The Syntax of Scent: Can We Ever Truly Describe Smells with Words?
Why can we describe a shade of blue with a dozen words, but struggle to articulate the scent of rain? Our language seems to fail us when it comes to…
Semantics
The Euphemism Treadmill: Why We Can’t Stop Inventing New Words for Old Taboos
Ever wonder why we have a dozen words for the toilet? This is the "euphemism treadmill," a linguistic cycle where our polite words for taboo subjects inevitably become tainted by…
The Ghost in the Machine: How Linguists Teach Computers to Understand Ambiguity
Ever wonder how your phone knows you mean the band Queen, not a monarch? This post explores the linguistic challenge of ambiguity and the clever statistical methods, like n-grams and…
A Word to Name the Unspeakable: Raphael Lemkin and the Creation of “Genocide”
Discover the powerful story of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust and created a new word to name the unspeakable. By combining the Greek…
Seeing Blue: How the Language You Speak Changes Your Perception of Color
Do you see the same "blue" as a Russian speaker, who has two distinct words for the color? The fascinating link between language and color perception reveals that our vocabulary…
Polysemy in English: The Complexity of Word Meanings
Language is a fascinating and complex system of communication that is as diverse as the human race itself. It serves as a window into the...