Who are better programmers—language nerds or math geeks? Can we identify extroverts by the language they use? Did the Huns speak a Yeniseian language?

Welcome to this week’s edition of Discovery Dispatch, a weekly roundup of the latest language-related news, research in linguistics, interesting reads from the week, and newest books and other media dealing with language and linguistics.

To start off, here’s a useful graphic I came across this week showing where each of the consonant phonemes of English is formed in the mouth. (Unfortunately I have no idea where this graphic originated from. It seems like there are various versions of it floating around on the internet, so I can’t give credit to the original creator.)

🆕 New from Linguistic Discovery

This week’s content from Linguistic Discovery.

The horror chamber of historical phonology

Danny Hieber, Ph.D. (@linguisticdiscovery) on Threads

The Armenian language is its own branch of the Indo-European language family. 🧵 It’s had so much influence from Iranian over the years that until relatively recently, linguists thought it *was* a dialect of Iranian. (We now know that it isn’t.) In one of the earliest dictionaries of Armenian, more than *one-third* of words were of Iranian origin.

Threads

The Armenian language is its own branch of the Indo-European language family.

It’s had so much influence from Iranian over the years that until relatively recently, linguists thought it was a dialect of Iranian. (We now know that it isn’t.) In one of the earliest dictionaries of Armenian, more than one-third of words were of Iranian origin.

It’s also undergone such unusual sound changes that one linguist called it “the horror chamber of historical phonology” (Olsen 2011: v) (although recent work suggests that these weren’t sound changes at all, but rather inherited these features from Proto-Indo-European).

If you want to learn more about historical linguistics and how languages are related, here’s the most popular introductory textbook:

📰 In the News

Language and linguistics in the news.

Halkomelem language program

The University of the Fraser Valley graduated its first cohort of 8 students from its Halkomelem language program. Halkomelem /hɒlkəˈmeɪləm/ is a language spoken on the coast of British Columbia, Canada which is part of the Salishan language family. Within the language itself, the name for the language varies depending on the dialect: Halq̓eméylem in the Upriver dialect, Hul̓q̓umín̓um̓ in the Island dialect, and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ in the Downriver dialect.

First UFV Halq’eméylem graduates helping keep Stó:lō language alive

Upriver Halq’eméylem has been spoken for thousands of years by Stó:lō communities along Fraser River and its tributaries

The Chilliwack Progress(University of the Fraser Valley)

Do you speak Canadian?

Keener linguists are compiling the latest English-language Canadianisms. What do their choices say about us? This article discusses work on the third edition of A dictionary of Canadianisms on historical principles (DHCP-3), the definitive collection of words, expressions, and meanings that are distinctive of Canadian English. This is part of a broader project to update the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, which hasn’t been updated since 2004. Here’s an interesting excerpt:

[2004] was at the tail end of what [lexicographer] Dollinger calls the Great Canadian Dictionary War of the 1990s, when Oxford University Press came to Canada and cornered the market. They played dirty, according to Dollinger, stoking anti-American sentiment and inflating their collection of Canadian phrases for clout. Winning the war wasn’t lucrative, though. In 2008, after killing its competitors, Oxford closed its offices, fired its lexicographers and left the country. In the decades since, no one has managed to publish a truly comprehensive Canadian dictionary.

• Do you speak Canadian? (The Tyee)

You can access DCHP-3 (which is an online-only publication) here:

• Dictionary of Canadianisms on historical principles (3rd edition)

🗞️ Current Linguistics

Recently published research in linguistics.

The linguistics of extraversion

Are extroverts identifiable by the language they use? A meta-analysis of 37 studies identifies two linguistic markers of extraversion.

Is Extraversion Identifiable by the Words People Use?

Extraversion may be associated with the frequent use of certain words, a new meta-analysis of 37 studies reports.

Psychology TodayChristopher Bergland

• Chen, Qiu, & Ho. 2020. A meta-analysis of linguistic markers of extraversion: Positive emotion and social process words. Journal of Research in Personality 89. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2020.104035.

How we swear online

A new analysis of 1.7 billion words of online text analyzed 597 different swearing expressions to look for patterns in how we swear. I actually reported on this a few weeks back, but this write-up in The Conversation is from the authors themselves:

201 ways to say ‘fuck’: what 1.7 billion words of online text shows about how the world swears

Australians are outdone by Americans and Brits, both in how often they swear, and in how many users swear online.

The ConversationKate Burridge

• Schweinberger & Burridge. 2025. Vulgarity in online discourse around the English-speaking world. Lingua 321. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2025.103946.

Who are better programmers? Language nerds or math geeks?

A 2020 study looked at the areas of the brain that were activated while attempting to read code, and compared responses to code problems with responses to sentence problems. They found that the brain’s language system only had a weak response to code problems, suggesting that reading code is not the same thing as reading language. On the other hand, neural systems typically involved in math and logic were activated, suggesting a closer link between mathematical abilities and coding abilities. Mathletes: 1, Linguists: 0.

Do Math Geeks or Linguists Make for Better Programmers?

New neuroscience study by MIT and Tufts reveals if certain brains better suited for computer programming, such as “mathletes” or the polyglot linguists with surprising results.

Psychology TodayCami Rosso

Comprehension of computer code relies primarily on domain-general executive brain regions

The domain-general executive brain regions support the use of a novel cognitive tool even when it is structurally similar to natural language.

eLife Sciences Publications, LtdAnna A Ivanova

New research argues that the Huns spoke a Yeniseian language

A new study argues that Huns do not, as previously assumed, originate from Turkic-speaking groups. Instead, the study claims that the Huns spoke a Paleo-Siberian language called Arin, which is part of the Yeniseian language family. We know extremely little about the language of the Huns (termed Hunnic) other than a few personal names and place names. This new study pieces together evidence from those words as well as loanwords from Yeniseian into other languages to suggest that Hunnic was a Yeniseian language.

