Before Japanese script was standardized in 1900, writers used a vast and beautiful array of variant cursive characters known as…
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…
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