Dictionary.com announces 6-7 as the word of the year
Also this week: Turkic states agree on a common Latin alphabet; and researchers decode Mandarin Chinese from brain activity
Welcome to this weekâs 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!
đą Updates & Announcements
Announcements and whatâs new with me and Linguistic Discovery.
5,000 readers đ
The Linguistic Discovery newsletter recently passed 5,000 readers! This combines readers from the website, Substack, and Patreon. The website alone makes up almost 3,000 of this! I only soft-launched the newsletter in August 2024, and then began publishing consistently in January, so itâs incredibly humbling that over 5,000 of you have signed up in a little over a year. Iâm grateful for every single one of you!
My ultimate goal is to transition into writing for Linguistic Discoveryâand writing books!âfull time once my work for the Chitimacha tribe is done. In pursuit of that goal, Iâd love it if youâd consider sharing the newsletter with your friends and social media networks! Word-of-mouth is still one of the best ways for a newsletter like this to grow, and recommendations would go a long way towards helping me build an audience that would let me do this full time.
If youâd like to help spread the word, the easiest way to do so is to pick your favorite article from the archives and post about it on social media, with text like:
I highly recommend the @LinguisticDiscovery newsletter to anybody whoâs interested in language or linguistics! Hereâs my favorite article: {{ link }}
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Thank you so much for your support! đ
Chitimacha language revitalization on NPR New Orleans
This week myself and Chitimacha language instructor Erin Daniels went on Louisiana Considered (New Orleans Public Radio) to talk about our work to revitalize the Chitimacha language. Itâs a quick interview (about 15 minutes), but Iâm happy that the tribe is getting some local attention in Louisiana for their great work, and grateful for WWNO in New Orleans and WKRF in Baton Rouge for setting up the interview. You can listen at any of the links below. Our segment of the show starts around 9:35.
Karen Henderson
World Linguistics Day
For a few years now Linguistics HQ in the UK has been popularizing a new National Linguistics Day on November 26th each year. The idea is starting to gain traction among the international community of lingthusiasts as well. As such, many of us âlinguistics communicatorsâ are now taking the idea global, and are anointing November 26th as World Linguistics Day each year going forward.
đ New from Linguistic Discovery
This weekâs content from Linguistic Discovery.
Exploring linguistic curiosities with Joshua Blackburn
This week I had a special guest post from Joshua Blackburn, author of The Language-Loverâs Lexipedia: An AâZ of Linguistic Curiosities (Amazon | Bookshop.org) and creator of League of the Lexicon, the most successful word game in Kickstarter history. In the spirit of his book, in this article Joshua takes us on a circumambulatory intellectual adventure as he follows the thread of linguistic curiosity, beginning with the first keyboards.
Joshua Blackburn
If youâd like to purchase The language-loverâs lexipedia book or The league of the lexicon game, you can do so at the links below.
man vs. human
Someone asked on Threads recently:
Serious question:
Why is it âhumansâ and not âhumenâ?
Thereâs a fascinating bit of etymology behind this so I penned a quick reply!
Because âmanâ and âhumanâ are completely unrelated words!
âmanâ is a Germanic word that comes from Proto-Indo-European *man- âmanâ, but âhumanâ is from Latin âhumanusâ âof man, humanâ, and comes from the Proto-Indo-European word *dhghem- âearthâ!
In Old English, âmanâ meant âperson, human beingâ, not a male specifically.
Thatâs why âmanâ is still used as the generic, gender-neutral term in expressions like âmankindâ or âmanslaughterâ.
The word for âmale personâ was âwerâ, and sticks around in the word âwerewolfâ!
The word for âfemale personâ was âwifâ, and sticks around in the word âwifeâ.
Thatâs why the word âwifeâ still just means âwomanâ in some contexts: âmidwifeâ was originally âwith-womanâ.
đ° In the News
Language and linguistics in the news.
Dictionary.com announces 6-7 as the word of the year
Itâs Word of the Year season again, which means all the major dictionaries as well as the American Dialect Society are beginning to choose their words of the year for 2025! Dictionary.com is kicking off the season with a strong statement this year, electing the popular Gen Alpha slang 6-7 as this yearâs word.
The phrase 6-7 is meant to be nonsensical, playful and absurd. Like much slang, itâs intentionally obscure and aims to disrupt common social expectations. A well-placed 6-7 is one that comes when itâs least expected.
6-7 is an example of a specific type of slang thatâs received its own category of late, called brainrot slang, referring to expressions that arise in âchronically onlineâ communities and are said to be the result of consuming large amounts of low-value internet content.
