Why your brain is faster at dismantling some words than others

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!

📢 Updates & Announcements

Announcements and what’s new with me and Linguistic Discovery.

Linguistics Commencement Speech

The other week I posted the transcript of my commencement speech for the linguistics department at the College of William & Mary (link below). Now you can watch a video of the talk as well!

You can also read the entire transcript here:

The curse of knowledge (and what to do about it)

Inspiring words for linguistics majors

Linguistic DiscoveryDaniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.

🆕 New from Linguistic Discovery

This week’s content from Linguistic Discovery.

On Iran, Persia, Farsi, and Aryan: The many names for Iran, its peoples, and its languages

Is the country called Iran or Persia? What about the language? Farsi or Persian? And what’s the word Aryan got to do with it?

Here’s your guide to the many names for Iran, its peoples, and its languages.

Is it “Iran” or “Persia”? “Persian” or “Farsi”?

On Persia, Iran, Farsi, and Aryan: The many names for Iran, its peoples, and its languages

Linguistic DiscoveryDaniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.

🗞️ Current Linguistics

Recently published research in linguistics.

Why your brain is faster at dismantling some words than others

Before you even know what a written word means, your brain is already playing a rapid-fire game of linguistic LEGO. Imagine catching a flash of the word football on a screen. Before you even register its meaning (‘a game’ or ‘a ball’), your brain may have already parsed it into foot + ball. A clever new experiment used red-and-blue anaglyph glasses and split-second word flashes to probe this. It found that real compound words (like football) are recognized much faster than lookalikes (like shamrock), suggesting our eyes and brain latch onto word form almost instantly.

Why ‘football’ beats ‘shamrock’ when your brain is dismantling every word at lightning speed

Before you even know what a word means, your brain is already playing a rapid-fire game of linguistic LEGO. Discover how our minds secretly dissect words, piece by orthographic piece, in the blink of an eye.

Science XSayan Tribedi

• de Almeida, Antal, & Salehi. 2026. Early morpho-orthographic and semantic effects in word recognition: Evidence from a foveal-splitting dichoptic paradigm with anaglyphs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition 52(7): 1108–1132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001533.

📃 This Week’s Reads

Interesting articles I’ve come across this week.

I’ve been social media acquaintances with Michelle Bruni since the early days of shortform video, when her child was just weeks old, and I think she’s a great exemplar for parents who want to give their kids fluency in another language:

• Mom defends decision to teach her kids French over a ‘more useful’ language, despite not being a native speaker (People)

Why English isn’t degenerating:

Despite all the likes, literallys and dropped g’s, English isn’t decaying before our eyes

Throughout the history of the language, what has been considered ‘bad’ speech often becomes ‘proper.’ You just have to give it time.

The ConversationValerie M. Fridland

That article also touches on Valerie Fridland’s new book, Why we talk funny: The real story behind our accents (Amazon | Bookshop).

You can also read an excerpt from the book in the Linguistic Discovery newsletter!

Baby, talk to me: How children get their accents

A sneak peek at Dr. Valerie Fridland’s new book, “Why we talk funny: The real story behind our accents”

Linguistic DiscoveryDaniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.

Other articles from this week:

Hooker, as promised

The Oxford Etymologist explores the etymological development and history of the word “hooker.”

OUPblogBecky Clifford

What Is A Lexicon?

At its most general, lexicon can refer to quite a few different things. What is a lexicon, and is it useful in language learning?

BabbelThomas Moore Devlin

Delve Into Diacritics: The Accent Marks That Guide Pronunciation - Rosetta Stone

Find out how diacritics and accent marks guide pronunciation in a language, including the different types of diacritics and how to use them.

Rosetta StoneJennifer Gunner

How Old is ‘Haha’? The Sound of Medieval Laughter

A strange image and the earliest ‘haha’ in English.

IncertusIncertus

📚 Books & Media

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

Is baby talk bad?

Many parents have heard the warning: Don’t use baby talk with babies and toddlers. Instead, caregivers are often encouraged to speak properly and use adultlike language, out of concern that simplified speech could confuse children or delay language development.

But research in child language acquisition actually suggests the opposite is true! Dr. Karen Stollznow explains why in this article for The Conversation:

Is baby talk bad? Why ‘parentese’ actually helps babies learn language

Exaggerating phrases and talking in a sing-song way can actually help, not make it harder, for young children to master speaking a language.

The ConversationKaren Stollznow

That article discusses some of the ideas from Dr. Stollznow’s new book, Beyond words: How we learn, use, and lose language, which I’m excited to see because there are very few books about first language acquisition out there for a general audience!

I also have an entire series of articles about baby talk if you want to learn more!

👶 The science of baby talk

• Part 1: Why you should be talking to your infant
• Part 2: What’s the point of baby talk?
• Part 3: Is baby talk good for your child?
• Part 4: Do all cultures use baby talk?
• Part 5: Baby talk in the languages of the world
• Part 6: How much should you talk to your toddler?
• Part 7: What really matters when talking to your child [forthcoming]

The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet

I just learned that a second edition of The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet was released last year, and I immediately procured a copy because I think this is the best history of writing for a general audience out there. Excited to see what’s new in this version!

• Amazon
• Bookshop

🗃️ Resources

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

The Atlas of Endangered Alphabets

The online Atlas of Endangered Alphabets is a beautiful testament to many endangered writing systems all over the world.

The atlas has photo galleries and informational articles to explore for each endangered writing system.

Atlas of Endangered Alphabets: Indigenous and minority writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them.

Our goal is to include scripts from indigenous and minority cultures who are in danger of losing their sense of history, identity and purpose and who are trying to protect, preserve and/or revive their writing system as a way of reconnecting to their past, their dignity, their sense of a way ahead.

👋🏼 Till next week!