Language & Culture

The Politics of Dictionaries

Ever wonder who decides when a word like 'rizz' is official? This post delves into the surprisingly political world of…

4 months ago

The Greek Language War: A Nation’s Identity Crisis

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

4 months ago

Speaking with Hands and Mouth

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

4 months ago

The Final Boss: Untranslatable Puns

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

4 months ago

The Language of Numbers Stations

Tune your shortwave radio to the right frequency, and you might hear it: a disembodied voice reading strings of numbers…

4 months ago

The Alphabet Wars: Central Asia’s Script Politics

An alphabet is more than just a tool for writing; it's a flag, a declaration of identity. In Central Asia,…

4 months ago

How Vietnam Got Its Latin Script

The Vietnamese alphabet, Quốc Ngữ, presents a fascinating paradox with its Latin letters used for a tonal, Austroasiatic language. Originally…

4 months ago

Bulls, Bears, and Black Swans: The Language of Wall Street

From the primal imagery of charging bulls and swiping bears to the stark warning of a "dead cat bounce," the…

4 months ago

Naming the Enemy: The Linguistics of Disease

The names we give diseases, from the ancient 'malaria' (bad air) to the clinical 'COVID-19,' are never just labels. They…

4 months ago

The Gestural Lexicon: When Hand Signs Become Words

We do it without thinking: a thumbs-up for a job well done, a wave to say hello. But these hand…

4 months ago

This website uses cookies.