The five countries of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) have overcome years of disagreements about letters and diacritical marks to agree on a common Latin alphabet for their languages that consists of 34 letters.

In a first, AI models analyze language as well as a human expert If language is what makes us human, what does it mean now that large language models have gained “metalinguistic” abilities? www.quantamagazine.org/in-a-first-a...

The latest bonus episode of the @Lingthusiasm podcast interviews linguist Claire Bowern @chirila.bsky.social about the mysterious Voynich manuscript from the early 1400s, which contains an undeciphered (and perhaps undecipherable) script. www.patreon.com/posts/144558...

From “skibidi” to “brain rot,” the words dominating your child’s group chat might sound like nonsense—but linguists say there's more to these words than you might think. Here’s the psychology behind ‘6-7’ and ‘skibidi': www.madeformums.com/apple-news/t...

🗣️ Men speak with vocal fry just as much as women 🤖 Merriam-Webster chooses “slop” as the 2025 Word of the Year 🌟 Gaelic and Scots recognized as official languages in the UK 🇨🇦 Canada’s prime minister called out for using British spelling 🌐 Why people feel entitled to correct your grammar online

Slang terms like ‘six-seven’ have no definition. But they’re loaded with meaning Older generations are demanding explanations of the viral phrase—but slang doesn’t have to make logical sense. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New words are good, actually www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

This week I joined Jess Zafarris @jesszafarris.bsky.social on the Grammar Girl podcast @grammargirl.bsky.social to talk about the 2025 words of the year! We explain each of the words chosen by different organizations this year and give our reactions. Have a listen at the links! ⬇️

Canada’s Prime Minister called out for ‘utilizing’ British spelling This one’s a little funny to me, because Canada’s spelling conventions are an interesting mix of American and British conventions in the first place. www.bbc.com/news/article...

And if you want to learn more about all the words (over 30!) connected to “one” (for one million!) in English, here’s the place to go: Website: linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/one/ Substack: open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

Linguistic Discovery’s social media channels reached a combined total of 1 million followers this week! 🎉

Scholars claim to have determined the language of mysterious glyphs of Teotihuacan, the site of the most well-known Mesoamerican pyramids 🧵

@merriam-webster.com chooses “(AI) slop” as the 2025 Word of the Year M-W defines the word as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.”. www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/wor...

Pretty cool that I'm a top 0.5% creator with @buffer.com! And mind boggling that I made 2,500 posts this year 😲 I've been so happy with Buffer since I started using it back in 2021. I definitely recommend it for any creators looking for a way to schedule content. #ContentCreator #SocialMedia

I'm relieved @merriam-webster.com chose "slop" as the word of the year! I recorded a WOTY episode Friday with @jesszafarris.bsky.social and @linguisticdiscovery.com, and M-W hadn't made its choice yet. But The Economist & Macquarie Dictionary had already chosen "slop," so it's in the show.

AI is helping reconstruct damaged Latin inscriptions Google DeepMind and historians created an AI tool called Aeneas that can predict the missing words in Latin inscriptions carved into stone walls and pottery sherds from the ancient Roman Empire. www.newscientist.com/article/2489...

How the TikTok algorithm created new words like ‘unalive’ Adam Aleksic @etymologynerd.bsky.social talks about his recent book ‘Algospeak,’ which details how algorithms are changing our vocabulary www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

The K-pop band Big Ocean’s members are all deaf or hard of hearing, and they incorporate Korean Sign Language into all their videos and performances—and fans love it www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/w...

Slay the new slang: check out a guide to social media’s baffling lingo Language is evolving rapidly in a world of social media. This millennial reviewer finds Adam Aleksic’s @EtymologyNerd.bksy.social Algospeak to be a much-needed helping hand www.newscientist.com/article/mg26...

👀 POV: Me at Parties 🎊 🧑🏽 Other Person: "What do you do?" 👨🏼 Me: "I'm a linguist." 🧑🏽 (excitedly) "Cool! How many languages do you speak?" 👨🏼 (tediously) "Linguistics isn't about how many languages you speak. It's the science of how language works." 🧑🏽(bored) “Oh. … Cool.” (continued...)

The mysterious Dhofari pre-Islamic script from Oman has finally been deciphered A linguist saw a string of 26 characters with no repeats and realized it was an abecedary—a list of letters of the alphabet. He then matched the letters to their corresponding sounds in other scripts in the region.

Here’s what happened this week in language and linguistics! - Some dogs can learn categories like human toddlers do - New study maps how we simultaneously process different words - Bringing the Navajo language to *Rez Ball* - How Wiki for Minorities is helping preserve languages in Nigeria

Here’s a brand new handbook on conlanging (inventing languages) that focuses on worldbuilding and linguistic typology (the grammatical patterns we see in the world’s languages). Amazon: amzn.to/48q6GRy Bookshop: bookshop.org/a/110785/978...

