice from a cacophony of speakers and background noise is a surprisingly difficult problem.

Speech recognition, he said, is “something that humans are remarkably good at, but it turns out that machine emulation of this human ability is extremely difficult.” (Source: Science Daily)

What does the word haggis conjure in your mind? How about jellied eels?

It’s fair to say that British food isn’t renowned for its culinary excellence. In comparison to our European neighbours, the British look pretty badly off, food-wise. But give some of our traditional dishes a chance, and you might be surprised!

BBC America has taken a look at the food behind the notorious words, and explained exactly why you should give haggis a go:

Blah blah blah “they cook it in a sheep’s stomach” blah blah “it’s just minced offal and oats” blah blah. Shut up. You have no reason to criticize how haggis is made (they don’t do the sheep’s stomach thing any more, by the way) and refuse to even try it unless you a) don’t drink milk because of where it comes from, b) don’t eat eggs because of what they are and where they come from and c) are any form of vegetarian or vegan. Yes, the recipe for haggis makes it sound gross, but you know what? It’s not. It’s lovely. It tastes like the best, pepperiest meatloaf you’ve ever eaten, and goes perfectly with some mashed potato, and mashed turnips (or swede) and lots of gravy.

What other British foods (and words) do you think are misunderstood?

Following in the footsteps of L’Academie francaise, Russian officials have launched a campaign to “clean up” the Russian language.

Russia’s Education and Science Ministry has decided that words borrowed from other languages (loan words) are no longer permissible and Russian words should be used instead. In a project costing around US$150,000, they aim to revise all dictionaries and school teaching material, as well as producing an internet resource on the correct way to speak the language.

Whilst L’Academie francasie has been somewhat successful in replacing loan words for French ones, they’ve really only caught on for official usage. Ordinary people are still shaping their language in the way they want to speak it. I wonder if this project will be successful in Russia, a country with a much larger population than France?

Good news for tech-savvy language learners – you can now buy Kindle ebooks in Spanish!

Earlier this month Amazon launched eBooks Kindle en Espanol at amazon.com/tiendakindle. The shop currently has around 30,000 Spanish language titles, including bestsellers from Paolo Coehlo and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. You can even buy the massively popular young adult series The Hunger Games.

“We’re excited to introduce Spanish language storefronts on all Kindles, as well as a dedicated store for our Spanish-speaking customers in the US,” said Kindle Content vice president Russ Grandinetti.

“We’re looking forward to continued expansion of our store for Spanish language readers around the world.” (Source: Yahoo News)

Now there’s no excuse for not doing some Spanish language reading!

Whether you’re headed off to a new school or starting a new job, there’s always new lingo to learn.

This may be especially true of environments where there are lots of young people, who tend to have slang that’s all their own. Don’t worry though, Huffington Post has the “Ultimate College Dictionary”, just for you!

Here’s a couple of examples to get you started:

Darty (or Day-long): A party occurring during the day (aka an excuse to rage in broad daylight). At many college campuses, darty or day-long season begins in early spring, when the weather starts to warm up, and typically ends right before finals start.

Kegs & Eggs: A morning keg party. These parties usually begin before daybreak (around 6 a.m.) and last until noon or later. Another version is finishing off the keg used at a party the night before while eating eggs.