Languages of the World

The Sailor Who Mistook a Word for an Island

Explore the strange case of "I-da-no", a phantom island that appeared on Japanese maps for decades. This wasn't a sailor's…

4 months ago

The Brontës’ Secret Language of Gondal

Before the world knew them as the authors of *Jane Eyre* and *Wuthering Heights*, the Brontë siblings were rulers of…

4 months ago

The Forbidden Language of the Inca Court

The Inca emperors, divine rulers of a vast Andean empire, held a powerful secret—a language spoken only among themselves. This…

4 months ago

The Man Who Taught a Gorilla to Lie

The story of Koko the gorilla is filled with moments of wonder, but none are as philosophically charged as the…

4 months ago

The Sadesan Hoax: A Language That Never Was

In the early days of the internet, a mysterious language called Sadesan appeared, promising a lost branch of the Indo-European…

4 months ago

The Final Word: Verb Chaining in Papuan Languages

Imagine a sentence that lists a dozen actions before revealing the main verb at the very end. This is the…

4 months ago

Japan’s ‘Hentaigana’: The Lost Characters

Before Japanese script was standardized in 1900, writers used a vast and beautiful array of variant cursive characters known as…

4 months ago

Re-voicing the Past: The AT-ST Project

We can read the words of Charlemagne's era, but what did they actually sound like? A groundbreaking initiative called the…

4 months ago

The Verlan of French Rap

Verlan, the French back-slang born in the suburbs, found its ultimate expression in hip-hop. More than just street talk, it…

4 months ago

Indo-European vs. Sino-Tibetan Compared

A deep dive into the world's two largest language families, revealing their core architectural differences. We explore how Indo-European languages…

4 months ago

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