American English

• But that’s OK, because everyone already walks around with a dictionary – not the one on your phone, but the one in your head.
• Just like a physical dictionary, your mental dictionary contains information about words.
• Language is part of what makes humans special, and I believe everyone deserves the chance to use their words with others.

Your mental dictionary

• While a physical dictionary is helpful for shared knowledge, your personal mental dictionary is customized based on your individual experiences.
• What words are in my mental dictionary might overlap with the mental dictionary of someone else who also speaks the same language, but there will also be a lot of differences between the content of our dictionaries.
• You add words to your mental dictionary through your educational, occupational, cultural and other life experiences.
• By now, you might be envisioning your mental dictionary as a book with pages of words in alphabetical order you can flip through as needed.

Using your mental dictionary

• One reason why your mental dictionary can’t be like a physical dictionary is that it is dynamic and quickly accessed.
• In one study, researchers mapped the time course of word retrieval among 24 college students by recording their brain activity while they named pictures.
• It’s the feeling when you know what word you want to use but are unable to find it in that moment.
• One proposed reason for this increase is that they’re due to an age-related disruption in the ability to turn on the right sounds needed to say the selected word.

• This is commonly seen in aphasia, a language disorder that often occurs after injury to the language centers of the brain, such as stroke, or neurodegeneration, such as dementia.
• There are also treatments like phonomotor treatment that focus on strengthening the selection and production of speech sounds needed for word production.
• Remember that the words you use and the mental dictionary you have are part of what make you and your voice unique.

Nichol Castro 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 academic appointment.

• Today, in partnership with UNCF, the investment grows—with an additional $2 million in unrestricted funding to Morehouse College and Hampton University.
• “We are thrilled to partner with UNCF to continue Google’s ongoing commitment to invest in education pillars like Morehouse College and Hampton University.
• Google’s $1 million investment to Hampton University will enable the university to expand pathways and opportunities by facilitating needed infrastructure and classroom technology upgrades.
• Students at both Morehouse and NC A&T will be able to network with Google employees and explore mentorships and career opportunities through the partnership.

• The winning word from Cambridge Dictionary was searched for nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May, when it was an answer in the word game Wordle, to become the dictionarys highest-spiking word of the year.
• Cambridge Dictionary, with its commitment to providing trusted guidance on the use of both British and American English words, was ideally positioned to settle debates.
• In a typical year, spikes in searches of the Cambridge Dictionary are related to current affairs.
• In 2022, by contrast, the spikes for five-letter Wordle words created a new category of contenders for Word of the Year.

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