I always hear, from Norwegians, Brazilians, Chinese – everyone – that English is very hard to learn.  They say it is because English is notorious for breaking all the rules.  For example: why does ‘heard’ and ‘beard’ have different vowel sounds when they have the same ending ‘-eard’?  Same with ‘great’, ‘treat’ and ‘threat’?  There [...]

Language progressively changes over time.  In theorising how a language changes, scholars look at two things – internal and external change.  Internal change relates to grammar – word patterns (morphology), sound patterns (phonetics) and meaning patterns (semantics) etc.  External change relates to influences from innovations (such as the printing press), politics and social identity (such [...]

Yes, we get In The Night Garden here: Drømmehagen.  We watch it religiously as Lilu loves to dance and mimic the characters.  My favourite character is the OCD-geriatric stone-stacker who gets around with the walker – Makka Pakka!  (We’re still trying to figure out what the circles are on his head and butt – are [...]

My understanding of languages was very minimal before I moved to Norway.  This has made it incredibly hard for me to learn Norwegian.  I had no idea where languages came from or how they developed.  As I started to learn Norwegian I found it harder than most to comprehend.  I couldn’t just take things ‘how [...]