Cunning Linguist
Because this is intellectual and historical. And also a bit 12-year-old-giggly.
http://solongasitswords.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/on-the-origin-of-fuck/
Crossing Cultures
Wow I sooooo get this! For me it wasn’t in writing, but in speaking….when I first started speaking German I felt like my personality had been completely removed and replaced by a tattered grammar book. Slowly I’ve managed to rebuild it again, but I have to say, it’s still not the same complete “me” that I am in English.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/born-again-in-a-second-language/
This post via BoingBoing has everything I could want in one article — a discussion of linguistic and cultural differences between German and English, a sprinkling of medieval history, and beer:
Maybe I’m just glad to justify all my efforts to learn another language. Or maybe I’m glad to have scientific backing for my own observations I’ve written about in the Adventures in German series. Either way, this article totally confirms my own experience.
The findings suggest that after learning a second language, people never look at words the same way again.
“The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages” (Scientific American)