19th century

The Mystery of Rhaeto-Romance Languages

Venture deep into the Swiss and Italian Alps to uncover the story of the Rhaeto-Romance languages. Learn about Romansh, Ladin,…

2 weeks ago

Why is Paella So Important to Spain?

Paella is far more than Spain's most famous culinary export; it's a social ritual cooked over an open fire and…

2 weeks ago

The QWERTY Problem: Typing in a Non-Latin World

How do you type a language with thousands of characters on a keyboard with only a few dozen keys? The…

3 weeks ago

The Telephone’s Missing Body Language

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he inadvertently stripped conversation of its most fundamental element: body language. In response,…

3 weeks ago

The Chinook Jargon: Language of the Pacific Fur Trade

For over a century, a unique pidgin language connected Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Asians along the Pacific Northwest coast. Known…

3 weeks ago

The Language of the Looms: Jacquard’s Code

Long before Silicon Valley, a different kind of code was being written—not in silicon, but in cardboard and thread. The…

3 weeks ago

Linguistic Watermarks: A Hidden ID

An author's unique patterns of word choice, punctuation, and sentence length create a "linguistic watermark" that can serve as an…

3 weeks ago

The Mechanical Mouth: A History of Speech Synthesis

From the bellows-powered talking heads of the 18th century to the neural networks that voice our smart assistants, the quest…

3 weeks ago

Killing the Verb: How the Telegraph Changed Writing

The telegraph, with its per-word cost, forced writers to perform linguistic surgery, stripping sentences down to their bare essentials. This…

3 weeks ago

The Singapore Stone’s Lost Story

Long before the British arrived, a massive inscribed stone stood guard at the Singapore River's mouth, holding the secrets of…

3 weeks ago

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