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Category: Language

By The Generalist Posted on April 13, 2022April 12, 2022

Double borrowing

The English language is notorious for borrowing words from other languages. And sometimes it borrows them more than once.

Categories: Europe, Language
By The Generalist Posted on February 8, 2022January 25, 2023

Cryptographic magic

Steganographia is a late 15th / early 16th century German book of magic… but it’s not actually about magic.

Categories: Early modern history, Europe, Language, Literature, Mathematics & statistics, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on December 8, 2021December 8, 2021

Deciphering a secret society manual

Around 1730 a German secret society recorded their initiation rituals in an encrypted manuscript. In 2011, that cipher was finally decoded.

Categories: 21st century history, Early modern history, Europe, Language, Literature, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on December 3, 2021January 25, 2023

Donald Duck’s voice

Donald Duck’s distinctive speaking style is a type of alaryngeal speech – it is made without using your voice box.

Categories: 20th century history, Film & television, Language, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on November 23, 2021November 22, 2021

Polari slang

Naff, butch, camp, and zhoosh are slang terms that came out of Polari, an argot from early 20th century English gay subculture.

Categories: 20th century history, Europe, Language
By The Generalist Posted on October 26, 2021October 25, 2021

Word history duels

Was the word “orange” first applied to the colour or the fruit? Was “Turkey” first a bird or a country? Was “duck” first an action or an animal? “Organ” the instrument or “organ” the body part?

Categories: Europe, Language, Medieval history
By The Generalist Posted on October 12, 2021January 25, 2023

The linguistics of speaking in tongues

Glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, occurs sometimes in Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian gatherings. It is supposed to be the language of God – but what does it say?

Categories: Language, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on September 7, 2021September 6, 2021

Multilingual tautologies

What do the River Avon, the Gobi Desert, and the La Brea Tar Pits have in common? Redundancy.

Categories: East Asia, Europe, Language, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on May 25, 2021May 24, 2021

Quantum crossword

Most crosswords have a single correct solution. A quantum crossword has several.

Categories: 20th century history, Games & sport, Language, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on April 29, 2021January 25, 2023

Book of lonely vowels

Christian Bök’s 2001 anthology Eunoia contains five chapters that each use just one of the five vowels.

Categories: Language, Literature, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on April 22, 2021April 28, 2021

The doubters and the oracle bones

The Doubting Antiquity School were sceptics of ancient Chinese texts’ historical veracity… until the oracle bones were deciphered.

Categories: 20th century history, Ancient history, East Asia, Language, Literature, Religion & belief
By The Generalist Posted on April 14, 2021April 28, 2021

Burmese names

Burmese people do not have surnames.

Categories: Language, Society, Southeast Asia
By The Generalist Posted on March 22, 2021April 28, 2021

Meaningful sounds (Part 2)

Why do monolingual Japanese speakers have difficulty distinguishing “l” and “r” sounds? And why do monolingual English speakers have difficulty distinguishing “t” and “th” sounds? [2 of 2]

Categories: East Asia, Language, Places, Southeast Asia
By The Generalist Posted on March 21, 2021January 25, 2023

Meaningful sounds (Part 1)

In English, what we think of as the letter “t” is actually a collection of many different sounds – but most of the time we do not notice the difference. [1 of 2]

Categories: Language
By The Generalist Posted on January 25, 2021January 25, 2023

Most consonants, fewest vowels

Ubykh, an extinct language spoken on the shores of the Black Sea, has more consonants and fewer vowels than almost any other language.

Categories: 19th century history, Europe, History, Language, North & Central Asia, Places
By The Generalist Posted on January 9, 2021January 25, 2023

Losing letters

The 2001 novel Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn depicts a town in which a totalitarian government begins banning letters – from the town and from the novel itself.

Categories: Arts & recreation, Language, Literature

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