language and thought

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…

6 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…

6 days ago

“Hello World”: The Birth of a Coded Ritual

The phrase "Hello, World!" is more than just the first program most coders write; it's a universal rite of passage…

6 days ago

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…

6 days ago

The Fairy Tale Behind ‘Serendipity’

The delightful word 'serendipity' wasn't a happy accident itself, but a deliberate creation by 18th-century writer Horace Walpole. Inspired by…

6 days ago

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…

6 days ago

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…

6 days ago

The Hidden ‘Event’ in Every Verb

Have you ever wondered how a simple action can be described with endless detail? The secret lies in a hidden…

6 days ago

Deconstructing a Fake Review

Ever wonder if that glowing five-star review is too good to be true? The secrets of deceptive writing are often…

6 days ago

Lexical Gaps Across Languages

Ever wonder why German has a word for taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune (*Schadenfreude*), but English doesn't? This post…

6 days ago

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