20th century

Linguistic Implicature: What We Mean, Not What We Say

Have you ever understood someone's "no" even when they didn't say the word? This is linguistic implicature, the art of…

2 weeks ago

Why Icelandic Creates New Words, Not Borrows Them

While English readily borrows words, Icelandic takes a different path, deliberately creating new terms from its Old Norse roots. This…

2 weeks ago

How Do Linguists Map a Dialect?

Dialectology is the geography of language, revealing the hidden maps drawn by our words. From old-school fieldwork with clipboards to…

3 weeks ago

The Ket Language: Siberia’s Last Echo

Deep in the Siberian wilderness, the Ket language is the last of its kind, a linguistic island with a mind-bendingly…

3 weeks ago

The Anti-Language of Power: What Is Gobbledygook?

This dense, evasive prose, known as gobbledygook, is more than just bad writing; it's a sophisticated "anti-language" designed to obscure…

3 weeks ago

The Million-Dollar Mistake: When False Friends Cause Chaos

We've all heard humorous tales of language mix-ups, but so-called "false friends" can have consequences far beyond embarrassment. From derailing…

3 weeks ago

Null Ciphers: The Message in the Noise

A null cipher is a clever form of steganography where a secret is hidden within an ordinary-looking text. Instead of…

3 weeks ago

The Cold War’s Translation Engine

The powerful translation tools we use daily weren't born from a desire to share poetry, but from the urgent need…

3 weeks ago

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…

3 weeks ago

Waking a Sleeping Language: The Myaamia Story

What happens when a language’s last fluent speaker passes away? For the Myaamia people, this was not an ending but…

3 weeks ago

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