Five-Star Lies: The Linguistics of Fake Reviews
Ever wondered if that glowing five-star review is too good to be true? This article delves into the fascinating world of forensic linguistics to reveal the subtle linguistic clues—from pronoun…
Linguistics
The Language of Avoidance: In-Law Tongues
Imagine having to learn a completely separate vocabulary just to be in the same room as your mother-in-law. For speakers of the Australian Aboriginal language Dyirbal, this wasn't a joke—it…
The Tongue’s Blind Spots: Unmakeable Sounds
Your mouth is a remarkable instrument, capable of producing an astonishing range of sounds. But like any instrument, it has physical limits. This exploration of articulatory phonetics reveals the "blind…
How to Own Without ‘Have’: The Be-Languages
In languages like English, you 'have' a book. But in Russian, Irish, or Turkish, you would say "to me there is a book". This fundamental grammatical difference explores the world…
The Dictionary’s Phantom: Hunting for Mountweazels
What if some of the words in your dictionary were complete fabrications, planted by clever editors as copyright traps? These phantom words, known as "mountweazels", have haunted the pages of…
The Unspoken Tutor: How Games Teach Language
How do video games teach us to navigate new worlds and master complex actions without a single word of instruction? They use a powerful, unspoken language built from mechanics, level…
The Scribe’s Mistake: Errors in Medieval Texts
Before the printing press, every book was a handmade original, and every scribe made mistakes. Far from being mere blemishes, these scribal "bloopers" are a treasure trove for historians and…
The Child Who Forgot to Speak: Childhood L1 Attrition
We often worry about losing a second language, but what happens when a child starts to forget their first? First-language attrition is the poignant phenomenon where a child's mother tongue…
The Milliseconds Before You Speak
Before a single sound leaves your lips, your brain performs an incredible series of high-speed calculations. In just a few hundred milliseconds, it races from a vague idea to a…
10 Biases AI Learned From Our Writing
AI models learn language from us, warts and all. From reinforcing gender stereotypes in professions to assuming a Western-centric worldview, the vast library of our writing has baked subtle and…
10 Endangered Scripts to Watch in 2025
Long before a language falls silent, its unique writing system can fade into obscurity. This post explores ten beautiful and endangered scripts, from the vertical Mongolian alphabet to the Philippines'…
10 Game Localization Hurdles for 2025
Translating a video game isn't just about swapping words; it's about rebuilding an entire world for a new audience. From untranslatable puns to UI that breaks under the weight of…
10 UX Writing Rules from Linguistics
Every button, menu, and error message you read is a piece of micro-linguistics. This article reveals 10 crucial rules of UX writing, grounding them in core linguistic principles like Grice's…
Beyond Nominative: 10 Coolest Grammatical Cases
If you think cases are just for Latin or German, think again. This listicle dives into ten of the most fascinating grammatical cases from around the world, from Finnish's "Translative"…
Spot the Bot: 10 Cues of Deepfake Audio
As AI voice cloning masters the art of imitation, telling human from machine is becoming a crucial skill. This guide delves into 10 subtle linguistic and phonetic giveaways, from robotic…
Top 10 Linguistics Jobs for 2025
Think a linguistics degree only leads to a career in academia or translation? Think again. This article explores the top 10 booming careers for linguists in 2025, from designing AI…
The Law of Vowel Harmony
Ever wonder why languages like Turkish or Finnish sound so uniquely melodic? The secret lies in a hidden linguistic rule called vowel harmony, a principle where all the vowels within…
Lost in Translation: Brand Name Blunders
Ever wonder what happens when a catchy brand name in English means something utterly embarrassing in another language? From cars named after slang for private parts to slogans that sound…
The Brain’s Autocorrect: Error Repair in Speech
We constantly misspeak, yet our conversations flow with surprising smoothness. This is thanks to "speech repair", the brain's subconscious autocorrect system that detects our own verbal errors mid-word. This remarkable…
The Accent Ceiling: Does Your Voice Limit Your Pay?
Beyond the glass ceiling lies a more subtle barrier: the accent ceiling. Sociolinguistic and economic research reveals how subconscious bias against non-standard accents isn't just a social slight—it's a measurable…