Psychology
video
Knowledge
Yes, the Inuit have dozens of words for snow – but what does each one mean exactly?
6 minutes
essay
Language and linguistics
The polyglots of Dardistan
At the crossroads of south and central Asia lies one of the world’s most multilingual places, with songs and poetry to match
Zubair Torwali
essay
The ancient world
Cracking the Cretan code
Linear B has yielded its secrets, but Linear A remains elusive. Can linguistic analysis unlock the meaning of Minoan script?
Ester Salgarella
essay
Language and linguistics
Typos, tricks and misprints
Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology
Arika Okrent
essay
Language and linguistics
Africa writes back
European ideas of African illiteracy are persistent, prejudiced and, as the story of Libyc script shows, entirely wrong
D Vance Smith
video
Beauty and aesthetics
Komorebi: ‘a dance of shadows emerging when sunlight filters through trees’
4 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Ums, likes and y’knows get no respect – but they’re vital to conversation
6 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
A playful tribute to the words our grandparents used (but we can’t pronounce)
2 minutes
essay
Philosophy of language
Thoughts into words
Here’s the paradox of articulation: are you excavating existing ideas, or do your thoughts come into being as you speak?
Eli Alshanetsky
essay
Human rights and justice
Weak links
The idea of the ‘supply chain’ shackles how we think about economic justice. What forces could new metaphors unleash?
Michael Gibb
essay
Language and linguistics
A history of punctuation
How we came to represent (through inky marks) the vagaries of the mind, inflections of the voice, and intensity of feeling
Florence Hazrat
essay
Language and linguistics
The space between our heads
Brain-to-brain interfaces promise to bypass language. But do we really want access to one another’s unmediated thoughts?
Mark Dingemanse
essay
Language and linguistics
Hand to mouth
If language began with gestures around a campfire and secret signals on hunts, why did speech come to dominate communication?
Kensy Cooperrider
essay
Language and linguistics
On gibberish
Babies babble, medieval rustics sing ‘trolly-lolly’, and jazz exults in bebop. What does all this wordplay mean for language?
Jenni Nuttall
idea
Language and linguistics
Hypocognition is a censorship tool that mutes what we can feel
Kaidi Wu
essay
Philosophy of language
The ethics of speech acts
It’s one thing to say something. It’s quite another for a person to do (or not do) something because of what you’ve said
Guy Longworth
idea
Language and linguistics
Why learning a new language is like an illicit love affair
Marianna Pogosyan
video
The ancient world
How writing began, and other unexpectedly funny stories about cuneiform
39 minutes
idea
Mood and emotion
Trigger warnings don’t help people cope with distressing material
Christian Jarrett
video
Subcultures
When a deafblind woman from Denmark met a woman like her in Nepal
9 minutes
essay
Philosophy of language
The way words mean
Words stand for things in the world, and they stand apart from it. Perhaps meaning is more sunken into words than we realise?
Alexander Stern
video
Language and linguistics
To all intensive purposes, you might have another think coming about how idioms work
4 minutes
essay
Stories and literature
Sweetness and strangeness
In our image-saturated, over-sped world, we are losing the imaginative power to create and find meaning through metaphor
Heather Altfeld & Rebecca Diggs
idea
Language and linguistics
Noah Webster’s civil war of words over American English
Peter Martin