Stuttering John’s Lost Language
In the 10th century, an envoy named John of Gorze adopted a radical language-learning strategy: two years of total silence to master Arabic. But when he finally spoke, he was…
Language Acquisition
The Forbidden Experiment: Feral Children
From an Egyptian pharaoh to a Holy Roman Emperor, history is dotted with cruel attempts to discover humanity's "natural" language by raising children in silence. These "forbidden experiments", along with…
The First Family of Esperanto
L. L. Zamenhof may have invented Esperanto, but he didn't bring it to life alone. This is the story of the Zamenhof family and the first pioneers who transformed a…
The Dad Who Taped 90,000 Hours of Baby Talk
What if you could record every moment of your child's life to understand how they learn to talk? MIT researcher Deb Roy did just that, wiring his home with cameras…
Gradual vs. Abrupt Creolization
How are new languages born from scratch? This article explores the fascinating debate over creolization, contrasting the "abrupt" theory, where children create language in one generation, with the "gradual" view…
Syntactic Priming: The Echo
Ever found yourself accidentally copying the sentence structure of the person you're talking to? This isn't a coincidence; it's a fascinating psycholinguistic phenomenon called syntactic priming. Discover the unconscious 'echo'…
The βGavagaiβ Problem: How We Map Words to Reality
Imagine a speaker in a new language points to a rabbit and says "gavagai." How do you know if it means "rabbit", "animal", or even "dinner"? This famous linguistic puzzle,…
Kitchen-Table Creole: A Child’s Private Language
Ever heard a bilingual child say something that isn't quite one language or the other? This isn't a mistake, but a "kitchen-table creole"βa unique, rule-governed hybrid language they've created themselves.…
The Reduplication Spectrum: From ‘Bye-Bye’ to ‘Chit-Chat’
Reduplication isn't just baby talk like 'bye-bye' or 'choo-choo'. This surprisingly common linguistic tool is used across the world's languages to do everything from forming plurals and changing verb tenses…
How Do Babies Learn to Hear Word Breaks?
Ever wonder how babies find individual words in the continuous stream of speech they hear? It turns out their brains are incredible statisticians, unconsciously tracking syllable probabilities to figure out…
The Echo Chamber of the Mind
Echolalia, the repetition of heard phrases, is often dismissed as simple mimicry, particularly in autism. But what if these echoes are not empty sounds, but a sophisticated strategy for communication,…
Fossilized Errors: The Permanent Mistake
Why do some second-language errors become permanent, even for highly advanced speakers? This phenomenon is known as "fossilization", where certain mistakes resist correction and become a stable part of a…
The Poet’s Gene: Language in Williams Syndrome
Williams Syndrome presents a fascinating linguistic paradox where remarkable verbal eloquence and a love for unusual words coexist with significant cognitive challenges. This unique genetic condition offers a rare window…
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 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…
Does Language Make You Better at Math?
Why do children in some countries seem to learn arithmetic faster? The answer may lie not in their schools, but in their words. This article explores the surprising link between…
Why Does ‘Mom’ Sound the Same Everywhere?
From Mandarin's 'mΔma' to Swahili's 'mama', the word for 'mother' is strikingly similar everywhere, but it's not a linguistic coincidence. This universal term arises from the "Nursery Word" phenomenon, where…
Why We ‘Baby Talk’: The Science
That high-pitched, singsong voice adults use with babies is more than just cuteβitβs a powerful linguistic tool called Parentese. Far from being simple gibberish, this universal "baby talk" is scientifically…
When a Community Has No Language
Before established sign languages, how did deaf children in isolation communicate? This post explores "home sign," the remarkable gestural systems they invent from scratch. Discover how these personal languages reveal…
The Hidden Logic of Baby Babble
Is a baby's babbling just adorable, random noise? Far from it. Linguists have discovered that babbling is a highly structured practice session, where infants methodically master the sounds, rhythms, and…