Blog 9- The Bilingual Brain

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2014/11/bilingual-brains-better-equipped-to-process-information.html

This is a good read for all of you aspiring or accomplished bilinguals. I'm sure you already know of the many benefits of knowing multiple languages, but I think this article breaks it down well. It talks about a study that was done on bilinguals and monolinguals, which tested their brains' filtering abilities and the bilinguals scored remarkably higher. It also described a study which found that bilingual children were much more capable of filtering out noise in the classroom and effectively retaining more information. I think these tests prove that bilingual people simply do not get distracted nearly as easy as monolinguals and I think that is a great quality to have. It has added even more motivation for me to learn my target languages.

Blog 8- German dialect in Texas

I thought this was an interesting video. There has been a German dialect in a part of Texas for 150 years and it's at risk of dying out. All the speakers alive now were born and raised in Texas, so even though their German is very good, they all have heavy Southern American accents in their German pronunciations. The umlauted vowel sounds, which are a huge part of the German language, are essentially non-existent in this dialect and they now replace them with English sounds. The video says this dialect started to diminish after World War I and then even more so proceeding World War II.

Blog 7- English in China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T-5Hadoct8

This video brings to light some of the failed attempts at translating English and putting it on some of the public signs in China. It shows exactly why you can't always use a direct translator because the literal translation can mean something very different in another language. I won't give any spoilers, but some of the mistakes are hilarious.