Jumping in too quickly with ‘Oh yes, that happened to me’ can end up saturating conversation and make your friend feel they were never heard in the first place.
Aerosols are the tiny particles of liquid and material that float around in our environment. When they come from an infected person, they may be a significant source of coronavirus transmission.
The CDC now recommends that everyone wear a face covering when they go into a public place. But there’s confusion about why and if this protects the wearer, people around them or both.
It can be hard to understand a non-native speaker of your own language. But conversation is a two-way street and linguists are figuring out how native listeners can improve their half of the interaction.
No longer do we need to talk with shop assistants, receptionists, bus drivers or even coworkers, we simply engage with a screen to communicate whatever it is we want to say.
In the space of a few short years, deaf Nicaraguan school children created their own language. This example may give us a clue about how spoken language developed over thousands of years.
The internet has revolutionised communication, but voice calls are declining in some demographics. And that means we may be losing out on a powerful part of what connects us to each other.