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

The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons pushed what was once Britain’s dominant language into three unconnected regions

The use of the word “guy” to refer to a man came to Britain from the US in the 1950s, but its origins are far from clear

Poet Constantine Cavafy took his own linguistic path as the argument over the form of written Modern Greek raged on

A new generation of Gaeilgeóirí, or Irish language-speakers, are pushing for their rights in Northern Ireland in a cultural revival that could bring communities closer

Despite its vast size, China insists on having only one time zone. It shows the same rigid approach to language

The former Soviet Union countries are full of Russian speakers… surely they don’t all need Putin’s protection?

Before the Romans arrived in south-west France along with Latin, people there spoke what we now call Aquitanian

Lie is a strong word and many seem to prefer to use a softer version, which has its roots in a term for fictitious stories

After 81 years of silence, modern descendants of Moriori speakers in New Zealand are now pushing for more recognition

The Italian word obbligato has come to have two entirely contradictory meanings when used in English

How two different forms of the Celtic language continue to influence modern surnames and pronunciations

Is it the small size of Scotland’s population that gives them a linguistic kink: a desire to reduce everything to the compass of a cosy domesticity?

Discoveries of tablets inscribed with curses provide an insight into the language spoken by the British lower classes

The word arrived in English in the 1500s from France along with the ‘bay-coloured cloths’ it described

Many popular musical terms have their origins in West African languages – but ‘riff’ probably isn’t one of them

A 17th-century encounter between the peoples of Newfoundland and incoming Europeans had a tragic end

The use of ‘amount’ rather than ‘number’ when referring to plural nouns is on the increase. But is it actually wrong?

Many family names in Britain seem likely to have descended from bynames of Norwegian and Danish origin

Colonialists of all stripes have squeezed the island’s indigenous languages out in favour of Mandarin and Hokkien

Archaeological evidence indicates the language was used in southern England before the Roman invasion of AD43

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but three of them need not be there at all. Could they be put to better use?

An emphasis on Russian culture has left the languages of many small, semi-nomadic peoples vulnerable to extinction

It’s all me, me, me as our linguistic expert considers a reader’s complaint about the misuse of pronouns

It is the only East Germanic language we have records of – and we only have those because of an accident of history