Could Neanderthals handle language variation?
Also this week: Jane Goodall dies at 91 + Merriam-Webster adds 5,000 words to the dictionary
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Should you be talking to your infant? The science of baby talk, Part 1
Is it pointless to speak to children before they start speaking themselves?
Why is the ⟨g⟩ in “longevity” pronounced twice?
How the spelling of “longevity” is playing a mental trick on you
The way we read in our first language influences how we read in other languages
Also this week: AI models can now analyze language as well as humans + The first monolingual Irish dictionary is published
One year of Linguistic Discovery
A look back at the first year of the newsletter, and what’s changing in 2026