When speakers of different languages meet, their words, sounds and even grammatical structures mingle in surprising ways. Ketchup, for example, may be an American staple today, but its name entered ...

What happens to language when two populations come together? A new study in Science Advances has sought to answer that question with the help of human genetics. In fact, in a first-of-its-kind ...

George Poulos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Languages, like animal species, can go extinct. More than half of the world’s approximately 7,000 signed and spoken languages are currently endangered. And without intervention they are likely to ...

LAST February, amid the fjords of southern Chile, an elderly woman died – and a language fell silent. Cristina CalderÓn, a much-loved 93-year-old, was the last known native speaker of Yaghan, which ...

In a study, researchers tested having AI agents play a communication game with each other to mimic how humans develop language. They had an AI agent communicate a colour via a symbol, and the ...