8 Things I’ve Learned from mental_floss Readers
Every once in awhile, commenters hit on something I probably should have known, but for whatever reason didn’t. We are always learning. Or should be, at least.
Every once in awhile, commenters hit on something I probably should have known, but for whatever reason didn’t. We are always learning. Or should be, at least.
If you like languages, you’ll love The Great Language Game. Data scientist Lars Yencken was inspired by his love of languages to create a simple game where you listen to a sample of a language, and then have to guess which language it is.
It has been two years since “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed as a military policy, but it seems to have taken up residence in our storehouse of ready-made expressions for good, which is not surprising, considering how succinctly it captures a particul
Travel back to a time when 'lady’s low toupee' and 'Master John Goodfellow' were perfectly acceptable terms for genitalia.
With the 1980 census, a three-part question was adopted that applied to everyone, giving a more complete picture of language in the U.S.
Is there any suffix more adorable than the lovely little –ling? It gives us yearlings and starlings, downy ducklings and goslings, affectionate darlings and siblings, and comforting tender dumplings. But –ling hasn’t always been so little and cute. It use
In 1992 in Japan, Fernandez Verde combined English language instruction with awkward aerobic movements to create the early morning TV show Eikaiwa taisō Zuiikin' English.
Light Warlpiri only has 350 native speakers, and none of them are older than 35 years old.
“Blown to smithereens” is such a great, colorful phrase. Almost everyone knows exactly what you mean, without being able to define what exactly a smithereen is. What the heck are they?
Some of the biggest and most lasting changes to language happen slowly and imperceptibly—but these days, it's possible to spot subtle linguistic changes by analyzing large digital collections of text.
These passages from old English textbooks aren't wrong—but they don't sound quite right, either.
So you think you have the fortitude to learn Klingon? Let's find out.
Chinese characters are made up of strokes. Learning to write them involves not only learning where all the strokes go, but also the order in which they are supposed to be written and the direction of each individual stroke (left to right, up to down, etc.
Rules of language games in other languages may vary, but here are some general guidelines for fun in 11 different languages.
It goes back to German anthropologist Friedrich Blumenbach.
If you're a kid learning how to write, English spelling can seem like a cruel prank.
In the 1950s and 60s, the U.S. Army conducted training exercises using an imaginary enemy named, quite simply, Aggressor. The soldiers assigned to play the part of Aggressor troops had to speak a different language: Esperanto, the language of peace.
Taboos against what we would consider pretty mild exclamations led swearers of years past to come up with creative substitutions, and they've left their mark on our vocabulary.
A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles is a wonderful place to search or browse through the wordy history of our neighbors to the North.
Hamlet has been translated into hundreds of languages. But normal human languages can be so, well, normal. These seven translations go beyond the normal, right into the awesome.
There are millions of people, even in the mostly monolingual US, who speak more than one language at home. Competence in three languages is not unusual. But what about 10, 20, 30, 100 languages? What's the upper limit on the number of languages a person c
We know that infant chickens are called chicks and baby ducks are called ducklings—but how should we refer to the newborn offspring of animals that don’t often get cooed over in their early developmental stages?