Current Linguistics
Language may not be so hierarchical after all: A new study challenges 70 years of linguistic theory
Also this week: Some dogs learn words like children + “How to kill a language”, a new book by Sophia Smith Galer
Current Linguistics
Honeyguide birds learn regional human dialects
Also this week: People with personality disorders use language differently + Decoding the lost scripts of the ancient world. Here’s what happened this week in language and linguistics.
Current Linguistics
Is the dictionary dead? Or merely changing?
Also in this week’s digest: Why Morse Code didn’t work for Chinese + Words affect us based on how they sound + Your brain processes language more alike to AI than we previously thought
Current Linguistics
World’s oldest alphabet discovered
Also this week: Researchers determine that bees understand morse code + ⅓ of grammatical universals stand up to rigorous testing
Current Linguistics
Some dogs learn word categories like human toddlers do
Also this week: The California Language Archives receives a treasure trove of new materials on Pomoan languages. Here's what happened this week in language and linguistics.
Current Linguistics
Oxford chooses “ragebait” as the 2025 Word of the Year
Also this week: Whales are found to use “vowels” + 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian seals linked to the dawn of writing
Current Linguistics
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
Newsletter
Curiouser and curiouser… A (short) journey through words and language
Join League of the Lexicon game creator Joshua Blackburn as he follows the threads of his curiosity about keyboards
Current Linguistics
Have scholars finally deciphered the mysterious writing of Teotihuacan?
Also this week: How technological advances in language modeling have allowed researchers to develop speech recognition technology even for small, endangered languages
Newsletter
Where does the alphabet come from? And why does English use it so strangely?
A new book takes us on a linguistic odyssey through the history of the alphabet
Current Linguistics
gen z loves lowercase, but they’re losing their southern drawl
gen z loves lowercase, but they’re losing their southern drawl. meanwhile trump makes english the official language (sort of).
Current Linguistics
The quest for the first Indo-Europeans, and whales communicating like humans
New DNA evidence emerges in the hunt for the first speakers of Indo-European, and researchers discover that whalesong shares a property of human language never before found in the animal kingdom.