Today is Exelauno Day, so named because “Exelauno” means “march forth” in ancient Greek. My Greek 2 teacher used to celebrate it because he had gone to Roxbury Latin School, where it is (or at least was) an official holiday…. Read More ›

If you need the full explanation, visit explainXKCD.

Is there really such a language as Texas German? The answer is yes. So why is it—according to my informal (and totally unscientific) poll—that everyone has heard of Pennsylvania German (usually, however, called by the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch, where “Dutch”… Read More ›

Well, the question is “Which Indo-European language, spoken by many Jews mostly around the Mediterranean, is derived from Old Spanish but is not Castilian nor Catalan nor any other language that most Americans have heard of?” The answer, as you… Read More ›

The problem here is not what you’re thinking if you’re a non-linguist: most non-linguists think of language as writing, and they know that written Chinese looks intimidating. But language is primarily speaking, not writing, and the person quoted here is… Read More ›

I was looking through the newest information from Medicare, which looked to my untrained eyes just like the previous version and the one before that and the one before… What caught my eye won’t surprise you: some sentences (presumably equivalent… Read More ›