MSI Press Blog

   This excerpt continues last week's post. Really Getting into It In high school and college, I joined the debate team. Debate taught me how to use language with purpose—how to wield subtleties, double entendres, logic, and evidence to persuade. That training sharpened my awareness of how language functions beyond vocabulary lists and grammar charts. When I later began learning foreign languages, I instinctively looked for those same tools of persuasion and nuance. Speech competitions reinforced this skill even further. Standing before an audience, I learned how rhythm, tone, and word choice could sway listeners. Political speeches—whether for student council elections (which I won) or workshops I conducted later—added another layer of practical application. Each of these experiences deepened my understanding of English as a system of communication, and I carried that awareness into my study of other languages. Getting Into It Even More My academic path added anothe...

  When I think about English as my first language, I don’t just think of grammar lessons or vocabulary lists. I think of the way we actually spoke. Every family, every region, every community has its own idiolect—the personal flavor of speech—and its own dialect, shaped by geography and culture. Growing up in New England, I learned early that the way we spoke wasn’t always the way we were expected to write. In school, teachers corrected our spelling and word order, guiding us toward Standard English. But at home and in the community, we kept our own rhythms and sounds. We didn’t “park our car in Harvard Yard.” We “pahked owah cah in Hahvid Yahd.” That distinction mattered. In writing, dialects and idiolects were often erased, replaced by the standard language that carried authority in textbooks, exams, and professional life. Yet in speech, they remained alive, carrying identity, humor, and belonging. My dialect was a reminder that language is not just rules—it is culture, heritag...

  English was my first language, the one I absorbed without effort as a child. It was the language of my family, my community, and my earliest immersion in the world. I didn’t study it at first; I lived inside it. Every year, my understanding deepened as I listened, spoke, and eventually read and wrote. When I entered school, English became not just the language I spoke but the subject I studied. Teachers corrected my spelling, my grammar, and my word order. I learned that sentences had structure, that verbs carried tense, and that word placement could change meaning entirely. Grammar became a framework I could lean on, even if I didn’t realize at the time how valuable it would be later. That foundation in English proved indispensable when I began learning other languages. With Germanic languages, I found familiar ground in the shared grammar framework. With Romance languages, the gift of 1066—the Norman Conquest—was still alive in English. So many words had already crossed i...