"What letter does the word bee start with? If you said "B" you're right--in English! But in many, many languages, it actually starts with A. Bee is An¿± in Igbo, Aamoo in Ojibwe, Abelha in Portugese. And Ar♯ł in Turkish. Come and explore the gorgeous variations in the ways we talk about familiar things." --book jacket.

When Dat starts school in a country where he does not speak the language, everything around him sound like gibberish until a new friend helps him make sense of his new world.

"With more than 6,000 languages spoken around the world, it's no wonder that linguistics, the study of language, has a reputation for being complex and inaccessible. But here's a secret: There's a lot that's quirky and intriguing about how human language works--and much of it is downright fun to learn about. Every day, linguists ponder and try to solve some of the most intriguing scientific, historical, and sociological puzzles behind the inner workings...

"The time of our immortality is at hand. An undeciphered language in Crete. A rash of mysterious disappearances, from Bolivia to Japan. An ancient warning at the ruins of Babel. And a new spiritual leader, who claims that human history as we understand it is about to come to an end. Seventeen-year-old Daniel Calder's world falls apart when a freak accident brings personal tragedy--and he discovers there's a link between the accident and a wildly successful...

When Max cuts out words from magazines and newspapers, collecting them the way his brothers collect stamps and coins, they all learn about words, sentences, and storytelling.

Presents lectures (each 30 minutes in length) by John McWhorter, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, based on his courses in Linguistics.

Filled with solid information and good advice, this program defines the rules for using the semicolon, the colon, and the dash, offering clear-cut caveats against misuse and overuse along the way. Litmus tests such as the "furthermore" test and the "and here it is" test make it easy to tell when to utilize these punctuation marks, while Thai food, spaghetti sauce, and even oatmeal with paprika spice up the numerous examples.

When should the red pen be wielded to the hilt, and when should writers and readers simply agree to disagree? Part one of this program deals with three unequivocal errors-sentence fragments, comma splices, and run-on sentences-and three major enemies of clarity-tense shifts, vague pronoun references, and faulty parallels. Contraction/possessive pronoun confusion is also sorted out. In part two, syntactical errors that many no longer consider unacceptable...