For a while now, I have been contemplating my attitude towards the popular non-fiction bestseller  Wij zijn ons brein  (translated: we are our brain) by Dutch neurologist Dr. Dick Swaab.  Among other things, he has done extensive and sometimes controversial research on neurological gender differences and homosexuality, and is currently studying Alzheimer's disease. As I've understood it, this book describes the longitudinal developments in the brain, starting with conception and ending with death. Although until recently I hadn’t given it much active thought, in the peripheries of my mind I always retained a certain reluctance to actually pick up and read his book. Perhaps the root of this disinterest lay in a majorly time consuming project on the neurological and philosophical aspects of human consciousness, which consumed a large part of my last semester as an undergraduate. Having had to read a lot of ‘brain’ literature for this course, I guess I simply did...

What is it about summer and reading (and the inevitable combination: summer reading) that gets me thinking about languages and the learning thereof? I guess it makes me think of traveling, and the books I want to read before summer ends, or it could be that I simply have the time to let my mind wander and think back to a long time ago when my romance with languages first began. Once upon a time nearly twenty years ago today, I rang the next door neighbor’s doorbell, and thus encountered my best-friend-to-be Nora for the very first time. Although we spoke not a word in common (I babbled away in English and Dutch, she made strange noises in Serbo-Croatian and Hungarian), we allegedly fell into each other’s arms and have been best friends (practically sisters) ever since. And in perfect harmony (ha!) we lived happily ever after (or something stupid like that…) Fairy tales and parent’s stories aside, this early encounter with overcoming language barriers arguably shaped many of my futur...