Category: games (page 2 of 2)

268: Dialect (featuring Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalioglu)

Are dying languages worth saving?

That’s the concept of a new game that allows players to explore language creation, language community, and language death, all in the course of an evening. Heavy concepts. How does it work?

Linguist Daniel Midgley

257: Alien Languages

What would an alien language be like?

The new trailer for the film Arrival has got us pretty excited, and there’s even a whole field of study called xenolinguistics. How will we know what to say when we make …

254: Plagiarism

Did Melania Trump really plagiarise that speech?

Yeah, she totally did. But how can you tell if someone is copying someone else’s work? How do plagiarism checkers work? And can you beat them?

Linguist Daniel Midgley shows his work on …

228: Ludlings

Kids love to play, and that includes playing with language.

These language games, or ludlings, are played by kids around the world, and they can be fun, or confusing, or just maddening to adults. But don’t worry.

Linguist Daniel

211: Newsbag

For this episode, we’re reaching deep into the newsbag, and showing what’s new in the world of linguistics.

What is the War on Women’s Voices? Is a popular toy spouting obscenities? And how did the language of trade floor speculation …

210: Listener Feedback

We get a lot of feedback from listeners.

So for this episode, we decided to answer questions, and settle some scores. We even ask the musical question: “How do you alphabetise your music collection?”

All on this episode of Talk

206: Baby Talk, or Not?

Everyone seems to use baby talk on babies. And linguists think it helps them learn language.

But a new study says dads don’t do it as much. Does it matter? And what kind of input helps children learn?

Linguist Daniel

205: Lost Writing

The written word lasts longer than speech, at least in principle.

But what happens when a writing system is lost in the mist of history? Lost writing can be deciphered, but these scripts have resisted all attempts.

Linguist Daniel Midgley

172: Why It’s Hard to Learn a Language

Anyone who’s tried to learn a foreign language knows that it can take a lot of work.

Yet children seem to learn languages easily. How do they do it? And why should you try learning a language?

Linguist Daniel Midgley

106: Scrabble Points

In a world of changing values, one set of values has never changed: the point values on Scrabble tiles.

Now word nerd Joshua Lewis has an idea that has some gamers reaching for pitchforks. He suggests changing the scoring values …

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