Every language has its own character, or “spirit.” Part of learning to speak a second language fluently is developing a sense of the ways it tends to form words, combine words into phrases and sentences, and express ideas. Speaking a language like Korean, for example, in which the main verb usually comes at the end of a clause, is a very different experience from speaking a language like English, in which the main verb is more comfortable resting somewhere in the middle of the clause. Similarly, someone who is used to speaking English, a language in which major grammatical relations like Subject and Direct Object are expressed by the order of words, must reset their cognitive framework in order to speak Russian, a language in which grammatical relations are mostly expressed by word endings. These and many other features pertain to the typological characteristics of a language, i.e., what “type” of language it is according to various features of form, meaning, and use. Understanding what type of language English is, especially as it compares to one's mother tongue, or the mother tongues of one's students or clients, can be very useful to any English language professional (see Ramat 2002 for several case studies).