A Practical Guide To Naming Things — Smashing Magazine
A practical guide to naming UI components, with useful resources, naming conventions, and structures.
language-linguistics
The Ass Camouflage Construction
What an African American English expression teaches us about the world’s languages
Where do writing systems come from?
Writing was invented three different times in world history—in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. But not all writing systems derive from those three original scripts. How can this be?
How to be a word detective | Psyche Guides
Etymology unravels the mysteries of language and the hidden webs that link people across the world. Here’s how to dive in
Fighting Illiteracy With Typography
Why an attempt to simplify Arabic script for printing and learning has the potential to boost literacy, and why it has not yet succeeded.
20 Italian Phrases That Unlock Italy
Not textbook Italian. Just the words that help you greet properly, order politely, find your train, ask for the bill, and move through Italy with more confidence.
How the brain learns to read is an evolutionary mystery—a new study offers clues
Reading hasn't been around for long, evolutionary speaking. Instead, the brain recruits systems evolved for other purposes
What Are the Most Difficult Languages to Learn? (For English Speakers) | TheCollector
Some languages are harder to learn than others. Difficulty often depends on your first language, so here are the hardest languages for English speakers.
Could Rocky’s musical language in Project Hail Mary actually work?
Linguists explain how a language built from musical notes could convey complex meaning and even support conversation
Birdsong follows a fundamental law of human language
A fundamental law of human language has now been found in both songbirds and whales
Sometimes It’s O.K. to Let a Language Die
Nikhil Krishnan reviews “How to Kill a Language,” Sophia Smith Galer’s new book on global language loss.
Claude's Personality Changes Depending on the Model—And the Language You Speak
According to new Anthropic research, Claude consistently expresses different values across models and languages.
How far back in time can you understand English?
An experiment in language change
Will humans one day talk to animals? This scientist is bringing us closer
Julie Elie has been studying zebra finch vocalizations for years. Now, she has won the Coller-Dolittle Prize for progress toward a world where humans can talk to animals
Urban Dictionary: love peace and chicken grease
Love peace and chicken grease: Love peace and chicken grease: A way of saying goodbye with fondness...and the hope that the other person's day goes...
3 NLTK Tricks for Advanced Text Preprocessing & Linguistic Analysis - KDnuggets
In this article, we will walk through three essential NLTK tricks to elevate your text preprocessing: preserving phrase integrity with the MWETokenizer, context-aware lemmatization with POS mapping, and statistical collocation extraction using association measures.
How Soviet prisons spread a secret 'language of thieves' now spoken by millions
The tricks of the jail jargon Fenya were once used to bewilder guards in Stalin's Gulags. Now they are now being used by Russian cyber-criminals.
Comparisons as Predictable as the Sunrise
An analysis of 200,000 similes from popular fiction.
The Strange and Fascinating World of Forensic Linguistics
Forensic linguistics deals with the study of language used in legal cases. Not lawyer talk, but things like figuring out who wrote something when they aren't identified. I've been delving into that type of puzzle just today, in reading about Trota of Salerno and which medical…
This is what happens in your brain when you can’t recall a word - Cella Wright
Dig into what causes the tip of the tongue phenomenon, where your brain struggles to recall a word or term from memory.--You’re sure you know your 3rd grade ...
Competitive Scrabble Is A Lexical Shitshow | Defector
This piece originally appeared on Unabridged, a newsletter about words published by Stefan Fatsis. If you enjoy this story, and want to read more like it, please consider subscribing to Unabridged. Under an oak-beamed ceiling on the top floor of one of Washington, D.C.’s coolest…
Language Birth
Since 1960, the world has lost hundreds of languages — and gained thousands.
Toki Pona has only 120 words. None of them change form, in any way, in any context. The grammar is nearly the bare minimum — specified word order, and a few particles to denote a predicate, a direct object, subordination, negation. Interpreting any utterance takes a lot of context clues, or a lot…
Metannoying
Your brain on "not X but Y"
This happens in seconds. A student with high verbal aptitude processes this almost instantaneously.
Psychometricians have called antonyms the most efficient measure of verbal intelligence in the toolkit: high g-loading, high discrimination at the top of the ability range, no contextual scaffolding.
Defining Color - Longreads
"A deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral, bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william."
