We can read the words of Charlemagne's era, but what did they actually sound like? A groundbreaking initiative called the…
Deep in a remote California valley, a community invented its own secret lingo called Boontling to gossip and joke in…
The QWERTY keyboard you use every day wasn't designed for speed; it was engineered to prevent jams in 19th-century typewriters.…
Named after the Cheshire Cat, Cheshirization is a fascinating phonological process where a vowel vanishes but leaves a ghostly trace…
In the history of language, sounds can vanish without a trace. Or can they? This post explores compensatory lengthening, the…
Learning to count in Japanese means mastering counters, and the one for people holds a fascinating secret. While most numbers…
Journey into the Sino-Tibetan language family, a vast linguistic world of over 400 languages spoken by 1.4 billion people. From…
Why do the French say 'four-twenties' for 80? This linguistic quirk is a fascinating relic from a base-20 counting system…
What happens when a language’s last fluent speaker passes away? For the Myaamia people, this was not an ending but…
Scientists have peered into the life of Ötzi the Iceman, learning what he ate and how he died. Now, thanks…
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