Dictionary.com notes, appropriately, that they donât base their choice for Word of the Year on mere popularity:
To select the 2025 Word of the Year, our lexicographers analyzed a large amount of data including newsworthy headlines, trends on social media, search engine results, and more to identify words that made an impact on our conversations, online and in the real world.
Some others words on the shortlist were:
- agentic
- aura farming
- broligarchy
- clanker
- overtourism
- tariff
- tradwife
Hereâs Dictionary.comâs official announcement about 6-7:
And hereâs their official entry for the expression:
Matthew Cantor at The Guardian offers a good opinion piece about the social meaning of slang expressions like 6-7:
Matthew Cantor
And since weâre on the topic of slang, here are some other relevant articles and opinion pieces from this week:
James Marriott
Stefanie Schantl, M.A.
Lastly, hereâs some additional reporting on Dictionary.comâs announcement:
ABC News
ABC News
Turkic states agree on a common Latin alphabet
The five countries of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) have overcome years of disagreements about letters and diacritical marks to agree on a common Latin alphabet for their languages that consists of 34 letters.
Adopting a standard alphabet could prove relatively easy for Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan, who already use the Latin script, as well as Kazakhstan, which is in the process of transitioning away from Cyrillic.
But it remains a sensitive topic in Kyrgyzstan, the only OTS member that has not decided to switch to the Latin alphabet amid long-standing debates by scholars, politicians, and the public.
RFE/RLâs Kyrgyz Service
Radio Free Europe also has a shortform video on Instagram covering the topic.
đïž Current Linguistics
Recently published research in linguistics.
Researchers decode Mandarin Chinese from brain activity
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can restore communication for people who have lost their speech to a stroke or neurological disease. But these experimental systems, which combine sensors placed in the brain with algorithms that turn the neural signals of attempted speech into words, have so far been developed mostly for English speakers.
New research uses this kind of brain-computer interface with Mandarin Chinese, which is a major step forward for these technologies since Mandarin is a tonal language (and there are more tonal languages in the world than non-tonal languages). The technology that this research enables could help more people with speech impairments around the world.
- Reporting: Researchers âdecodeâ Mandarin Chinese from neural signals (Science)
- Research: Qian et al. 2025. Real-time decoding of full-spectrum Chinese using brain-computer interface. Science Advances 11(45). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adz9968.
Babiesâ brains recognize foreign languages they heard before birth
A recent study suggests that babies start processing language before they are born. A research team in Montreal has found that newborns who had heard short stories in foreign languages while in the womb process those languages similarly to their native tongue.
Previous research had shown that fetuses and newborns can recognize familiar voices and rhythms and even that they prefer their native language soon after birth. But these findings come mostly from behavioral cuesâsucking patterns, head turns or heart rate changesârather than direct evidence from the brain. This is the first study to use brain imaging to show what neuroscientists and psychologists had long suspected.
Meghie Rodrigues
Andréanne René
đ This Weekâs Reads
Interesting articles Iâve come across this week.
James Marriott
Matthew Cantor
Stefanie Schantl, M.A.
atremper
Colin Gorrie
Hereâs some additional reporting on Danny Bateâs new book, Why Q needs U: A history of our letters and how we use them, which Linguistic Discovery readers got a preview of the other week:
James McConnachie
Danny Bate
Nicholas Evans has spent decades trying to decipher the undocumented tongues of Papua New Guinea and Australia. His work has redefined the way we think about human communication:
Laura Spinney
đ Books & Media
New (and old) books and media touching on language and linguistics.
Linguistics HQ Podcast
A new linguistics podcast just launched in September called Linguistics HQ. Hereâs the description:
Are you curious about how languages work? Have you ever wondered, for example, why humans speak and animals donât, or why there are so many different languages? Maybe at some point youâve asked yourself why some people start a sentence in one language and finish it in another, or whether women really do talk more than men, or who invented the alphabet, or where we get new words from. Perhaps you want to know why the language youâre learning has masculine and feminine words, or youâve heard rumours of languages that consist entirely of whistling! And where do designer dogs fit into all this?!
Well, youâve come to the right place, because the Linguistics HQ podcast will answer all of these questions and many more! Weâll explore every aspect of the science of language, starting with the basics, from how languages are structured to how we can use our knowledge of linguistics to discover exciting things and even make our world a better place. Whatever sort of language enthusiast you are, Linguistics HQ has got something for you. Iâm Dr Rebecca Mitchell and Iâm a lecturer, teacher and public speaker, and Iâm on a mission to make the science of language everyoneâs business. So hit subscribe and letâs get thinking, talking and learning about linguistics!
đđŒ Til next week!
If youâd like to support Linguistic Discovery, purchasing through these links is a great way to do so! I greatly appreciate your support!
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