Inscriptions are the closest things we have to authentic, first-hand reports from the past. But they can...
Linguistics
Languages, like genes, are also ‘documents of history’. Abstract Historical inference is at its most powerful when...
After the Norman invasion of 1066, English went into decline as a written language. English is full...
Englishman Samuel Johnson’s work helped define the English language for readers on both sides of the Atlantic....
Neanderthals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech. When the ancestors of anatomically-modern non-Africans came...
Remember the ‘peanut gallery’ from ‘Howdy Doody’? That term, like many others we commonly use, has surprisingly...
By the sixth century gossip and defamation were viable and even preferable weapons against one’s political adversaries....
Deciphering Linear B, the earliest form of Greek, was a history-changing achievement, but decoding the older Linear...
A linguist considers whether saving languages is sentimental or critical. I met the last speaker of Naati...
Harriot had the right temperament for his diplomatic role – he was open, curious, and notably non-judgmental....
Ethnographer Daisy Bates recorded many Aboriginal languages in the early 20th century, which would otherwise be lost...
Linguists are using new technology to return decades-old recordings of near-extinct languages to the communities where they...
No one in history has ever, based on their adopting a sea-going profession, talked like Robert Newton’s...
The Abbott Papyrus from ancient Thebes / British Museum The Egyptians used a variety of terms to...
It takes about a millennium for dialects to become languages. Simple questions often yield complex answers. For...
Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. Introduction Very little is known about the Canaanite...
The silver industry influenced life in the colonial Americas and the Atlantic world on social, political, and...
What is it to understand a language, hence others? By Dr. Paul TomassiFormer Professor of PhilosophyUniversity of...
Creative Commons At the intersection of applied linguistics and journalism studies lies media linguistics. By Dr....
Dance is a unique way of passing on cultural stories to a younger generation. Aaron Hawkins/Flickr.com Many Native languages are dying,...
First lines of Beowulf from the damaged Nowell Codex Old English arose from the set of varieties...
This bilingual papyrus containing magical spells and recipes dates from the early third century A.D. and is...
Will learning sax make you better at French? Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton, CC BY-NC-ND Music is what penetrates most...
To communicate is human – but how did language originally get started? Scott Johnson, CC BY-NC-ND What can a bunch of people grunting...
It is nearly impossible for us to know or be sure about the earliest human language ever...
Could these gentlemen be early pioneers of textspeak? Council Flat Holm Project/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY Long before ‘sup’ and...
Cheeky. Tim Large Most people’s shortbread-tin ideas about the Highlands and Islands are missing a key traditional ingredient. By Dr. Peter Mackay / 10.24.2017...
Science Oxford But the British soon got the hang of profanity. By Emily Reed / 03.15.2018 Doctoral...
The terribly good Brief Encounter (1945). The BFI/Eagle Lion Distributors Is British English being swallowed up by American English – or are both versions...
TonelloPhotography/Shutterstock.com Each discipline tells us only part of the story. And so the truest picture of prehistory comes from...