We’re losing 338 spoken words every year, linguists find

Welcome to this week’s edition of Discovery Digest, 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!

🗞️ Current Linguistics

Recently published research in linguistics.

We’re losing 338 spoken words every year

Linguists and psychologists have discovered that, since 2005, the average person has spoken less each year than the year before, by approximately 338 fewer words per day.

We’re losing 338 spoken words every day | BBC Science Focus Magazine

We’ve been nattering less and less each year since 2005, according to research on more than 2,000 people across three continents

BBC Science Focus MagazineHatty Willmoth

• Pfeifer & Mehl. 2026. Sliding into silence? We are speaking 300 daily words fewer every year. Perspectives on Psychological Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916261425131.

Sperm whales’ communication closely parallels human language

Researchers with Project CETI (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), an organization dedicated to understanding the communication of sperm whales, has found that the whales’ communication is remarkably similar to our own in several respects: not only do the whales have something akin to an “alphabet” and form vowels within their vocalizations, but the structure of these vowels behaves in the same way as human speech.

Sperm whales communicate in a series of short clicks called codas. Analysis of these clicks shows that the whales can differentiate vowels through the short or elongated clicks or through rising or falling tones, using patterns similar to languages such as Mandarin, Latin and Slovenian.

Sperm whales may make their own vowel sounds, similar to human language

Sperm whales, which make clicking sounds to communicate, use different “vowels” in ways similar to human speech

Scientific AmericanAllison Parshall

Sperm whales’ communication closely parallels human language, study finds

Analysis shows whales’ coda vocalizations are ‘highly complex’ and remarkably similar to our own

The GuardianOliver Milman

• Beguš et al. 2026. The phonology of sperm whale coda vowels. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 293(2069): 20252994. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2994.

📃 This Week’s Reads

Interesting articles I’ve come across this week.

Some new reporting on a study of language universals in 1,700 languages (which I included in the digest a few weeks back):

Surprising hidden pattern connecting over 1,500 languages found

Findings point to shared cognitive pressures forcing evolution of languages

The IndependentVishwam Sankaran

Toddlers struggle to understand the meanings of the pronouns I and you. Think about it: the meanings of those words change constantly depending on who is saying them! This article talks about some cool research on how children use pronouns:

Stuff

Stuff

• If I were you: Pronouns out of the mouths of babes (Stuff)

Home to some of the last speakers of Aramaic, Maaloula was attacked in Syria’s civil war. Its residents are determined to rebuild–and preserve their mother tongue from extinction:

This war-torn village is fighting to keep Christ’s language alive

Home to some of the last speakers of Aramaic, Maaloula was attacked in Syria’s civil war. Its residents are determined to rebuild–and preserve their mother tongue from extinction.

History

Other reads:

The Etymological Problem with Apples

How the humble apple can lead us into the murkiest prehistory of the English language.

Danny Bate, Wanderer in Language HistoryDanny Bate

What Language Do They Speak in Belgium? - Rosetta Stone

Belgium may be small, but its languages are diverse. Learn about Flemish, Belgian French, German, and minority languages.

Rosetta StoneJacyb Porter

📚 Books & Media

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

Why we talk funny

Historically it’s been difficult to find books aimed a general audience about sociolinguistics, which is a real shame because it’s one of the most applicable and relatable areas of linguistics, that probably has the most to teach people. So I’m very happy to see this new book from Valerie Fridland, author of Like, literally, dude: Arguing for the good in bad English (Amazon | Bookshop.org). Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Accents have long held our fascination. As far back as the 7th century BCE, Egyptian pharaohs experimented with babies to test out theories about the “original” accent and the Old Testament relays how a small difference in the pronunciation of “s” became a fatal litmus test of tribal belonging. Still today, from dinner parties to job interviews, you’ll find people kicking up dust about things like where and how to pronounce a ‘t,’ as in, never in “often,” but with proper British poshness, as in “t(y)une.”

In Why We Talk Funny, linguist Valerie Fridland unlocks the secrets of what linguistic science, psychology and history can tell us about the evolution of human speech, why accents develop, and how they shape our professional and social lives. With a healthy dose of her signature humor and captivating anecdotes, Fridland explores how the twin forces of physiology and psychology along with the need to fit in changes the trajectory of speech over languages and lifetimes, diving deep into the history and social forces driving the way people talk. Along the way, she emphasizes that accents don’t always set us apart, they can also bring us together. Whether it’s the accent that hints at your hometown, your group, your social status or your ethnicity, the sounds we say reveal a lot about who we are and where we’ve been – even for those who might think they have no accent at all.

The story of language is the story of humanity, and as Fridland reminds us, the funny sounds we make – whether from the mouths of ancient ancestors or the tongues of screenbound teens – all come from the same powerful desire to communicate and belong. Why We Talk Funny will change the way you think about your own accent – and transform the way you listen to the sounds of others.

Get your copy here:

• Amazon
• Bookshop

👋🏼 Till next week!

Here’s great blog post from Ryan Starkey showing the etymologies of endonyms (community-internal names for one’s own group) and exonyms (names given to a group by an outsider community) for several different countries. Read the full blog post here for details.

Etymologies of Endonyms and Exonyms - Starkey Comics

Endonyms are the names countries call themselves in their own language(s), while exonyms are the names foreign languages call them. Often these are clearly related (like English “Brazil” and Portuguese “Brasil”). Other times they are clearly unrelated, like Germany and Deutschland. And sometimes they are related, but don’t really look it (like Burma and Myanmar). […]

Starkey ComicsRyan Starkey