Accurate and dependable machine translation has long been a dream among linguists and computer scientists alike. Will computers get there eventually? Possibly.  Continue reading...

Here in the Lounge, we've been thinking (not surprisingly!) about the language of the 25th Amendment.  Continue reading...

Long, cold winter nights lend themselves to absorption in a good narrative and if you're looking around for one, you could hardly do better than Frankenstein which was published on January 1, 1818.  Continue reading...

Apparently, one of the things that is making our Facebook feeds appetizing is a sauce—a combination of metrics mixed in exactly the right proportions to make this particular meal ever appealing.  Continue reading...

With the Halloween season now safely behind us for another year, I can bring to light a feature of it that has haunted me in recent weeks.  Continue reading...

Martin Luther is a fascinating study for any lover of language because his entire conflict with and banishment from Catholicism were conducted through speech and writing.  Continue reading...

From a linguistic perspective, the now burgeoning field of genetic genealogy provides an interesting case study for the ways in which we develop new terminology for new concepts, picking and choosing among the raw materials we have (that is, words) to designate things for which we didn't have or need particular names before.  Continue reading...