Word of Mouth with Colleen Ross

Singing to your baby can help fast track language development. Even though infants don't understand the words, caregivers can help them buy into language, through song.

Spring has finally sprung! Oh, the cliché. They’re universally panned for being meaningless, overused and uninspired. But with everybody and his dog publicizing their thoughts, faster, clichés are impossible to avoid. So it’s about how to manage them.

Spring has officially sprung in Canada. Clichés like that are universally panned for being meaningless, overused and uninspired. But with everybody and his dog publicizing their thoughts, faster, clichés are impossible to avoid. Colleen Ross tells us that

For a dead language, Latin has taken on a life of its own. Pope Benedict boosted its profile when he retired, adding to its recent popularity in TV, film and books.But Latin doesn’t just allow us to access other worlds, it can help improve our English.

Going for gold! With the Sochi Winter Olympics approaching, we'll be hearing more Olympic language. Indeed, sports terms pervade our everyday speech. And while they can help connect people, in our increasingly diverse society, they can also alienate.

Prepositions are powerful little words, but they're also perplexing. Their meaning and placement can be hard to explain, and their usage changes over time. The 200th anniversary of the 1st edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales inspired this prepositional tale.

The 2012 U.S. presidential candidates spent months posturing and pontificating on the campaign trail. But what are they actually saying? One analyst uses the cool calculations of math to cut through the heated rhetoric of politics for the real message.

A successful brand name that rolls off the tongue can mean big bucks. Think about big household names like Google, Nike, Starbucks, Lulu Lemon...even Lady Gaga. Everyone wants a bang-up name. But one company is leading the charge...and it's relying on a secret weapon. And linguistics helps explain why some names have more panache than others.

You may be struck by the number of words we say that, for all intents and purposes, we don't need. Take "added bonus" or "final conclusion" or the recent U.S. soccer victory against Italy for the "first time ever". The extra words we tuck into our speech are often redundant. And they can muddy what we're trying to say. But wait! It turns out those those extra words are an essential part of our language.

Spelling errors are all around us...from signs to posters to menus. Some experts say we're making more mistakes than ever, thanks to texting, outsourced editing, and the decline of reading and writing in schools. But in this abbreviated, punctuation-challenged, acronym-littered world, it seems people DO still care about spelling mistakes. Especially in public spaces.

For many Canadians dream of learning a new language. And while some people swim masterfully through foreign grammar and vocabulary to distant lands, others – perhaps yourself - flail around like a fish on a dock. But polyglots -- people who speak multiple languages -- can actually help the rest of us improve our language learning.

Texts, tweets, and technological advancements are making communication ever faster. And don't forget the 24-hour news cycle that bombards us with information around the clock. Yes, the world is definitely speeding up. And it's causing many of us to speak faster, just to keep up. But as language speeds up, it turns out that our comprehension is slowing down.