history

The World’s First Word Processor

Before 'cut and paste' existed on a screen, there was the Friden Flexowriter, a revolutionary machine that used punched paper…

3 weeks ago

The Accent That Wasn’t Theirs: Inside the Baffling Neurological Mystery of Foreign Accent Syndrome

Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) is a baffling and rare medical condition where a person, typically after a stroke or brain…

3 weeks ago

Carved in Stone, Read on the Edge: Unlocking Ogham, Ireland’s Ancient Alphabet of Lines

Forget runes and hieroglyphs; journey to ancient Ireland to uncover Ogham, a script written not on a page but on…

3 weeks ago

The Language of Salt: How a Single Commodity Carved Paths Across the Lexicon

Long before refrigeration, salt was a mineral so valuable that Roman soldiers were paid in it, giving us the word…

3 weeks ago

The Fight for Purity: Inside the Académie Française and the Quest to Protect the French Language

For nearly 400 years, the forty "immortals" of the Académie Française have stood as the official guardians of the French…

3 weeks ago

Canali on Mars: The 19th-Century Mistranslation That Invented a World

This post explores how Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli's 1877 description of "canali" (channels) on Mars was translated into English as…

3 weeks ago

The Surgeon and the Lexicographer: The Unlikely Genius Who Built the OED From an Asylum

The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary relied on thousands of volunteers, but none were as brilliant or enigmatic as…

3 weeks ago

Famous Mistranslations: “Let Them Eat Cake!”

The phrase "Let them eat cake" is one of the most notorious remarks attributed to a historical figure. This sentence…

2 years ago

How Did People Learn Languages in the Ancient World?

The ability to communicate across linguistic boundaries has always been a hallmark of human civilization. From early tribal communities to…

2 years ago

The Hidden Beauty of Italian Idiomatic Expressions

One of the most fascinating aspects of studying a new language is the opportunity to delve into the richness and…

2 years ago

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