This collection of poetry explores an immigrant woman's lived experiences, from coming out to a deeply religious mother, to idolizing the "bad boy" of the NBA, to understanding how to relate to her ever-changing Chinese-Canadian identity. A meditation on family, food, and falling in love, The Language We Were Never Taught to Speak reveals how the stories of immigrants in Canada contain both universal truths and singular nuances.

Here is an informative introduction to language: its origins in the past, its growth through history, and its present use for communication between peoples. It is at the same time a history of language, a guide to foreign tongues, and a method for learning them. It shows, through basic vocabularies, family resemblances of languages -- Teutonic, Romance, Greek -- helpful tricks of translation, key combinations of roots and phonetic patterns. It presents by common-sense methods the most helpful approach to the mastery of many languages; it condenses vocabulary to a minimum of essential words; it simplifies grammar in an entirely new way; and it teaches a language as it is actually used in everyday life.

The perfect gag gift, this humorous book helps readers navigate the world of real Low German. Scheisse! introduces readers to the fine art of cursing and basic slang to spice up their German speech. If you think you have a fairly good command of German, think again. For it’s a sure bet that Frau Schultz never taught you those nasty little guttural curses and humiliating invectives so expressive of real low German speech. But relax—here at last is the one book that can introduce you to the very worst beer-hall German. Scheisse! is an indispensable guide to off-color German colloquialisms and profanities—lascivious bedroom slang and boozy insults, jeering scatological put-downs and scurrilous ridicule. This hilarious illustrated cornucopia of creative expletives, guaranteed to vex, taunt, aggravate, and provoke as only overwrought low German can, will help you master the fine art of German verbal abuse—with triumphant one-upmanship.

Explains the meaning of French slang expressions, idioms, epithets, and colloquialisms.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • For anyone who wants to learn a foreign language, this is the method that will finally make the words stick. “A brilliant and thoroughly modern guide to learning new languages.”—Gary Marcus, cognitive psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Guitar Zero At thirty years old, Gabriel Wyner speaks six languages fluently. He didn’t learn them in school—who does? Rather, he learned them in the past few years, working on his own and practicing on the subway, using simple techniques and free online resources—and here he wants to show others what he’s discovered. Starting with pronunciation, you’ll learn how to rewire your ears and turn foreign sounds into familiar sounds. You’ll retrain your tongue to produce those sounds accurately, using tricks from opera singers and actors. Next, you’ll begin to tackle words, and connect sounds and spellings to imagery rather than translations, which will enable you to think in a foreign language. And with the help of sophisticated spaced-repetition techniques, you’ll be able to memorize hundreds of words a month in minutes every day. This is brain hacking at its most exciting, taking what we know about neuroscience and linguistics and using it to create the most efficient and enjoyable way to learn a foreign language in the spare minutes of your day.

The Japanese are known for their polite discourse and deferential demeanor, but there's another side to the language of the land of the rising sun--and every one of its biting curses, scathing slanders, and frustration-venting expressions is captured here in this priceless repertoire of "colorful" Japanese expressions. 16 line drawings.

For more than a quarter of a century, Ildefonso, a Mexican Indian, lived in total isolation, set apart from the rest of the world. He wasn't a political prisoner or a social recluse, he was simply born deaf and had never been taught even the most basic language. Susan Schaller, then a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, encountered him in a class for the deaf where she had been sent as an interpreter and where he sat isolated, since he knew no sign language. She found him obviously intelligent and sharply observant but unable to communicate, and she felt compelled to bring him to a comprehension of words. The book vividly conveys the challenge, the frustrations, and the exhilaration of opening the mind of a congenitally deaf person to the concept of language. This second edition includes a new chapter and afterword.