Linguistics

The Grammar of Silence: Why Sign Languages Are as Complex as Spoken Languages

Far from being simple pantomime, sign languages are a testament to the human brain's linguistic ingenuity. These visual-gestural systems possess…

4 months ago

The Language Catchers: Racing Against Time to Document Endangered Tongues

Every two weeks, a language dies, taking with it a unique way of seeing the world. Meet the "Language Catchers,"…

4 months ago

The Ultimate Ancestor: How Linguists Reconstructed the Proto-Indo-European Language

Imagine a language that vanished over 5,000 years ago, leaving behind no written records. This is Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the mysterious…

4 months ago

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

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

4 months ago

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

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

4 months ago

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

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

4 months ago

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

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

4 months ago

Punctuation Reimagined: Hervé Bazin’s Linguistic Innovations

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

2 years ago

Where is Esperanto Spoken?

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

2 years ago

The Mystery of Rongorongo: Easter Island’s Enigmatic Script

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

2 years ago

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