Sign of the Times
Speech, rather than hearing, has been at the heart of the long history of deaf exclusion.
Language
Easy as ABC
What were the origins of the alphabet, before the Greeks?
Explicit Content
Rude words are a constant, but their ability to cause offence is in flux. Historians should know their flim-flam from their fiddle-faddle.
Learning Japanese
Official secrecy and institutional rivalry obscured the achievements of two crash programmes hastily launched to teach Japanese during the Second World War.
Things, Many and Varied
How the index helps us to understand, categorise and engage with the world.
The Power of the Pen
The writing of constitutions is a forgotten artform.
Medieval Minims
The hidden meaning of a medieval pen-twister.
The Invention of Chinese
Believing language would unify their struggling nation, Chinese officials began a project to create a national language and define what it meant to speak Chinese.
‘Did You Hear the One …’
What to do when a good joke becomes bad taste.
Making Massacre
A Dutch conspiracy trial in the Indonesian archipelago gave birth to a sadly enduring English word.