Historical Linguistics

Crimean Gothic: The Dialect That Cheated Death

Discover the fascinating story of Crimean Gothic, a Germanic dialect that survived in isolation on the Black Sea coast for…

1 week ago

Stoichedon: The Greek Grid Style of Writing

Discover the "stoichedon" style of Ancient Greece, where inscriptions were carved in perfect, checkerboard-like grids without spaces or punctuation. This…

1 week ago

Terms of Venery: A Murder of Crows

Discover the fascinating history behind terms like a "murder of crows" or a "parliament of owls." We explore how the…

1 week ago

Rohonc Codex: Hoax or Hungarian History?

Often overshadowed by the Voynich Manuscript, the Rohonc Codex involves a mysterious book found in Hungary containing nearly 800 distinct…

1 week ago

Proto-Elamite: The World’s Oldest Unsolved Code

Contemporary with the famous Sumerian cuneiform, Proto-Elamite is a 5,000-year-old script from ancient Iran that remains almost entirely undeciphered. This…

1 week ago

Hanacaraka: The Legend Behind Javanese Script

Unlike the arbitrary order of the Latin ABCs, the Javanese script (Hanacaraka) is organized into a perfect poem recounting a…

1 week ago

Cypriot Syllabary: Greece’s Forgotten Script

Before the Greek alphabet conquered the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus used a unique, puzzle-like script derived from the Bronze…

1 week ago

Retronyms: Why We Have ‘Desktops’ and ‘Landlines’

Retronyms are new names given to old objects when a modern version arrives to steal the default title—like how "guitars"…

1 week ago

Billion vs. Milliard: The Long Scale Confusion

When is a billion not a billion? This article explores the linguistic tug-of-war between the "Short Scale" (used in the…

1 week ago

The Dragoman: Polyglot Diplomats of the Ottoman Empire

Explore the fascinating history of the Dragoman, the polyglot intermediaries who held the keys to communication between the Ottoman Empire…

1 week ago

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