How First Contact With Whale Civilization Could Unfold
If we can learn to speak their language, what should we say?
language-linguistics
Beyond dogwhistles – racists have a new rhetorical trick
How are so many politicians today able to get away with overtly racist utterances? By using rhetorical ‘figleaves’
A new look at our linguistic roots
Linguists and archaeologists have argued for decades about where, and when, the first Indo-European languages were spoken, and what kind of lives those first speakers led. A controversial new analytic technique offers a fresh answer.
People Have Very Different Understandings of Even the Simplest Words
Distinctive meanings for a word like “risk” can have a big impact on public messaging, especially when it comes to issues like climate change
History
How different languages laugh online
Laughter is universal, but lol is not.
People Who Speak Backward Reveal the Brain’s Endless Ability to Play with L
Argentine researchers studied a regional slang that reverses the order of word syllables or letters. Their findings give insight into our natural ability to engage in wordplay
Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World’s Oldest Continuously Run Lib
The centuries-old texts were erased, and then written over, by monks at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt
The fascinating evolution of typing Chinese characters
From Wubi to Zhineng ABC, here are the different ways Chinese people have typed their language over the years.
Hacker News
Just a few days ago I saw an amazing video about Kurt Quinn, a man who can talk backwards. When I say backwards, I don’t mean that he reverses the order of the words in a sentence, but he act…
mi kama sona e toki pona or something
So I stumbled a few weeks ago on this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4y7tf3VJAM] about the world's smallest conlang and I've been thinking about it ever since. [https://staging.cohostcdn.org/attachment/91c54129-9425-4695-bd68-6f65d83ae793/maxresdefault.jpeg]…
What is the secret to an evocative smell description?
Many languages have very few odour-related words, so conveying what a scent is like requires knowing your audience
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class
Alex Danco's Newsletter, Season 3, Episode 2
Can You Decode an Alien Message?
An artist, a programmer and a scientist have created a simulation of extraterrestrial communication to test Earthlings’ ability to understand it
5 Linguistic Illusions That Will Make You Go “Wait, What?”
Optical illusions have long captured our imagination, but what about linguistic illusions? A linguistic illusion is a phenomenon in which your judgment or under
Chinese Tech Terms Explained In English | 16x Engineer
Learn about five Chinese tech terms: Huidu, Lunzi, Chendian, Dapan, and Maidian, frequently used in companies like Tencent and ByteDance.
WhatsApp voice notes are revolutionizing farming in Senegal
For farmers in Senegal who struggle to read or write, sending voice notes has unlocked a new world of collaboration across the industry.
The Rarest Sounds Across All Human Languages: Learn What They Are, and How
When first we start learning a new foreign language, any number of its elements rise up to frustrate us, even to dissuade us from going any further: the mountain of vocabulary to be acquired, the grammar in which to orient ourselves, the details of pronunciation to get our…
Why are some sounds funny?
To English speakers, the word, “peanut” isn’t especially funny. But “peanut” in Serbian, “kikiriki” is widely considered by Serbs to be the funniest word in their language. This raises the question of why people laugh at some words (“poop”) but not at others (“treadmill”). Does…
The unsolved mystery of Europe’s oldest language
For linguists, the uniqueness of the Basque language is an unsolved mystery. For native speakers, long oppressed, it's a source of pride.
How our brains cope with speaking more than one language
Speaking a second or even a third language can bring obvious advantages, but occasionally the words, grammar and even accents can get mixed up.
Why French Sounds So Unlike Spanish, Italian & Other Romance Languages, Eve
French is known as the language of romance, a reputation that, whatever cultural support it enjoys, would be difficult to defend on purely linguistic grounds.
Why Do We Gesture When We Talk?
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We all know people who talk with their hands. Turns out there’s quite a bit of research around the relationship between language and gestures.
What the Heck is Cuneiform, Anyway?
The writing system is 6,000 years old, but its influence is still felt today
The Interesting Etymologies of 71 Everyday Words
Here’s (at least) one interesting way station each of these common words made on its journey to the present day.
