A language that survived the boarding schools
Gwich’in is among Alaska’s most threatened languages. but Princess Daazhraii Johnson is determined to change that. Her mother, she says, was of “that ...
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About
Language unites and divides us. It mystifies and delights us. Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay tell the stories of people with all kinds of linguistic passions: comedians, writers, researchers; speakers of endangered languages; speakers of multiple languages; and just speakers—people like you and me.
A tale of edible intrigue
Who writes the fortunes in fortune cookies? Why are so many of them not really fortunes at all? Why did some fortunes turn ominous for a while? (“Afte...
The pleasure and pain of spelling
With the Scripps National Spelling Bee back after a Covid-enforced year off, we conduct our very own spelling quiz. Also, Kavita Pillay offers her tak...
We are the people
The German word “Volk” usually translates as “people,” but it means a whole lot more than that. In 1989 as Germans tore down the Berlin Wall, they cha...
The little pronoun that could
In 2012, a children’s book in Sweden sparked a nationwide debate— not about the book’s content but a three-letter word used by the main character. Hen...
How the alphabet won our hearts
If you’re under the impression that encyclopedias and dictionaries in the West were always organized from A to Z, think again. We have chosen to class...
Japan’s mystery language
Japan is an ethnically homogenous nation where everyone speaks Japanese, right? Not exactly. Other groups including the Ainu also have called Japan ho...
The dots and their future
Will technology make Braille obsolete as a primary reading tool for blind people? Will talking apps and audiobooks win out over embossed dots? It's po...
The language closest to English
You may not have heard of Frisian, but it’s spoken by about 500,000 people. Once upon a time, an older form of the language was barely distinct from O...
My notorious name
Digital consultant Ivanka Majic was such an early user of Twitter that she was able to snag the handle @Ivanka. Which was great, until the rise of ano...