When American Lynne Murphy says "sure" to her British husband, he thinks she means "not really."
Ekegusii is spoken by about two million Kenyans but has been losing ground to Swahili and English. Now it is taught in some schools, thanks to local language activists assisted by American linguists.
You may have never heard of Frisian. But it is spoken by more than 300,000 people, and its revitalization is a model for other small, struggling languages.
What if Hamlet didn’t sound like a proper English bloke, but more like someone from the American South?
Shakespeare shouldn’t be lost on anyone, but how much should the text be changed?
Standing Rock is more than a movement for clean water rights. It's also where the Lakota language is re-inventing itself.
We know much more about bilingualism now than we did 18 years ago, when Californians voted to ban bilingual education. So what does the research tell us?
The Keres language, spoken by the Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico, is dying. When younger tribal members tried to revive it, they were blocked by elders fearful that spiritual essence of the language would be lost.
What happens when the last native speaker of a language has died? Is that language "dead" or just "sleeping?" And can it be woken up again?
Many Ktunaxa lost their native tongue when they were sent to church-run boarding schools. Now the Ktunaxa language is making a modest comeback at a local school where both First Nations and white students study it.
Listen to The World in Words' live performance at the New York Public Library, with stories on how language activists around the world are trying to revive their mother tongues.