The Aztecs didn't call him Montezuma. Nor Moctezuma. They didn't call chocolate "chocolate". Heck, they didn't even call themselves Aztec! Though they were an oral culture, we have an idea of what their language really sounded like. Here's why.
The story of a Greek town that I'm told still preserves the Spartan tongue. I explore why they don't speak like the rest of Greece and dig into their connection to ancient Sparta. Will their Tsakonian language survive?
Botched rhymes, buried puns and a staged accent that sounds more Victorian than Elizabethan. No more! Use linguistic sleuthing to dig up the surprisingly different sound of the bard's Early Modern English.
How an old letter and a printing press changed our pronunciation of a Scottish name. A story about Scots - neither English nor Gaelic!
Before you pronounce Irish names or thumb through a dictionary, you should know that Irish words do something quite unusual. They can mutate their starting sounds.
This region has a new language around every mountain. Over 50 languages and 7 language families! Learn why the Caucasus is one of the world's language hot zones.
Europe is full of languages! Actually, it may be full of ONE kind of language... Meet Standard Average European!
Whorf ignited a controversy when he claimed the Hopi don't speak or think about time the way Europeans do. Malotki wrote 600 pages to prove him wrong. Come explore Sapir-Whorf and Hopi Time! Do speakers of different languages have different concepts of time?
Do some languages change faster than others? Discover an Australian language that seemed to change incredibly fast in a generation, and meet a linguist who claimed that all tongues evolve at the same rate.
Languages change over time, but how fast? Do they all evolve at the same speed? And how long does it take before a language is no longer recognizable?
Italy's lost language? They gave Rome the alphabet, but we hardly know them. Here's how we pieced together the extinct language of an early Italian civilization.
How China's scholars uncovered its ancient imperial language and founded a linguistic tradition that's uniquely separate from the West.
Not every language talks about family the same way. Why did Latin have so many words for "cousin"? When does "brother" also mean "sister" in Hawaiʻian? How did Ashanti kin terms thwart British colonizers? An animated exploration of kinship around the world!
Sometimes two languages are close enough that speakers of one understand the other. But it's not always fair. It's easier for Danish speakers to understand Swedish than the other way around. Same goes for Portuguese and Spanish. Many other languages, too. How come?
The history behind why Danish sounds like a "throat condition". I'm told Danes speak like they have a cough, hiccups, or a potato in their throat. I did some linguistic excavating find out why.
Genghis Khan? Or Chinggis Khaan? Maybe Khagan? History's most famous conqueror kept many secrets. Yet with some clever linguistic investigation, we can reanimate the sounds of his language.
In Japan, you don't wait quietly for a conversation to finish. Be polite - chime in! This is the story behind aizuchi, why Japanese speakers talk back so much more often.
The Maya language has no past, present or future tense, and no word for "before" or "after"... yet the Maya still talk time as well as you! How?
The Maya language has no past tense, so how do they tell stories? I'll explain the complex way this tenseless language talks about events in the past.
The Georgian language has some highly unusual syllables. Here's the linguistics behind its complex consonant clusters.
Languages throughout Asia are startlingly similar, but are they all part of one huge family? Thus began the biggest fight in the history of historical linguistics.
Other languages have unique features that English just doesn't have access to. So, English, why don't you level up your skills with these linguistic tricks from around the world?
English has unusual linguistic features most other languages don't! These skills really make English unique compared to other languages around the world.
Did a Romance language survive in North Africa? What was it like? The story of a late Latin language, people who spoke it and a tour of its possible features.
Warm messages from native speakers teach me about their own languages, including some lesser-known ones. I can't even animate fast enough to cover all of them! Here are some on my mind. Which have you not heard of before?
A steppe empire's undeciphered glyphs are at the verge of recovery. Meet the Khitan language!
Meet the Mongolic languages. Mongolian, Mongguor, Mangghuer, Moghol and more!
A brief animated history of a language native to northern Japan and the edge of Siberia.
One of the world's least populous areas is actually home to about forty languages from over ten language families.