The Cognitive Cost of a Character
Is it harder for the brain to read Chinese characters than the English alphabet? This article explores the cognitive load of different writing systems, from logographic to alphabetic. We dive…
Orthography
The Brazil-Portugal Spelling War
Imagine a civil war fought not with weapons, but with dictionaries. For decades, Brazil and Portugal have been locked in a cultural and linguistic struggle over how to write their…
The Scribe’s Shortcut: A History of the Tilde (~)
That familiar squiggle, the tilde (~), is more than just a decoration on the Spanish 'ñ' or a casual emoji. From its origins as a space-saving trick for medieval scribes…
The Red Squiggle: Linguistics of Spell Check
That familiar red squiggle under a misspelled word isn't magic; it's a marvel of computational linguistics. This post explores the hidden science behind your spell checker, from how it calculates…
The Ghost Vowels of French: How Silent Letters Shape Pronunciation
Why does French have so many letters that aren't pronounced? Far from being useless spelling relics, these "ghost" letters are the secret architects of the language's sound. This post reveals…
The History of the French Circumflex
The French language, renowned for its fluidity and musicality, is adorned with a variety of diacritical marks that contribute to its phonetic, etymological, and aesthetic...
Why Are Many English Words Spelled Differently Than They Are Pronounced?
English is a peculiar language in many ways, and one of its most baffling features is the inconsistency between pronunciation and spelling. It often leaves...