Canali on Mars: The 19th-Century Mistranslation That Invented a World

6 months ago

This post explores how Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli's 1877 description of "canali" (channels) on Mars was translated into English as…

The Surgeon and the Lexicographer: The Unlikely Genius Who Built the OED From an Asylum

6 months ago

The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary relied on thousands of volunteers, but none were as brilliant or enigmatic as…

A Word to Name the Unspeakable: Raphael Lemkin and the Creation of “Genocide”

6 months ago

Discover the powerful story of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and created a…

Reading the Knots: Quipu, the Inca’s Mysterious 3D Writing System

6 months ago

What if writing wasn't flat on a page, but a three-dimensional web of information you could hold in your hands?…

Seeing Blue: How the Language You Speak Changes Your Perception of Color

6 months ago

Do you see the same "blue" as a Russian speaker, who has two distinct words for the color? The fascinating…

Clicks, Pops, and Whistles: A Journey into the World’s Rarest Speech Sounds

6 months ago

Go beyond familiar consonants and vowels on a journey into the world's phonetic rarities, from the sharp clicks of Southern…

Punctuation Reimagined: Hervé Bazin’s Linguistic Innovations

2 years ago

Hervé Bazin (1911-1996), a famous French writer and essayist, is known not only for his literary contributions but also for…

Where is Esperanto Spoken?

2 years ago

Esperanto, the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, was invented in the late 19th century by L. L. Zamenhof with…

The Mystery of Rongorongo: Easter Island’s Enigmatic Script

2 years ago

Rongorongo, the written script of the native Rapanui people of Easter Island, stands as one of the most intriguing and…

Speaking with Angels: The Enochian Language

2 years ago

In the diverse world of linguistics, few tales are as captivating and mysterious as the story of Enochian, reputedly the…

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