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 reading between the lines that makes our conversations work. This…
Tag: 20th century
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 practice, known as linguistic purism, gives us poetic words like…
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 modern computational analysis of social media, linguists use fascinating methods…
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 complex grammar. More than a curiosity, it holds the key…
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 responsibility, create insiders and outsiders, and maintain power structures. By…
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 diplomatic talks to causing catastrophic medical errors, these deceptive words…
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 complex scrambling, the key is a simple rule that tells…
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 to decipher enemy secrets during the Cold War. Discover how…
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…
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 the beginning of an extraordinary journey. This is the story…
The Alphabet That Failed
In the 1960s, a radical new alphabet for English was born, bankrolled by the will of playwright George Bernard Shaw. Designed to be perfectly logical and efficient, the Shavian alphabet…
The Dictionary’s Phantom: Hunting for Mountweazels
What if some of the words in your dictionary were complete fabrications, planted by clever editors as copyright traps? These phantom words, known as "mountweazels", have haunted the pages of…
10 Endangered Scripts to Watch in 2025
Long before a language falls silent, its unique writing system can fade into obscurity. This post explores ten beautiful and endangered scripts, from the vertical Mongolian alphabet to the Philippines'…
How Do We Name a Hurricane?
Ever wondered why storms are named Katrina or Ian, and not Kevin? The process is a fascinating blend of history, linguistic strategy, and cultural sensitivity, managed by the World Meteorological…
The Politics of Place Names: Why Cities Change
From Bombay to Mumbai, place names are more than just labels on a map; they are battlegrounds for identity, power, and history. This deep dive into toponymy explores why cities…
Russenorsk: The Lost Arctic Pidgin
For 150 years, Russian fishermen and Norwegian merchants in the Arctic communicated in a unique pidgin language: Russenorsk. This fascinating trade language, which blended Russian and Norwegian with a simplified…
The Real Language of Pirates
Think pirates all sounded like Long John Silver, shouting "Shiver me timbers"!? The historical reality is far more fascinating. This article explores the real language of the high seas—a complex…
Why Do Old Movies Sound So Weird?
Ever wonder why stars like Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant spoke with that peculiar, half-British accent in old movies? This strange, placeless way of speaking, known as the Mid-Atlantic accent,…
Sul Sul: The Genius of Simlish
Ever wondered what your Sims are really saying? The iconic "Sul Sul" is more than just cute gibberish; it's the gateway to Simlish, a constructed language designed not for meaning,…
The Life and Death of a Brand Name Word
Ever wonder how "aspirin" or "zipper" went from protected trademarks to everyday words? This is "genericide", the high-stakes process where a brand name becomes so famous it loses its legal…