The Emperor’s New Letters
When a Roman emperor updated the alphabet – and basically nobody listened to him.
Danny Bate, Wanderer in Language History
Linguist, writer, purveyor of pieces and fun facts on the topics of history, language and language history. Author of the acclaimed new book 'Why Q Needs U'. BA, MPhil, PhD, etc. etc.
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Latest episodes
Homer's ABCs
Why don’t people in the Iliad and Odyssey write anything down?
Sure Sugar
Shouldn’t these two English words be spelled with SH?
Did the Philistines Speak Greek?
An investigation into whether the Biblical baddies shared a language with Homer and Plato.
What the Isle of Man Teaches Us About Spelling
Meet the Manx language and its "abominable system" of spelling
You Know More Finnish Than You Think
Prehistoric and historical interactions mean that Finnish, often said to be a 'difficult' language, hides many familiar faces in its lexical layers.
Ex- a Weird Old Word Order -ploring
A return to my PhD days and the bit of ancient syntax that got away from me.
The Fates of the Dual
The status and story of Indo-European’s (mostly) lost alternative to singular and plural words.
The Inglish Language
Strange to say that there might be a spelling mistake in the name of a global language – shouldn’t it be ‘Inglish’?
Meet English’s Newest Consonant
The slow emergence of a new sound in English speech, and what it evens means to be a sound ‘of a language’.