Why Are Letters Shaped the Way They Are?

Linguistic games and research are revealing a hidden connection between what words look and sound like, and what they mean.

The Unusual Language That Linguists Thought Couldn’t Exist

In most languages, sounds can be re-arranged into any number of combinations. Not so in Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language.Brian Goodman via Shutterstock Languages, like human bodies, come in a variety of shapes—but only to a point. Just as people don’t sprout multiple heads…

In the beginning was the word, and the word was embodied | Aeon Essays

A special class of vivid, textural words defies linguistic theory: could ‘ideophones’ unlock the secrets of humans’ first utterances?

Some Rules of Language are Wired in the Brain

In fascinating study involving synesthesia, people make good guesses at meanings of foreign words

An ancient language has defied decryption for 100 years. Can AI crack the c

Machine learning can translate between two known languages, but could it ever decipher those that remain a mystery to us?

Indus

(PDF) Text is not the enemy: How illiterates' use their mobile phones

PDF | Despite 800 million illiterate people worldwide little research has aimed at understanding how they use and appropriate mobile phones. We... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

https://volument.com/blog/minimalism-the-most-undervalued-development-skill

A very short introduction to the undeciphered Aegean writing systems

Every so often a news article will make the rounds of the internet – or, for that matter, a paper will be published in an academic journal – presenting a new ‘decipherment’ …

The language rules we know – but don’t know we know

Mark Forsyth tasted internet fame this week when a passage from a book he wrote went viral. He explains more language secrets that native speakers know without knowing.

Why Japanese Web Design Is So… Different

When 0748 Means “Go Die": The Secret Messages Inside Chinese URLs

URLs like 4008-517-517.com mean a lot more than they appear.

10 Tips for Building a Visual Language

A visual language is just like any other form of communication. Elements from color to style to type of photos or illustrations establish what a brand or company is. A visual language includes both the written and spoken elements of a website or brand, as well as every design…

How the Alien Languages in Foundation Were Created

“It was a matter of really reading between the lines of the script.”

In Praise of Bad Taste

Rax King’s ode to cringeworthy culture – Lindsay Zoladz

Everyday Sayings Explained

The origins, meaning, and authors behind 50 popular phrases and sayings.

To learn Klingon or Esperanto: What invented languages can teach us

NuqneH! Saluton! A linguistic anthropologist (and creator of the Kryptonian language, among others) studies the people who invent new tongues.

From respair to cacklefart – the joy of reclaiming long-lost positive words | Susie Dent

We have been bombarded with negativity recently; but the English language is a treasure trove of joyous vocabulary, says Susie Dent, a lexicographer and etymologist

The Lost Lingo of New York City’s Soda Jerks

Anyone for a "glob"?

The Invention of Chinese | History Today

7 Powerful Habits of People With High Emotional Intelligence

You don’t get where you want to be without practice. Here’s how and what to practice.

Language Is the Scaffold of the Mind

Once we acquire language, we can live without it.

How the Rosetta Stone Yielded Its Secrets

The quest to decode hieroglyphic writing.

Why more people are saying 'y'all' - BBC Worklife

The distinctive Americanism is making its way across the world and becoming an unlikely favourite catch-all term.

Fifty Percent of Facebook Messenger's Total Voice Traffic Comes from Cambod

In 2018, the team at Facebook had a puzzle on their hands. Cambodian users accounted for nearly 50% of all global traffic for Messenger's voice function, but no one at the company knew why, according to documents released by whistleblower Frances Haugen. From a report: One…

How to Memorize the Un-Memorizable

Although I’ve successfully learned the language of mathematics, it has always frustrated me that I couldn’t master those more unpredictable languages like French or Russian that I’d tried to learn …

How to Revive a Dead Language - JSTOR Daily

Although it was the language of sacred texts and ritual, modern Hebrew wasn't spoken in conversation till the late nineteenth century.

Are We on the Verge of Chatting with Whales? | Hakai Magazine

An ambitious project is attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with artificial intelligence, then talk back to them.

The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages | The New Yorker

What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?

The hand gestures that last longer than spoken languages

Using hand gestures might feel like an intuitive way to communicate across language barriers, but their meaning can change, and there are few universal signs that everyone agrees on.

Tips From a Sign Language Interpreter for Overcoming Language Barriers

An ASL interpreter shares some travel-friendly tips and techniques that she’s learned from the Deaf community, the real masters of cross-cultural communication.

What Did Ancient Languages Sound Like?

NICHOLAS SWIFT Can we really hear the ancients speak?

I left high school with no foreign language skills. Now I’m fluent in five

There I was, a clumsy, decaf-drinking 25-year-old British man in a swanky Buenos Aires radio station, being ridiculed by Viggo Mortensen. But even as he laid into me — his jokes later leading to my…

How to Spot a Cult

According to Amanda Montell’s new book, “Cultish,” the jargon and technical language of fanaticism is surprisingly common.

Why the French rarely say 'I love you'

It likely explains why the French have the reputation of being so demonstrative about love – because if you can't really say it, you have to show it.

10 Latin phrases people pretend to understand

Knowing some Latin has its advantages

Fairy Tales Could Be Older Than You Ever Imagined

Jack may have been climbing that beanstalk for more than 5,000 years

Africa’s ancient scripts counter European ideas of literacy | Aeon Essays

European ideas of African illiteracy are persistent, prejudiced and, as the story of Libyc script shows, entirely wrong

Surprising shared word etymologies - Daniel de Haas

Etymological Wordnet

Etymological Wordnet/lexicon/dictionary resource

Online Etymology Dictionary | Origin, history and meaning of English words

The online etymology dictionary (etymonline) is the internet's go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone.

The Elephant Ethogram

Introduces the elephant ethogram: A Library of African Elephant Behavior

The First 'Google Translate' For Elephants Debuts

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Elephants possess an incredibly rich repertoire of communication techniques, including hundreds of calls and gestures that convey specific meanings and can change depending on the context. Different elephant…

How to Save an Ancient Language Before It Disappears Forever

For decades, Taiwan’s minority Hakka people were banned from teaching their native language. Now an unlikely coalition of aging academics and millennial radio DJs are doing all they can to keep it alive.

LSA

Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and the soft, squishy science of language

A deep dive into xenolinguistics, pragmatics, the cooperative principle, and Noam Chomsky!

Language Models

natural language processing, nlp, machine learning, computer science

Trading Pit History

Trading Pit History - hand signals of open outcry pit trading

Why we remember more by reading – especially print – than from audio or video

People tend to think of digital media as entertainment, so they devote less mental effort than when they’re reading a printed book.

Etymology Blog - THE ETYMOLOGY NERD

The verb decide has deadly interesting origins. Though it came through Middle English deciden , Old French decider , and Latin decidere , you can tell that there's the prefix de- , kind...