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Americans have long debated whether the U.S. should have an official state language. The issue has been back in the spotlight in recent days since Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said, "There are other states with more than one language, like Hawaii, but to be a state of the United States, English must be the principal language." However, recent studies show that switching between languages may actually make you smarter. 

At present, there are nearly 7,000 languages being spoken worldwide. However, due to ageing populations and globalization's English-only emphasis, a language dies out every 14 days. At this rate, nearly half the world's languages will vanish in 100 years. Very often, these languages are lost without any record: no clues about pronunciation, let alone grammar or vocabulary. 

Merriam-Webster has chosen "pragmatic" as their word of the year. The dictionary saw a spike in searches for the word in the run-up to the debt ceiling negotiations and again during deficit negotiations this Fall.

»» What do you think of the decision? What would be your word of 2011? Post it below and tell us why! Or tweet us @brianlehrer using the tag #blword.

Here's something you should know about yourself. Vowels control your brain.

Born in St. Kitts and brought up in the UK, Caryl Phillips has written about and explored the experience of migration for more than 30 years through his novels, plays, and essays. In Color Me English: Thought About Migrations and Belonging Before and After 9/11 he reflects on the shifting notions of race, culture, and belonging before and after the September 11 attacks.

Perhaps this has happened to you before. You’ve said something that someone misunderstood — with or without a translator. Due to culture, language, or even gender, a statement like "I appreciate your frankness" comes across as "I enjoy your rudeness." The new play, "Chinglish" pays tribute to, and pokes fun at, these moments when something gets lost in translation. The play is in both Mandarin and English. And because the show has subtitles similar to those at the opera, the audience is fully in on all the jokes, even when the mono-lingual characters are not. 

Scientists have found that babies can become fluent in foreign languages at an extremely fast rate; one that begins to slow down by their first birthday. What is it about the make-up of their brains as newborns that gives them this ability? Could adults train their brains to be more like the brains of babies?

Ever dreamed about your name living on forever? Robert and Adam Cole put together this wildly charming video about eponyms.

Born in St. Kitts and brought up in the UK, Caryl Phillips has written about and explored the experience of migration for more than 30 years through his novels, plays, and essays. In Color Me English: Thought About Migrations and Belonging Before and After 9/11 he reflects on the shifting notions of race, culture, and belonging before and after the September 11 attacks.

People in 2011 have more ways to communicate now than ever before, and how we communicate says a lot about who we are. We tweet, we text, we chat online. And every word has a particular significance — maybe even more than we often realize.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. Linguist and author of Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, David Crystal, discusses its impact on the English language over the last four centuries.

Back by popular demand, here's another installment of Mike Vuolo's "Lexicon Valley." In February 2010, the last living speaker of Boa died, and with her, the logic, culture, and history of the ancient people. Mike and Bob discuss the death of languages and why their passing matters.

English is English, right? Not so, according to Matthew Engel of The Guardian. Last week, he wrote an article for the BBC about the most offensive “Americanisms” — words or phrases that Americans have distorted over time. The list includes "faze," "elevator," and "rookies." The Guardian then invited readers to send in their own most-hated Americanisms. 

Diane Ackerman talks about her husband, Paul West’s, stroke and long recovery. He was afflicted with aphasia—loss of language—and Diane, frustrated with traditional therapies, relied on her scientific understanding of language and the brain to guide Paul back to the world of words. Her book One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing is an account of stroke, aphasia, and recovery, as well as a love story.

Diane Ackerman talks about her husband, Paul West’s, stroke and long recovery. He was afflicted with aphasia—loss of language—and Diane, frustrated with traditional therapies, relied on her scientific understanding of language and the brain to guide Paul back to the world of words. Her book One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing is an account of stroke, aphasia, and recovery, as well a love story.

Ben Zimmer, Executive Producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com is putting John and Celeste to the test by asking them to identify the real definition of words with truly American origins. Could you identify absquatulate, callithump and copacetic? If so, you might do well on producer Kristen Meinzer's quiz.

Here are the words with which Ben Zimmer tried to stump the hosts: absquatulate, callithump, copacetic, hornswoggle, lagniappe, rumbustious. Do you know what they mean?

205 years ago, a lawyer-turned-textbook writer-turned-newspaper-editor published the first American English dictionary. It was 1806, and the title was “A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.” That man’s name was Noah Webster. And today, his name is synonymous with the word “dictionary” in the U.S. Joshua Kendall is the author of a new biography on Webster called: “The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture.” Joshua joins us from our partner, the WGBH, in Boston.

Was Noah Webster an unheralded founding father? That's what the author of a new book about the man who gave his name to the first ever American dictionary. In fact, Webster added words that had not been in any British dictionary that came before his. We're testing your knowledge of these Webster words (the old ones and the new ones) with a quiz. See how well you do.

From English teachers to grammar grouches, people have been complaining for generations that the English language is going down the drain. As they see it, our vocabularies are shrinking, our grammar is abysmal, and we’ve all but forgotten about how to punctuate (?!). Carol Shaffer is one of those grammar grouches. A former teacher, she’s also the founder of the website Grammarpolice.com, which has been pointing out language usage errors for fifteen years. Robert Lane Greene has a different perspective. The author of the new book, “You Are What You Speak,” he thinks what some people see as errors are in fact evolution.

Tomorrow, we'll talk to Robert Lane Greene, who wrote a book about the way we speak and what that says about our identities. We want to hear about your experiences. Tell us about a time when the way you speak has gotten in the way for you? You can use our iPhone app to record your answer or you can just respond here.

We’ll play a selection on the air and post them online. If you can snap a photo as well, all the better.

Thanks!