stevethevagabond

Etymology and Cardi B.

By Tiffany Marcum If you use Instagram, Vine, listen to pop radio, or have seen any of the Love and Hip Hop series, you may know who I am describing already. Ca...

Ancient antagonists: how our ancestors cursed at each other. Part one — the Greeks

By Joana Atanasova We naturally perceive our ancestors as the “old and wise” ones. “Listen to your grandfather! He knows better!” is what your mom would say whe...

What’s In an Accent?

By Stefano Nunes I would like to begin by stating the simple fact that there is no such thing as “not having an accent”. Every language has accents; if they are...

Dispatches from Linguists: Dinner with the In-Laws, Language Barriers

By Rachael Brown This month the Dispatch is from Rachael Brown, who narrates a humorous tale of learning German and how this can bring an extra level of stress ...

Some Linguistic Customs Around the World

By Valentin Pradelou There are as many varieties of language as there are customs attached to these languages. It is easy to note, when learning a new language,...

Seeing and Unseeing

By Gil Cohen Ever heard of the saying: “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it”? Let’s say you have a friend who has a habit of chewing very loudly, but you don’t ...

The Best of the World's Untranslatable Words

By Catherine Muxworthy Every language has words in it that are unique to it, that don't translate exactly as a singular word or idea from one language into anot...

The Big DON’Ts of Language Learning: Don't Look for ONE method

By Alessio F. Bona The promise of “the best way” to do a certain thing is a very tempting one. Advertisements and click-baits are full of such promises: the bes...

"Mum, I Missed the Plane!" and Other Translations of Film Titles

By Rebekah Bradshaw In many ways, Hollywood, and popular culture more generally, has become a kind of lingua franca for the younger generations across the globe...

Ancient antagonists: how our ancestors cursed at each other. Part two — the Romans.

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK By Joana Atanasova There is such a vast amount of ancient profanities that are worth the read, that I just simply couldn’t lea...

Monkey see, monkey do, monkey speak

How Yerkish helps us understand primates By Joana Atanasova Every now and then an article from a sketchy website would come up on my newsfeed, claiming that the...

How to read Japanese characters and why it is so hard and interesting at the same time

By Linguipixie Reading Chinese characters can be difficult already, since you need to memorize both the meaning and the pronunciation of a character, but Japane...

Assembly of Animals: The Origins of Collective Names

Written for our Silly Linguistics magazine By Catherine Muxworthy Collective names – such as a pride of lions, a swarm of bees or a pack of dogs – are used to d...

Learning languages through media

I taught myself German and it was a long arduous process. With Swedish I wanted to take it easy and do things a bit differently. So I just watched music videos ...

Language - tree or machine?

Are languages like trees? Did they grow and evolve slowly over time? Or did they get invented by some clever person and require knowledge and skill to operate a...

What do the words "not" and "wight" have in common?

If you have been watching Game of Thrones, then you would have heard the word "wight". In literature this word is used to refer to some kind of supernatural ent...

Why do "busy" and "bury" have U's in them?

Languages are messy. They borrow words from each other, have irregular verbs and their spelling systems can sometimes do with a bit of work. Writing is a techno...

The story of how the word "stone" came to be

A long time ago, in the Bronze Age, there were a group of people living in Scandanavia. These people would eventually become the Germanic people. The people liv...

What is the Japanese word for sushi?

This question, though at first absurd, can be a great jumping off point for a discussion about language. When does a word become a part of a language? And what ...

Grammar

...