Language

In this page from Confessionario En lengua Castellana y Timuquana Con algunos consejos para animar al penitente (Confessions in the Castilian and Timucua Language, with some tips to encourage the penitent.), Spanish is at left and the translation of Timucua is at right.

With Their Knowledge Combined, Two Scholars Are Deciphering a Long-Lost Native Language

A historian and a linguist, working together, revealed new truths about the relationship between Spanish colonizers and the Timucua people

One of the scrolls carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

You Could Win $1 Million by Deciphering These Ancient Roman Scrolls

The Herculaneum scrolls have remained unreadable since their discovery in 1750, but researchers hope to change that

The resort sits at the base of Palisades Tahoe, a ski resort that dropped the slur from its name two years ago.

California Resort Drops Racial Slur From Its Name

The resort worked with representatives from the Washoe Tribe to implement the name change

Dictionary.com regularly adds new words with staying power to its online listings.

Dictionary.com Adds More Than 300 New Words

Additions like “digital nomad,” “anti-fat” and “liminal space” reflect the dynamic nature of the English language

The comb found by archaeologists in 2016

What a Comb Can Tell Us About the History of the Written Word

A curious new find yields clues to the origins of the alphabet

How much advance warning would we have if a large comet were headed on a collision course with Earth?

How Much Warning Would We Have of an Earth-Shattering Comet? And More Questions From Our Readers

You’ve got questions. We’ve got experts

Instead of transitioning between Latin and English, spoken Latin keeps the cognition all in one language.

Spoken Latin Is Making a Comeback

Proponents of the teaching method argue that it encourages engagement with the language and the ancient past

The 12- by 12-inch runestone dates back to between 1 and 250 C.E.

Cool Finds

'Sensational' Runestone Discovered in Norway May Be the World's Oldest

The find promises to shed new light on lingering questions about runic writing's early history

Examples of computing hardware architecture supporting an AR and IR environment inside a car of the near future are displayed at the Valeo booth at CES 2023 in Las Vegas.

Eight Cool New Technologies From This Year's Consumer Electronics Show

Flying cars, live-translation eyeglasses, self-driving strollers and more were unveiled at the annual trade show in Las Vegas

Robert Burns, the renowned Scottish poet most famous for writing “Auld Lang Syne” 

Cool Finds

This Rare Robert Burns Book Was Discovered in a Barber Shop, Where It Was Used to Clean Razors

The rarely seen copy of the Scottish writer's debut poetry collection is now on display

Historian John Rice Irwin, linguist Carl Croneberg and historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Three Pioneering Scholars Who Died This Year

They believed that the stories of marginalized communities were worth chronicling

To select a winner, Oxford editors track trending words and phrases throughout the calendar year.

'Goblin Mode' Is Oxford's 2022 Word of the Year

The term describes behavior that's "unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy"

Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, a film adaptation of the 1938 play Gas Light

'Gaslighting' Is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year

Searches for the term, defined as the "practice of grossly misleading someone," skyrocketed in 2022

The Hand of Irulegi

Cool Finds

This 2,000-Year-Old Inscription Changes Our Understanding of the Basque Language

The words are engraved on a bronze hand that archaeologists unearthed in northern Spain

Previous research has demonstrated that crows can make tools and recognize faces.

Scientists Suggest a New Layer to Crows’ Cognitive Complexity

The birds may be able to grasp a pattern-forming concept once thought to be unique to humans

The comb is made of ivory and inscribed with the sentence: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

Scientists Translate the Oldest Sentence Written in the First Alphabet

Inscribed on a Canaanite comb, the words reveal a struggle with head lice

About one in five students has a language-based learning disability. 

Scientists Identify Genes Linked to Dyslexia

In the largest study of its kind, researchers pinpointed 42 genetic variations tied to the language-based learning disability

The project started eight years ago, when artists Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott had no words to describe the anxiety they were experiencing over California’s drought.

Art Meets Science

How Two California Artists Can Help Personalize Your Eco-Grief

Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante founded the Bureau of Linguistical Reality to create words to help describe people's feelings about climate change

“The first people to look at the Rosetta Stone thought it would take two weeks to decipher,” says Edward Dolnick, author of The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone. “It ended up taking 20 years.”

Trending Today

Two Hundred Years Ago, the Rosetta Stone Unlocked the Secrets of Ancient Egypt

French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs on September 27, 1822

The artificial intelligence has looked for patterns between audio recordings and the brain activity of people listening to those recordings. 

By Reading Brainwaves, an A.I. Aims to Predict What Words People Listened to

The research is a long way off from practical use, but researchers hope it might one day aid communication for people who experienced brain injuries

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