Sociolinguistics

The Town That Fought Over Its Apostrophe

What happens when a local council tries to erase a single punctuation mark from a place name? In the English…

5 days ago

How Dr. Seuss Invented ‘Nerd’

Where did the word 'nerd' come from? The answer lies not in a dusty dictionary, but in the whimsical pages…

5 days ago

The Treaty That Had Two Meanings

New Zealand's founding document, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, exists in two languages—but it tells two different stories. A crucial…

5 days ago

The Doctor Who Invented a Writing System

Discover the forgotten story of Dr. J. W. P. Davis, a Liberian doctor who invented a unique writing system for…

5 days ago

The Telegram That Named a Country

The name "Pakistan" is famously an acronym for the homelands of Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Sindh. But a fascinating, debated…

5 days ago

The Loneliest Song: The 52-Hertz Whale

For decades, a mysterious call has echoed through the Pacific—a single voice at a frequency no other whale uses. This…

5 days ago

The Novel That Made Pidgin Literature

When Amos Tutuola published *The Palm-Wine Drinkard* in 1952, its "broken" English was celebrated abroad but scorned as a national…

5 days ago

The Campaign to ‘Speak Good English’

Explore the sociopolitical story of Singlish, Singapore's vibrant creole, and its decades-long clash with the government's official "Speak Good English…

5 days ago

A Study in ‘H’: The London Docklands Story

Ever wonder why some people say ''ouse' instead of 'house'? In the 1970s, sociolinguist Peter Trudgill conducted a groundbreaking study…

5 days ago

The Scholar Who Built a National Epic

Meet Elias Lönnrot, the 19th-century Finnish physician who traveled thousands of kilometers on foot and ski to collect the fading…

5 days ago

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