When her child refuses to take off his Halloween costume because he’s decided that he’s a Mongolian nomad, an ESL teacher in Portland finds herself stuck in an absurd conflict that further strains her suffering marriage.

A Laotian six-year-old, whose parents can't read English, struggles in school.

A daughter and a mother wonder what the lesson of their story is.

An old linguistics researcher is ousted from his university position on the frontier of a small island he acculturated. Upon his return home, he begins to believe that he and his life's work are marginal.

In Spain during the Francoist dictatorship, a girl's father insists that their family will never speak Spanish again in favor of Basque — a small act of political defiance that slowly changes their lives, until they can never go back.

A linguist is called to investigate robots that seem to have created their own language.

An innocent introductory French course called la Muerte teaches vocabulary, by describing a typical farm until the farmer disappears.

A Los Angeles speech pathologist is assigned to the case of a presumably mentally-ill woman who speaks in gibberish that turns out to be Old English. When the woman disappears, deciphering her mysterious writing leads the pathologist to wonder if she has stumbled across a time traveler.

A man in charge of the instructors who teach English is proud of his college's football team. However, when one of the football players can't play because of a failing grade in an English class, the man tries to convince the professor to change the footballer's grade.

A high school English teacher copes with his disappointing reality by imagining a secret life for himself at a distinguished university campus - but he is shocked and furious when one of the students that he looks down upon has a similar method of escapism.