What can we learn about the nature of translation by comparing a mundane warning message in hundreds of different languages?

Rhetoric has a bad reputation, but in reality, it’s much more than political gibberish and snake oil.

“Bad” English might not be as bad as we think. In fact, it’s just language change in action.

Is it really harder for adults to learn new languages than it is for children? What goes into designing language learning curricula? In this episode, we explore these questions and more.

As Lead Language Researcher at Grammarly, Courtney Napoles is building AI systems to help the world better communicate.

Have you ever wondered about the name of your home country or the one you’re visiting––what it means and how it came to be?

Why do we some languages have gender while others don’t? What is it that makes some nouns “feminine” and others “masculine?”

The etymology of trivia is in plain sight: tri-via, “three roads.” But what could three roads have to do with obscure and useless information?

In this episode, linguist and author Tracey Weldon discusses the emergence of AAE, the role of code switching within AAE speech communities, AAE’s contributions to mainstream English, and more.

What does “standing under” have to do with “understanding?” Nothing, really, which is why it’s easy to overlook the fact that “understand” is actually compound comprising the words “under” and “stand.” But why?

In Old English, “world” referred not to a place, but to time. Weorold, comprising the roots wer (man) and ald (age), literally meant “the age of man”.

In this conversation with Silvia Ferrara, we discuss the invention of writing, the various writing systems that exists (and have existed) throughout the world, and methods for deciphering ancient scripts.

The etymology of grotesque is hiding in plain site: “grotto-esque”. But what does a grotto, or a small cave, have to do with being grotesque?

In Ancient Greece, an “idiot” was someone who did not hold a political office. By the 20th century, it had become a low-ranking score on the IQ test.

The Roman sense of “genius” referred neither to a brilliant person nor their works, but to a mythological deity that oversaw a man from the time of his birth to his death.

“Amok” is one of the few Malaysian loanwords in the English language that doesn’t describe local the food, flora, or fauna of Southeast Asia.

"Hyperbola" and "ellipse" are geometrical curves, but their cognates "hyperbole" and "ellipsis" are both rhetorical/literary terms. Why does this set of word pairs exist?

The meanings of “parable” and “parabola” are unrelated, yet they’re both derived from the same Greek word, parabole. The literal meaning of parabole - “a throwing aside” - also has very little to do with its derivatives. How did these developments take place?

Five decades before Google became one of the biggest tech companies in the world, the word “googol” originally referred to 10 to the 100th power.

Originally, the word “average” referred to a maritime shipping policy. The mathematical sense familiar to us today was a later development.