Category: conlangs

384: Mailbag of Welcome

30 October 2019 / / Comments Off on 384: Mailbag of Welcome

Welcome to our mailbag, where all the really great questions come from.

  • Why do we say “You’re welcome”?
  • How can varelse mean ‘a being’ in Swedish, but ‘a room’ in Danish?
  • In sci-fi, what happens when the universal translator breaks?
…

339: How English Could Be Way Cooler

25 September 2018 / / Comments Off on 339: How English Could Be Way Cooler

Other languages have good ideas too, you know.

Have you noticed something cool about another language, and wished English did that? Is there any feature of another language that you wish English had?

Daniel and Hedvig are engaging in a …

245: Language Fact or Fiction?

10 May 2016 / / Comments Off on 245: Language Fact or Fiction?

Ever read a language story, and felt something was a bit off?

Does your keyboard layout affect how you feel about words? Is it true that people couldn’t see the colour blue until modern times? How are you supposed to …

244: Brain Thesaurus (featuring David J. Peterson)

3 May 2016 / / Comments Off on 244: Brain Thesaurus (featuring David J. Peterson)

Where’s the language in your brain? Researchers have constructed a kind of brain atlas, showing the patterns of neural activation when we hear words.

And Klingon is at the centre of a legal battle. Can a language be under copyright — …

162: Conlangs 2

6 May 2014 / / Comments Off on 162: Conlangs 2

Conlangs — or constructed languages — give a feeling of reality to science fiction.

But constructing or learning a language means you have to know something about the structure of language. What choices are there, and what do you need …

161: Conlangs 1

29 April 2014 / / Comments Off on 161: Conlangs 1

Conlangs — or constructed languages — bring a feeling of reality to the worlds of science fiction.

For some people, learning Dothraki or Klingon shows their true dedication. But what are conlangs like? What can they tell us about natural …

145: Esperanto

26 November 2013 / / Comments Off on 145: Esperanto

Esperanto was designed to be simple to learn, and to unite the world.

It has a lot of competition from other artificial languages, but it still tops them all. What is Esperanto like? Will it take over the world, or …

51: Songs in Invented Tongues

6 December 2011 / / Comments Off on 51: Songs in Invented Tongues

Do you ever have a hard time understanding lyrics? For some songs, it could be because the language is imaginary.

Inspired by the release of what could be the final Sigur Ros album, Linguist Daniel Midgley looks at music in …

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