The European Huns had ancient Siberian roots, linguistic study reveals

New linguistic findings show that the European Huns had Paleo-Siberian ancestors and do not, as previously assumed, originate from Turkic-speaking groups. The joint study was conducted by Dr. Svenja Bonmann at the University of Cologne’s Department of Linguistics and Dr. Simon Fries at the Faculty of Classics and the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford.

Phys.orgEva Schissler

• Bonmann & Fries. 2025. Linguistic evidence suggests that Xiōng-nú and Huns spoke the same Paleo-Siberian language. Transactions of the Philological Society. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12321.

📃 This Week’s Reads

Interesting articles I’ve come across this week.

Could Beowulf see blue?

The history of English colour words

Dead Language SocietyColin Gorrie

What Would Be the Best Universal Language? - Freakonomics

What Would Be the Best Universal Language? - Freakonomics

FreakonomicsStephen J. Dubner

Teen Talk and Linguistic Evolution

Baffled by the language of teenagers? Here’s how teen talk may influence them in adulthood.

Psychology TodayValerie Fridland Ph.D.

Animals can’t talk like humans do – here’s why the hunt for their languages has left us empty-handed

Many scientists see evidence of language in the sounds animals put together, but they may be kidding themselves.

The ConversationAnna Jon-And

The Missing 11th of the Month - David R Hagen

Personal website of David R Hagen, scientific software engineer

David R HagenDavid Hagen

• Hint: It has nothing to do with 9/11.

Pop, soda or coke? The fizzy history behind America’s favorite linguistic debate

An expert in American dialects explains how a ‘health drink’ from the early 1800s spawned so many names and variations.

The ConversationValerie M. Fridland

Your guide to the French alphabet

The French alphabet has 26 letters. Here are their names, how to pronounce them, and how they’re used.

Duolingo BlogOlivia Thayer, M.A.

The Liquid of the Elbe

High up in the Giant Mountains (Krkonoše), in the north of the Czech Republic, one of Europe’s mightiest rivers bubbles into life as a bit of soggy bog. This river is the Elbe, which rises on…

Danny L. Batedannylbate

• This article is a really neat history of the Elbe River.

📚 Books & Media

New (and old) books and media touching on language and linguistics.

Chants of Sennaar

Chants of Sennaar is a 2023 adventure video game that involves solving puzzles and minigames focused around decoding fictional languages! The player explores a structure inspired by the Tower of Babel myth (which Sennaar is a reference to), which is full of people who speak fictional languages represented by logographic writing systems.

Previously the game had been available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Windows, and Xbox, but on August 26 it will also be released on mobile for Android and iOS!

Chants of Sennaar brings its award-winning puzzle adventure to mobile, launching on August 26

Chants of Sennaar, the award-winning adventure puzzle game, is set to launch on Android and iOS on August 26, published by Playdigious.

GamingonPhoneParash Jyoti Kalita

Kingdom of characters: The language revolution that made China modern

Kingdom of Characters: The language revolution that made China modern, follows the history of Chinese language and writing reform, and argues that language was one of the major hurdles to China’s modernization.

Extraterrestrial languages

The endlessly fascinating question of whether we are alone in the universe has always been accompanied by another, more complicated one: if there is extraterrestrial life, how would we communicate with it? In this book, Daniel Oberhaus leads readers on a quest for extraterrestrial communication. Exploring Earthlings' various attempts to reach out to non-Earthlings over the centuries, he poses some not entirely answerable questions: If we send a message into space, will extraterrestrial beings receive it? Will they understand? What languages will they (and we) speak? Is there not only a universal grammar (as Noam Chomsky has posited), but also a grammar of the universe?

🗃️ Resources

Maps, databases, lists, etc. on language and linguistics.

PHOIBLE

PHOIBLE is a database of the sounds in 2,168 of the world’s languages. You can explore which languages have which sounds and lots more. This is a map of all the languages in the database which have the /tʃʼ/ phoneme (a palato-alveolar ejective affricate). You can see that the sound is prevalent in the Americas and parts of Africa, but largely absent from the rest of the world.

PHOIBLE 2.0 -

Pink Trombone

If you haven’t encountered Pink Trombone before, you won’t be disappointed. It’s a sagittal section (vertical cross-section) of the vocal tract that you can manipulate to create different sounds!

Pink Trombone

Thanks for reading this issue of the Linguistic Discovery digest! I hope you found something fun to read and learned something new. Have a great week!

~ Danny

🚫 Errata

Corrections, clarifications, and omissions.

Last week when discussing the effects of foreign language on vaccine hesitancy, I forgot to include a link to the original research article. Here is the reporting in The Conversation as well as the research article:

Multilingual people may be more likely to take a vaccine if they read about it in English – new research

Previous research has shown that people tend to approach hypothetical problems in a more rational and less intuitive fashion when these are presented in a language that is not their native one.

The ConversationMonika Schmid

• Schmid & Roehr-Brackin. 2024. Overcoming COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: An investigation of the Foreign Language Effect. Applied Linguistics. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amae083.

📑 References

Olsen, Birgit Anette. 2011. The noun in Biblical Armenian: Origin and word-formation - with special emphasis on the Indo-European heritage (Trends in Linguistics: Studies & Monographs 119). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110801989.