Language

The term used to describe those typically offensive to religious or racial groups is thrown around too often in contemporary societies

The journalist Simon Jenkins claims the Celtic tribe and language did not exist. He is wrong – as Julius Caesar could have told him...

As Portugal sailed the world’s seas in the 15th and 16th centuries, its language spread globally – nowhere further than Macao

Today only the Hebridean islands remain strongholds of a language that was once dominant across almost all of Scotland

How a simple linguistic mistake linked a nymph from Greek mythology to the music genre that originated in the Caribbean

The English spoken by lesser-known white West Indians shows significant linguistic differences from that spoken by black West Indians

They endured the civil war, persecution and Franco, but the Basques are still singing

The Americans call it zee, but it is not the only letter pronounced differently in certain parts of the English- speaking world

Why do we have words that sound the same but are spelt differently? Because, in Old English, they sounded different too

History is repeating itself in Italy – and not in a good way

The Breton language of northern France does not derive from Gaulish – it has its roots in migration from Devon and Cornwall

Christianity may have driven out the old religion, but old English speakers still kept part of its language intact

Most modern European languages are thought to have originally come from one area of the vast Eurasian Steppe

Look closely at the suffix -less and you’ll find it often attached to words like reck and ruth that have ceased to exist

The language arrived in Wales much earlier than England thanks to links between Britons and ordinary Romans

Papiamentu is a young creole tongue that formed as a result of contact between many different languages during the Atlantic slave trade

The names of our cities, towns and villages are part of the linguistic heritage of Britain – but some have a complicated history

While some English words are of uncertain etymology, others have multiple origins and definitions

The familiar form is mercilessly overused in Germany. So, here's how to use it correctly

The world’s most extreme languages are on the brink of extinction as their last remaining speakers die out

How metathesis, a transposition of sounds, changes English and other languages around the world

Why King Henry VIII’s ships, not his pets, may be why we call a part of East London the Isle of Dogs

How fascist leaders in Italy, Spain, Germany and Greece all tried to control the public by stifling linguistic variety

Forget the purists – letting young Welsh speakers borrow words from English will help to preserve the language

A counting system used by children playing games was once used by shepherds for counting sheep in Cumbria

Jesus and his disciples would have spoken a Galilean dialect of Aramaic, the language of the area at the time

A backlash against looking perfect on social media has led to “goblin mode” becoming the word of the year

The melodious singing by Wales fans at the World Cup reminds us that their language was around many years before English

As the year comes to a close, what new lingo has emerged across the continent?

Why do the names of Messi and Pochettino sound like they hail from closer to Bologna than to Buenos Aires?

The language survived until the mid-1800s, long after most other Romance dialects in the Balkans disappeared

There is usually no link between how a word sounds and what it means. But there are some notable exceptions