The world’s only living natural experiment in the creation of language has happened among the deaf in Nicaragua. As Dan Rosenheck discovered, it has fundamentally changed how linguists think about one of civilisation’s greatest mysteries
Four-year-old Henry sometimes speaks English like a Dane. But Robert Lane Greene, his father, is convinced that there are cognitive benefits to raising bilingual children
Successful virtual assistants need to know how their users feel. Mark Harris speaks to the programmers making them emotionally, as well as artificially, intelligent
Luke Leitch loves fashion yet despairs at the linguistic pomposity that makes it so easy to hate
South Koreans use emoji to express playful sentiments they wouldn’t utter aloud
It used to mean a skilled worker, more craftsman than artist. Now it is applied to bread, and even lettuce
It used to mean a skilled worker, more craftsman than artist. Now it is applied to bread, and even lettuce. Tracing the rise of a vogue word
“Curating” used to mean caring for part of a museum collection. Now it means all sorts of things
We’ve had nouns being turned into verbs, and now there’s a rash of adjectives being used as nouns
