10 stories tagged language, newest first.
19 points by hangsi | 3 comments
James Somers' 2014 blog post arguing for using the 1913 Webster's Dictionary instead of modern dictionaries for its richer, more literary definitions.
66 points by Tomte | 40 comments
Anil Dash blog post arguing against the euphemism "unalive" and the platform-driven algospeak that self-censors language on social media.
43 points by speckx | 46 comments
A blog post arguing that people should stop using "google" as a verb meaning to search the web.
39 points by pepys | 12 comments
A New Yorker critical essay by Louis Menand on the history of punctuation and how it shapes reading, including what changes when machines write sentences.
369 points by biomene | 225 comments
Los Angeles Review of Books interview in which Julien Crockett talks with Ted Chiang about the search for a perfect language, the state of AI, and technology's future.
429 points by nabla9 | 400 comments
A Global China Pulse article about character amnesia, the phenomenon of Chinese speakers forgetting how to handwrite characters.
509 points by orcul | 362 comments
Scientific American article by Gary Stix on brain studies showing language is not essential for the cognitive processes underlying thought.
![Screenshot of gwern.net: Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought [pdf]](https://hn.urlbox.com/shots/renders/2024/6/22/cdc86675-2b19-489c-9146-d2abd1321636.jpg)
365 points by hardmaru | 279 comments
PDF of a 2024 paper by Fedorenko et al. arguing that language is primarily a tool for communication rather than for thought.
639 points by ahiknsr | 277 comments
Blog post excerpting Helen Keller's 1908 book The World I Live In, describing her life before she acquired language and self-consciousness.
402 points by cacher | 220 comments
A Classical Wisdom Substack newsletter post listing 12 Ancient Greek terms, such as eudaimonia and arete, that the author argues deserve modern revival.