What is linguistics? (wrong answers only)

“Predator: Badlands” is the first film in the franchise where much of the dialogue is in the alien hunters’ language. Director Dan Trachtenberg wanted to make sure the Yautja and their culture felt authentic in the film.

A young Anishinaabe roboticist has created a new language teaching robot, SkoBot, designed to be an interactive way for children to learn and preserve their indigenous languages. www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/t...

Oh you’re a linguaphile? Then let’s see your 12th Edition Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, cuz otherwise wyd @merriam-webster.com

As a refresher, **Gaelic** is a Celtic language (related to Irish, Welsh, and others) also known as Scottish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic. It is typically pronounced /ˈɡælɪk/ (whereas Irish Gaelic is typically pronounced /ˈɡeɪlɪk/, although in the U.S. you’ll often just hear /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ for both). 1/

The Scottish Gaelic and Scots languages are now recognized as official languages in the UK. “The Scottish Languages Act also empowers parents to ask for a Gaelic school to be established in their area and aims to ensure that more qualifications are available in Gaelic.

🦌 📸 Helen Cherry (Instagram: @HelenJCherry)

Both @academic.oup.com and @dictionarycom.bsky.social chose ragebait as their word of the year I guess:

“ragebait” is Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year @academic.oup.com I wonder if this makes “ragebait” autological… www.nytimes.com/2025/11/30/a...

Here's what happened this week in language and linguistics! 📰 Website: linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/2025-48/ Substack: open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

How do you define “language”? Linguist Charles F. Hockett proposed 16 design features of language—and one of them is the ability to lie! But what if your language didn’t allow you to lie? What would language be like?

We’re @lingthusiasm.bsky.social stans around here

The Mapping Black Language project is working to document how Black Americans speak, and how their language shifts and varies—and they’re looking for people to interview

The word “hibernate” derives from the Latin word “hiems” ‘winter’, which would seem to imply that there’s a Latin-derived word for ‘summering’ as well—and there is! May I present “estivate” (or “aestivate”), ‘to spend the summer in a certain place or doing a certain activity’. 😎

Here’s an article with 9 fun Christmas etymologies from @dannybate.bsky.social The etymologies are: Carol Hark Reindeer Icicle Sleigh Tinsel Mistletoe Antler Snow dannybate.com/2024/12/23/a... #Christmas #etymology #linguistics #language #history #winter

The earliest form of writing wasn’t used to write language at all—it was used to count! And the way they did it still influences our mathematics today. Here’s a look at how the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians counted and how it gave rising to cuneiform, the world’s first writing system. 🧵

“Mele Kalikimaka” is the Hawaiian pronunciation of the phrase “Merry Christmas”. But why is the Hawaiian pronunciation so different from the English? Find out how Hawaiian restructures borrowed words to fit its own sound system in this issue of the Linguistic Discovery newsletter ⬇️

The word explode literally means “to clap outward” (ex “out, away from” + the Latin plaudere “to clap,” same root verb as “applaud”). Its original meaning in English, c. 1500s, was to reject something. “Not that I wholly Explode Astrology; I believe there is something in it.” — Francis Bacon, 1696

Skobot: A robot designed to help preserve indigenous languages www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

Fighting linguistic prescriptivism one reader at a time 💪🏼 open.substack.com/pub/linguist...

linguistics, n. — the scientific study of language Today is World Linguistics Day! Here’s what linguistics is all about. #WorldLinguisticsDay #linguistics #science #language #dialect #accent #phonetics #syntax #words #grammar

What’s turkey got to do with the country of Turkey? Why doesn’t the bird have a Native American name since it’s indigenous to the Americas? @robwords.bsky.social has your answers in this deep dive into the etymology of the word “turkey”. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJJs...

Why are turkeys named after different countries in every language? youtu.be/5SQWEw7TSs4?...

Why do so many football coaches emphasize Southern accents? Linguistics experts explain www.nytimes.com/athletic/661...

‘Algospeak’ says we’re living through a linguistic revolution Adam Aleksic, known to his many online followers as @etymologynerd.bsky.social, writes about the ways social media is changing language. www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

“6-7” belongs in the dictionary, actually In defense of @dictionarycom.bsky.social's Word of the Year Website: linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/67/ Substack: linguisticdiscovery.substack.com/p/67

The Harvard-educated linguist breaking down ‘skibidi’ and ‘rizz’ Adam Aleksic, who posts as @etymologynerd.bsky.social, argues in a new book that algorithms are reshaping the English language.