Linguistic Discovery

What linguists think everyone should know about language, according to a 2025 survey: 1) How and why do languages change? (61) 2) How do children acquire language? (58) 3) How many languages are there in the world? (51) 4) What are the benefits of learning foreign languages? (45)

20) What is the difference between learning first and subsequent languages? (21) 21) Is language change equal to language decay? (21) 22) In what ways do languages differ? (21) 23) What features are shared by (almost) all human languages? (21) 24) What does it mean to speak “correctly”? (20)

What linguists think everyone should know about language, according to a 2025 survey: 1) How and why do languages change? (61) 2) How do children acquire language? (58) 3) How many languages are there in the world? (51) 4) What are the benefits of learning foreign languages? (45)

10) What differentiates human language from animal communication? (36) 11) What is linguistics? (34) 12) Are some languages better than others? (32) 13) Are sign languages real languages? (30) 14) How common is multilingualism in the world? (29) 15) What are the different parts of speech? (28)

What linguists think everyone should know about language, according to a 2025 survey: 1) How and why do languages change? (61) 2) How do children acquire language? (58) 3) How many languages are there in the world? (51) 4) What are the benefits of learning foreign languages? (45)

🔥 Storytelling around campfires may have shaped human language 🤖 AI agents invent their own language to talk to each other 🪘 Human speech found to follow a rhythm also found in the animal kingdom 📜 A new book on lost languages 🪦 The debate on whether it’s OK to let a language die

Is AI changing how people talk? A recent study examines how people and ChatGPT adjust their language to match each other—a pattern typical of conversations between humans, who naturally mirror their partners. This is called **linguistic accommodation**.

Just learned about this book released last year! Amazon: link.amazon/B0dsAjzyq Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978... Here's the publisher's blurb ⬇️

*Unabridged* takes readers to the heart of an industry in flux, celebrating as it does the sheer thrill and wonder of words.

Just learned about this book released last year! Amazon: link.amazon/B0dsAjzyq Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978... Here's the publisher's blurb ⬇️

Along the way, he manages to write a few definitions that crack the code and are enshrined in the pixelated dictionary.

Just learned about this book released last year! Amazon: link.amazon/B0dsAjzyq Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978... Here's the publisher's blurb ⬇️

He votes on the annual Word of the Year, travels to the legendary Oxford English Dictionary, and visits the world’s greatest private dictionary collection in a Greenwich Village apartment stuffed with more than 20,000 books.

Just learned about this book released last year! Amazon: link.amazon/B0dsAjzyq Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978... Here's the publisher's blurb ⬇️

Merriam-Webster became America’s most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies—only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today.

Just learned about this book released last year! Amazon: link.amazon/B0dsAjzyq Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978... Here's the publisher's blurb ⬇️

As he recounts in *Unabridged*, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere “one of the most basic features of our collective humanity.”

Just learned about this book released last year! Amazon: link.amazon/B0dsAjzyq Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978... Here's the publisher's blurb ⬇️

Words are the currency of culture—and never more than today. From *selfie* to *doomscrolling* to *rizz*, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence.

Does the structure of society affect the type of language those people speak? Linguists have hypothesized that languages with lots of second-language learners might become simpler over time. But research from 2023 suggests the connection is more complicated than that.

A new book on the history of punctuation came out in August! Here’s the description:

Weaving together anthropology, the history of writing, the philosophy of language, psychology, literature, and more, *On the Mark* masterfully proves that punctuation is at the heart of human communication.

A new book on the history of punctuation came out in August! Here’s the description:

Across ages and cultures, amid technological revolutions and radical changes in communication, these dots and dashes have reshaped the societies that created them. From the papyruses of the ancient world to our sprawling internet ecosystem, one thing has remained constant: Punctuation is powerful.

A new book on the history of punctuation came out in August! Here’s the description:

In this irreverent and delightfully intellectual book, Florence Hazrat argues that all punctuation marks, from the most forgotten to the most ubiquitous, are worthy of our attention. After all, the history of punctuation is the history of humankind.

A new book on the history of punctuation came out in August! Here’s the description:

A recent study found that large language models are homogenizing writing styles, leading to a decrease in variation in written complexity, and an erasure of many of the written cues that convey information about a writer’s identity—age, gender, personality, empathy, moral values, or politics.

Spreadsheets are at least 4,000 years old, btw www.datafix.com.au/BASHing/2020... #NationalSpreadsheetDay

Proof that there are two ⟨th⟩ sounds in English

There aren’t very many /θ/ vs. /ð/ pairs because /ð/ is typically restricted to use in function words, while /θ/ is typically restricted to content words.

The Herculaneum scrolls are speaking again: Breaking news from Naples reveals two new ancient books not seen in 2,000 years

Using virtual unwrapping, high-resolution scanning, AI and papyrological interpretation, researchers have recovered substantial readable text from unopened carbonised scrolls found in Herculaneum. open.substack.com/pub/lifeinth...