MSI Press Blog

  People often ask, “Do you translate into English when you’re listening to or speaking another language?” The short answer is no. Maybe I did once—back when I was still learning to trust the foreign language to carry meaning on its own. But now? No. Not even subconsciously. I know this because interpretation—real-time, oral translation—is not my strength. My brain doesn’t want to rock between two languages. It wants to stay rooted in one. And when I’m in that language, I’m all in. A potent example: years ago, I traveled with a group of U.S. Senators’ wives to the Soviet Union, serving as their liaison to the USSR government—particularly to the republic peace committees and the national women’s committee. I also helped informally as an interpreter when needed, though interpretation was never my forte. During a tour of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the group stood before a monument to World War II. The guide explained the history of the Nazi blockade of the city. I turned to...

  Research confirms what many polyglots intuitively know: there is no single path to near-native fluency. Even for the same learner, the journey can vary dramatically depending on the language, the context, and the resources available. My own experience with French and Russian illustrates this vividly. French: A Community-Fueled Glide I learned French in school, but the real advantage was my bilingual environment. Though my family remained firmly rooted in the anglophone community, I was surrounded by French-speaking stores, schools, and workplaces. That ambient exposure made supplemental study effortless—I could walk into a local shop and buy French books, which I devoured. French felt intuitive. Despite its Romance roots and English’s Germanic lineage, the historical influence of French on English created unexpected bridges. Cognates, syntax echoes, and shared idioms made the language feel familiar. My formal education reinforced this ease: a review of French grammar as the...

Psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann introduced the concept of “boundaries in the mind” to describe how permeable or rigid the divisions are between different mental processes—between thoughts and feelings, self and other, waking and dreaming, and even between cultural identities. People with  thin boundaries  are often described as open, impressionable, emotionally fluid, and highly sensitive. They tend to absorb external stimuli easily, blur distinctions between fantasy and reality, and merge with others’ experiences. These traits are often linked to creativity, empathy, and—importantly—language acquisition. By contrast,  thick boundaries  are associated with structure, clarity, and compartmentalization. Thick-boundary individuals tend to maintain strong distinctions between self and other, prefer well-defined categories, and are less emotionally permeable. They may be less prone to spontaneous absorption of new linguistic or cultural cues, and more reliant on deliberate, ...

Adult Language Learning vs Child Language Learning (Part Twp) Grammatical Competence Grammatical competence—the ability to produce structurally accurate language—is often assumed to be innate in native speakers. But in reality, it develops slowly and unevenly. In one’s first language, full control over grammar doesn’t typically emerge until around age ten. Before that, children rely on patterns and approximations. They say things like “I goed” or “She don’t like it,” not because they lack intelligence, but because they’re still internalizing the rules. True grammatical accuracy is learned—often through formal education, correction, and exposure to written language. This has profound implications for adult second-language learners. Adults are expected to produce grammatically correct sentences from the outset, yet they lack the immersive, multi-year K–12 schooling that shaped their native grammaticality. They must learn grammar the hard way: through textbooks, drills, feedback, and cons...