Sütterlin: The Handwriting That Divided Generations
In the early 20th century, Ludwig Sütterlin designed a unique handwriting script that became the standard in German schools, only to be abruptly banned by the Nazis in 1941. This…
Language Policy
The Banned Letter: The History of Ukrainian’s ‘Ґ’ and ‘Ї’
Explore the fascinating political history of the Ukrainian alphabet, where a single letter can act as a revolutionary symbol. This post delves into why the Soviet Union banned the letter…
Narkamaŭka vs. Taraškievica: A Tale of Two Spellings
Explore the fascinating linguistic divide in Belarus, where the choice between the official "Narkamaŭka" spelling and the classical "Taraškievica" is more than just grammar—it's a political statement. This article delves…
Why China Abandoned the “Latin of the East”
For over two millennia, the Sinosphere was united by a written language completely divorced from spoken speech—a "Latin of the East" accessible only to the elite. This post explores the…
The Aras River Divide: One Language, Two Writing Systems
Separated by the Aras River and two centuries of divergent history, the Azerbaijani language exists in a unique sociolinguistic split: one language spoken by millions but written in two completely…
A Century of Change: Azerbaijani’s 4 Script Swaps
In the 20th century, Azerbaijani speakers were forced to change their official alphabet three times—from Perso-Arabic to Latin, to Cyrillic, and back to Latin. This article explores the political maneuvers…
Cyrillic Persian: Why Tajik Scripts Changed 3 Times
Tajik is the only variety of the Persian language officially written in Cyrillic, a result of turbulent 20th-century Soviet policies that saw the script change three times in two decades.…
Surpassing Tagalog: The Massive Reach of Cebuano
For most of the 20th century, Cebuano, not Tagalog, held the title for the most native speakers in the Philippines, dominating the Visayas and Mindanao. We explore the history of…
One Language, 17,000 Islands: The Rise of Indonesian
Discover the fascinating linguistic history behind the world's fourth most populous nation. We explore how the 1928 "Youth Pledge" united 17,000 islands by rejecting the majority language in favor of…
The Bloody Origins of International Mother Language Day
Did you know that International Mother Language Day was born from a massacre? Discover the moving history of the 1952 Language Movement in Dhaka, where students sacrificed their lives to…
Ithaca & Ulysses: The Greek Diglossia Struggle
For over a century, Greece was locked in a fierce linguistic civil war between Katharevousa, an artificial "high" language of the elite, and Demotic, the natural tongue of the people.…
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 village of St Austell, it ignited a surprisingly fierce linguistic…
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 Movement." This is more than a debate about grammar; it's…
Language, Purity, and Power
This post explores the often-overlooked link between linguistic purism and exclusionary politics. We move beyond simple vocabulary debates to investigate how the drive to "purify" a language of foreign influences…
The Kazakh Alphabet Switch: A Nation’s Identity
Kazakhstan is undertaking a monumental linguistic and cultural shift, transitioning its national script from Cyrillic to Latin. This deep dive explores the complex history, political motivations, and fierce linguistic debates…
Japan’s ‘Hentaigana’: The Lost Characters
Before Japanese script was standardized in 1900, writers used a vast and beautiful array of variant cursive characters known as 'hentaigana'. Born from the simplification of multiple Chinese characters for…
The First Language Ban: The Story of the Acadian Expulsion
The Acadian Expulsion of 1755 was far more than a military maneuver; it was one of North America's first major language-based conflicts. British authorities, viewing the French language as a…
The Data Drought: Why Some Languages Are Invisible to AI
Why can AI translate French perfectly but struggles with Navajo or Swahili? The answer lies in the "data drought", a massive digital divide where a few "high-resource" languages have an…
The Brazil-Portugal Spelling War
Imagine a civil war fought not with weapons, but with dictionaries. For decades, Brazil and Portugal have been locked in a cultural and linguistic struggle over how to write their…
What is a Language Worth? The Economics of Extinction
Can you put a price tag on a language? This article explores the emerging field of linguistic valuation, where economists and lawyers attempt to calculate the monetary value of a…