linguistics

Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing

Fascinating account on the BBC News site of the quest to crack proto-Elamite, the oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets.&...

READ MORE | 24 Oct 2012

Cracking the code of machine translation

An amazing step forward in the translation of languages has been made thanks to human and artificial intelligence working together. According to an article in this week's New Scientist, treating langu...

READ MORE | 22 Jun 2011

Evolution of Language Takes Unexpected Turn

April's Wired Science article announces that the notion of there being a universal way in how languages evolve, affected by place, culture and the common linguistic structures in our brain might be ch...

READ MORE | 2 Jun 2011

Babel or babble?

Thought-provoking article in last week's Economist on the evolution of language. New research appears to confirm the theory that all languages originated in Africa. Just as humanity's origins demonstr...

READ MORE | 21 Apr 2011

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

Guy Duetscher's article on Does Your Language Shape How You Think? that appeared in The New York Times Magazine in August gets our vote for the best writing on language in 2010. In this fascinati...

READ MORE | 19 Dec 2010

Accent Speaks Louder Than Race for Finding Friends

It would appear that children prefer to make friends with those whose speech patterns, rather than skin colour, mimic their own, according to a new study reported on Discovery News. The issue of accen...

READ MORE | 18 Mar 2010