The sneaky language tricks cults use to influence you
In the age of social media and wellness trends, the comments section is as good as a cult compound, says linguist and cultural commentator Amanda Montell. Using Taylor Swift's throng of devoted Swifties as her guide, she exposes three sneaky language tactics that cults use to…
How far back in time can you understand English?
An experiment in language change
The Hidden Bias in Language That Turned Left-Handedness Into a Bad Thing
While the days of forcing left-handed children to use their right hands are mostly over, the bias against lefties continues in most languages around the world.
The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains (part I)
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter in…
Hawaiian Pidgin: The History of a Creole Language | TheCollector
The grammatical features of the Creole language known as Hawaiian Pidgin tell us of a society built on the efforts of its multicultural workforce.
'Hullo, hillo, holla': The 600-year-old origins of the word 'hello'
It's 200 years since the word "hello" was first used in print - though its roots date back to the 15th Century. How has the language of greetings evolved - and what does it tell us?
Dictionary of the Oldest Written Language--It Took 90 Years to Complete, and It's Now Free Online
It took 90 years to complete. But, in 2011, scholars at the University of Chicago finally published a 21-volume dictionary of Akkadian, the language used in ancient Mesopotamia.
The triumph of logical English - Works in Progress Magazine
English prose has become much easier to read. But shorter sentences had little to do with it.
We think we are looking at a language that got simpler
Sentences can be simple (one main clause), compound (two or more main clauses linked with a conjunction), complex (a main clause with dependent clauses, i.e. clauses that cannot stand alone), or complex-compound (one or more dependent clauses and two or more main clauses).
Swearing Actually Seems To Make Humans Physically Stronger - Slashdot
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A new study adds to the growing body of evidence that swearing can help us unleash our inner strength, improving physical performance, it seems, by helping people break through certain psychological barriers. [...] [Psychology…
The strangest letter of the alphabet
The rise and fall of yogh
Words That Don't Sound Nice Are Harder to Remember, Study Says
A new study suggests our brains welcome gibberish words that sound gentle and kind with open arms while rejecting the harsh ones.
How Did These 5 Ancient Languages Have Such a Historical Impact?
According to scientists, written languages appeared some 5,500 years ago. And from these myriads of ancient tongues, these five produced the biggest impact.
In a First, AI Models Analyze Language As Well As a Human Expert | Quanta Magazine
If language is what makes us human, what does it mean now that large language models have gained “metalinguistic” abilities?
15 English Words With Interesting Origins | TheCollector
From Greek constellations to Gaelic spirits, these 15 English word origins reveal how a Germanic language evolved into a global vocabulary.
Pidgin vs. Creole: What’s the Difference? | TheCollector
Pidgin and creole languages share a common origin, arising from interactions between groups lacking a common language. However, they also differ in significant ways.
The 3,000-year-old story hidden in the @ sign
In Taiwan they call @ "little mouse". It's "strudel" in Hebrew, "dog" in Russian and "monkey's tail" in Dutch. The @ sign is a mirror, and its story goes back thousands of years.
This Mind-Bending Phenomenon Is Basically Déjà Vu in Reverse
Most people have felt déjà vu at least once. Jamais vu is the flip side. It’s rarer, harder to describe, and somehow more off-putting.
Why do so many football coaches emphasize Southern accents? Linguistics experts explain
LSU coach Brian Kelly went viral for his attempt at a southern accent. But experts say there's a reason leaders lean into regional dialects.
Stuttering Has Deep Genetic Roots and May Affect Your Ability to Clap to a Beat
A massive genetic study found that stuttering is not just about nurture and may link to processing rhythm itself.
Why the origin of the word 'dog' remains a mystery
Although "dog" is ubiquitous today to describe man's best friend, it remains a mystery where the word originally came from.
Try and | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America
What Is the ‘Dolly Parton Effect’ and Does It Actually Work?
If the great Dolly Parton ever shouted directions at you in a hurricane, chances are you’d understand every word...
Leopard Seals Sing Songs That Resemble Human Nursery Rhymes—Here’s Why
Every night, a male leopard seal slips off the ice and sings underwater for hours. It sounds structurally like a human nursery rhyme...
Dogwhistles and Figleaves. How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood, by Saul Jennifer
Language serves many purposes. It can propel us forward, both individually and collectively, but it can also plunge us into misery. The latter is the focus
Inside India’s scramble for AI independence
Structural challenges and the nation’s many languages have made it tough to develop foundational AI models. But the government is keen not to be left behind.
Why English doesn’t use accents
And why French is full of them