There are some differences between American English and British English. Some differences are quite interesting.

When my friend Lily from London used the word “larder”， I didn't know what it meant. Realizing I didn't follow her, she used another word. I finally knew she wanted to find something to keep some food. The next word came up when we were planning a lunch date. She jotted down the date and time in her diary, while I marked my calendar（日历）. If she called me on the phone, she would ring me up. But if the line was busy, she would say the line was engaged.

Most times, I can know what Lily means. Last week, she regretted sending her boys to watch an early morning tennis game without their fleeces. I thought that she meant without their jackets or something like those. Other times, we have to ask each other. She recently told me a funny tale about a woman who was pissed. I wondered what had made the lady angry. It turns out that pissed means drunk.

Here is one more example. My British friend Jane was filling out a ticket at the grocery store recently. She asked the young man if he had a rubber. When she noticed he didn't follow her, she quickly asked for an eraser, which, in England, is often called a rubber.

In order to communicate well with the British, we Americans should learn some words that the British use differently. And I think people who learn English as a second language should also realize that there are differences between American English and British English.

There are thousands of languages in the world. But which language is the oldest? Experts use different methods to find out the age of a language.

Finding the oldest language is a challenging task, according to Danny Hieber, an expert in the study of endangered languages. “If we think that most languages can date back to an original human language, all languages are equally old,” Hieber said. However, it’s impossible to find out such language —the direct ancestor of every language in the world. Accordingly, some experts believe that the “oldest language” should belong to one with a well-established written record.

Many of the earliest recorded examples of writing come from languages that used cuneiform script (楔形文字). Among these languages are Sumerian and Akkadian, both dating back at least 4,600 years. Experts have also found Egyptian hieroglyphs that date to around the same historical period. These hieroglyphs, which can be translated into “He has united the Two Lands for his son, Dual King Peribsen,” are considered the earliest complete sentence ever discovered.

Experts generally agree that Sumerian, Akkadian and Egyptian are the oldest languages with a clear written record. All three are extinct, meaning that they are no longer used and don’t have any living followers which can carry the language to the next generation.

As for the oldest language that is still spoken, several competitors appear. Hebrew and Arabic stand out among such languages for having timelines that experts can reasonably find, according to Hieber. Although these earliest written languages only date back around 3,000 years, Hieber said, “both of them belong to the Afroasiatic language family, whose roots date back to 18, 000 to 8,000 B. C. E. , or about 20,000 to 10,000 years ago.” Even with this wide period of time, it is widely accepted that Afroasiatic is the oldest language family. But the exact point in time when Hebrew and Arabic separated from other Afroasiatic languages is heavily debated among experts.

Everyone wants to hold an audience’s attention. So do Media companies. The reason is simple: The further down a news story readers read, the more advertising income from the article creates: the longer audiences spend watching videos, the higher the rate brands can command. And the more a piece of content holds attention, the more customers learn about the product, service, or problems discussed.

Why do some articles encourage readers to keep reading, while others make them lose interest after just a few sentences? And how does the content (i.e. the language used) shape whether audiences stay engaged?

It is important to differ long-time attention from other types of engagement (参与). One way of measuring engagement is clicks, views, or others that measure how many people were engaged in a piece of content. As a researcher Berger explains, “While the preceding (之前的) research has examined how headlines or advertisements attract attention, we wish to explore how the content is able to hold a reader’s attention. Focusing on views and clicks does not necessarily lead to content being focused.”

Companies such as YouTube and Facebook use measures like “standing time”, or how long users spend reading a piece of content, to better measure engagement, judge relevance (相关性), and improve rankings and recommendations. An eye-catching headline might lead readers to click on a link, for example, but once they open the article, how much of it do they actually read? Do they stop after the first few sentences? Do they continue for most of the article? Holding attention refers to whether content keeps the attracted attention, making audiences engaged.

“Our study shows that language that is easier to understand encourages continued reading, as does language that brings emotion,” says Moe, another researcher. But not all emotional language has the same effect. “That is, language that is worrying, exciting, and hopeful encourages reading while language that makes you feel down discourages it,” adds Schweidel, a third researcher.