“Brene Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share.”

I love TED-talks, and watch several of them per week. This one hits close to home.

“Alexander Arguelles presents a series of videos to provide introductory overviews of the languages of the world. Working diachronically through various language families in turn, he demonstrates how to identify each language, translates a text sample to show how it works, and discusses its genetic affiliation and cultural context. For further information about the series, please refer to http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/“

I came across this video by Alexander Arguelles, explaining Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk – the two written languages in Norway. Whenever I try to explain to non-Scandinavian people who Norway have two written languages (“Why don’t you just decide on one?”), and how Scandinavian people understand each other (“So are the differences about as big as German and French?”) – I am not sure just how to explain it – so from now on I think I will refer them to this video.

I keep on being fascinated by polyglots. I wish I knew more languages, but I am not the fastest language learner. I do hope I can continue learning languages as a hobby throughout my life. If I could have one language “for free” – a language I just knew without having to work for it, I would choose French. I probably should choose a language from a completely different language group, like Chinese, Finnish or Arabic, but I have this secret love for French, even though I do not speak a single word of it yet.

If you could have one language “for free” – which one would you choose?