The Nature of Language Affects a Child's Understanding of...

It turns out that, just by the nature of the grammar of their languages, Korean- and English-speaking parents talk about the world quite differently. Korean (like Latin or French) uses an elaborate system of different verb endings to convey different meanings. As a consequence, Korean-speaking parents can, and often do, omit nouns altogether when they talk to their children. A Korean mother can say the equivalent of "moving in" when she sees the baby put a block in a cup, without saying anyth...

 The Energy Game

My father dealth a little bit with energy and used the term after I got a little bit of the idea about it. What he would have done I know, because he did in fact essentially the same thing--though not the same example of the toy dog. He would say, "It moves because the sun is shining," if he wanted to give the same lesson. I would say "No. What has that to do with the sun shining? It moved because you wound up the springs." "And why, my friend, are you able to move to wind up this spring?" "I...