linguistics

Somerset House in London is hosting a cultural celebration of the Peanuts comic strip in its “Good Grief, Charlie Brown!” exhibition. It is well worth a visit and there is plenty for the linguist to enjoy. Schulz helped immortalise words such as “Augh”, “good grief, “rats” and “blockhead”. He was…

With a teenager in the house currently deep into GCSE revision, the concept of time looms large in our lives. On the one hand, X days till exam time – cue panic. On the other hand, Y days till total freedom and a 10 week summer holiday – jubilation. The…

I should confess up front that I have never watched a Star Wars movie in its entirety. I have wandered past the TV on occasion when my husband and kids have been watching and once I viewed several minutes of some shooty business between Harrison Ford and what I believe…

I sometimes wonder if the Winter Olympics are the sporting event watched by the greatest number of people with absolutely no knowledge of the sports involved. Or maybe this is a peculiarly British perspective because our lack of snow and ice hampers any skiing, skating or snowboarding aspirations. At any…

My recent transatlantic travels and associated jet-lag lead me to thoughts of the traditional cures for insomnia. All I can say is, if you rely on counting sheep to fall asleep, I don’t recommend switching to the traditional English language of sheep counting highlighted in a blog post which I…

  You can learn the Korean alphabet in 1 day or less The Korean alphabet, or 한글 (Hangeul), was created during the 15th century by the court of King Sejong the Great, to help every Korean read and write the Korean language. Initially writing was the privilege of the elite…

Can you ever imagine the English language no longer existing? It seems like an unlikely thought, but that is what has happened to an estimated 400 languages over the last 100 years, which roughly equates to one tongue dying out every three months. In addition to this, the BBC reports…

We know a surprising amount of detail about some languages that are extinct, and for which there are no written records. How is that possible, and how far can we push this reconstruction of extinct languages? Reconstructing languages for which there is no record is made possible by the fact…