People Differ Widely in Their Understanding of Even a Simple Concept Such as the Word 'Penguin'
We think about what a penguin is like in dozens of different ways—one reason why we often talk past each other
The Magic of Knowing When to Use Concrete vs. Abstract Language - By Jonah Berger - Behavioral Scientist
When trying to make language either more concrete or more abstract, one helpful approach is to focus on either the how or the why.
New Mexico Is Losing a Form of Spanish Spoken Nowhere Else on Earth
A dialect from the state’s earliest Spanish-speaking settlers has endured for over 400 years in the state’s remote mountain villages. But its time may be running out.
Ten Words That Describe Human Emotions That We Might Have Difficulty Expres
Sometimes, we feel things that we can’t put into words. We can certainly describe things through paragraphs, but finding the exact word to describe our emotions can be limited. It turns out that aside from the common words we used to talk about how we feel, there are other…
Where Did Writing Come From?
The rise, fall, and rediscovery of cuneiform
Gaslighting, Narcissist, and More Psychology Terms You're Misusing
Mental-health experts say we often use psychology terms incorrectly—and that's a problem
3 Rhetorical Techniques to Increase Your Impact
Technological advances in natural language processing, computational linguistics, and machine learning, combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversations, have revolutionized our ability to analyze language, yielding unprecedented insights. Think…
Meet the Man Collecting Fading Place Names
What do we lose when we forget about locations like "Troll's Cave" and "Window Claw"?
The Surprising Reason Europe Came Together Against Putin
A major advance in translation technology means that Ukrainians can inform and debunk in real time. The world hasn’t seen a weapon quite like it before.
The Grammarphobia Blog: Why the ‘w’ is called a ‘double u’
The 23rd letter of the English alphabet is called a “double u” because it was originally written that way in Old English.
US cancer patient developed 'uncontrollable' Irish accent - BBC News
Despite never having been to Ireland, the North Carolina man spoke with a "brogue" until his death, say researchers.
Madeline Kripke Owned 20,000 Books, Some of Them Very Bawdy
She had perhaps the largest personal dictionary collection in the world. It is certainly the most titillating.
9 viral phrases that explain China’s work culture
From “lie flat” to “let it rot,” common terms have taken on new meaning in recent years.
Foreign languages: How to memorise vocabulary
When trying to learn a foreign language, most of us have the same complaint:
Symbols lost from our alphabet over time
17K votes, 728 comments. 5.5M subscribers in the coolguides community. Picture based reference guides for anything and everything. If it seems like…
Dialect detective: Chinese woman helps find hundreds of missing people nati
Hundreds of mainland Chinese families have been reunited with missing relatives thanks to the help of a Chinese woman who has taught herself more than 10 of the country’s myriad of dialects.
The All-Too Complicated History of Simplified Chinese
Often portrayed as the result of a revolutionary pro-literacy movement, many “simplified” characters have existed for hundreds of years.
The Linguistics of Swearing Explain Why We Substitute Darn for Damn
Languages from Hindi to Korean tone down swear words by inserting gentler consonants into speech. Here’s how “Let’s go Brandon” got started
What Humans Can Learn From The Language Of Honeybees
Advanced technologies like A.I. are enabling scientists to learn that the world is full of intelligent creatures with sophisticated languages, like honeybees. What might they tell us?
AI Homework – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
The first obvious casualty of large language models is homework: the real training for everyone, though, and the best way to leverage AI, will be in verifying and editing information.
Neurolinguistics
An accessible introduction to the study of language in the brain, covering language processing, language acquisition, literacy, and language disorders.Neurol...
'Arrival' Is a Timely Film About Aliens and Empathy
The movie's screenwriter talks about the creation of the story's extraterrestrial language and the importance of communication.
5 Linguistics Courses for NLP Practitioners
This collection of 5 courses is intended to help NLP practitioners or hopefuls acquire some of their lacking linguistics knowledge.
Everybody in Almost Every Language Says “Huh”? HUH?!
What makes this utterance the “universal word”?
The weird way language affects our sense of time and space
The languages we speak can have a surprising impact on the way we think about the world and even how we move through it.