Sociolinguistics

Guaraní: The Indigenous Language That Won

Unlike almost everywhere else in the Americas, the indigenous language of Paraguay, Guaraní, is spoken by the vast majority of…

1 week ago

Wampum Belts: Diplomacy Woven in Beads

Long before the invention of the computer, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy utilized a binary system of white and purple shells to…

1 week ago

The Stroop Effect: A Bilingual Brain Test

Ever tried to say the color of a word when the text itself spells a different color? This is the…

1 week ago

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…

2 months 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…

2 months 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…

2 months 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…

2 months 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…

2 months 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…

2 months 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…

2 months ago

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