Hey Siri: The Unwritten Grammar of Voice Commands

5 months ago

Have you ever noticed you talk to Siri differently than you talk to a person? We've developed a unique "Machine…

The Greek Language War: A Nation’s Identity Crisis

5 months ago

For over a century, Greece was torn apart by a linguistic civil war, a battle fought not with weapons but…

The Character with No Sound

5 months ago

Before it was the linchpin of your email address, the @ symbol was a character without a sound, a silent…

The Logic of Blissymbols

5 months ago

Born from the horrors of war, Blissymbols was a universal language designed for peace, built on pure logic. This post…

Speaking with Hands and Mouth

5 months ago

In central Australia, the Arandic peoples use a complex sign language alongside speech, a system developed for times when speech…

The Linguistics of Lying

5 months ago

That moment a child tells their first lie—"Who ate the cookie?" "Not me!"—is more than just mischief. It's a monumental…

The Final Boss: Untranslatable Puns

5 months ago

You can conjugate verbs and debate politics, but can you understand a pun in your target language? This article breaks…

The Bilingual Inner Voice: Who Is Talking?

5 months ago

For bilinguals, the advice to "think in the language" opens a fascinating cognitive puzzle. The voice inside our heads is…

How Words Go Bad: The Science of Pejoration

5 months ago

Why did "silly" once mean "blessed," and "villain" just mean "farmhand"? This post explores pejoration, the fascinating linguistic process where…

Know Your Type: A Language Learning Hack

5 months ago

Is your target language a "Lego" language or a "sculpture" language? This practical framework introduces language typology (isolating, agglutinative, fusional)…

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