This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. My mother used to ...

No one prepared me for the heartbreak of losing my first language. It doesn’t feel like the sudden, sharp pain of losing someone you love, but rather a dull ache that builds slowly until it becomes a ...

Although I now speak and think in English, my first words were not in this language. I was raised by a village of relatives; as a result, I grew up speaking in a patchwork of Cantonese, Mandarin and ...

Jill Boggs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

I’ve always wanted to be fluent in multiple languages, but at 28 years old with just English under my belt, I think I’m falling behind on my polyglot dream. It’s partly my fault — I studied French in ...