Language & Linguistics

Philosophy of Language - Moore's Disbelief Although this problem has received relatively little attention, it intrigued philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein when G. E. Moore presented it to the Moral...

1. What do you call your evening meal? 2. At school, everyone played _____. 3. What do you call a medium sized lump of bread? 4. Does 'scone' rhyme with 'gone' or 'alone'? (The scone is gone; The scone is probably gone; The scone is alone) 5. Do 'put' and 'but' have the same vowel sound? ("But" rhymes with "put"; "But" and "Put" have different vowels) 6. Most spoken language: (English, Old English mixed with Scots and Viking?) Source: samesamebutdifferentblog, 2018.

"Complaint about delivery of the wrong grade of copper" - The complaint tablet to Ea-nasir is a clay tablet from ancient Babylon written c. 1750 BCE. It is a complaint to a merchant named Ea-Nasir from a customer named Nanni. Written in cuneiform, it is considered to be the oldest known written complaint and is currently kept in the British Museum.

If all of the languages spoken in the world were proportionally represented by 100 people at a party: 17 would speak Chinese, 6 would speak Spanish, 5 would speak English, 4 would speak Hindi, 3 would speak Arabic, 3 would speak Portuguese, 3 would speakBengali, 2 would speakRussian, and 2 would speak Japanese. Without a fellow speaker of their native language to talk to at the party, the other 55 would just dance awkwardly. Source: Ethnologur / The World Bank

(2 of 2) Nearly everyone all over the globe knows that flashing the middle finger is meant as a huge insult to the recipient. However, many common hand gestures which are perfectly innocent in the U.S. are in fact quite dangerous in other parts of the world. Here are seven of the most hazardous ones:

(1 of 2) Nearly everyone all over the globe knows that flashing the middle finger is meant as a huge insult to the recipient. However, many common hand gestures which are perfectly innocent in the U.S. are in fact quite dangerous in other parts of the world. Here are seven of the most hazardous ones:

This fascinating infographic by Alberto Lucas López shows how 23 of the world’s mother tongues are proportioned, and how they’re distributed around the globe.