Language

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

English has a lot of words taken from French.. and some that we have ‘borrowed’ twice

Why do some British broadcasters appear to suffer from a linguistic inferiority complex about natural English grammar?

Comanche was once a powerful imperial language, but there are fewer than 100 native speakers today

A brand of English made it all the way to Iwo Jima – but linguists only found out thanks to a travel show on Japanese TV

The Spanish spoken by descendants of the first Europeans to colonise the US diverges from that of Mexicans and Latinos

Charting the far-flung, uninhabited countries where English was the first language ever spoken

Following a former Canary’s flightpath to Krasnodar leads to an ominous sense of history repeating itself

Brought to its knees by Covid, the UK’s travel and tourism industry is now beginning to feel the full force of Brexit as border restrictions and the end of the VAT reclaim scheme look set to deter thousands of Europeans and others

It has been in use on the subcontinent since the 1600s and now has millions of native speakers

The bungalow seems synonymous with the UK, but its origins can be traced back to north Indian languages

Accents, like any other cultural signifier, matter – and when they’re deployed in dramatic contexts they matter more

It has two meanings and a fascinating new use. Now read on... if you can be bothered, that is

Peter The Great and Nicholas II were part of a centuries-long effort to suppress the language

PETER TRUDGILL on the schools that took children away from their homes and forced them to abandon their own language and practices

PETER TRUDGILL explains how Catherine the Great’s ‘Greek Project’ led to the naming of Khersón

The same day Putin's invasion began, Karneval was due to start, and it did. But, it soon changed into Germany's largest demonstration for Ukraine so far

One region of England was still predominantly Welsh-speaking well into the 18th century – and its roots remain strong today

Polish ophthalmologist LL Zamenhof's dream of a universal language that would foster international harmony never really caught on. Nonetheless, we have to keep communicating with each other

Unpronounced letters in a word are often nothing to do with tradition, and merely the creation of snobbish scholars

The Picts, their practices and their fate are supposedly shrouded in mystery. The truth is somewhat different

The Grand Tour offered the privileged a taste of Europe’s treasures, yet they failed to embrace foreign languages

PETER TRUDGILL on how people with no common native language once communicated, and how that gave birth to the secret slang Polari