Language

This year’s non-word of the year, ‘Bio-deutsch’ (biological German) has caused much controversy

English spelling is notoriously difficult to learn; how might we benefit by reforming it – and what would we lose?

There is usually a way to translate supposedly untranslatable words into English – even if it does take a bit longer

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has reignited fears in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

Aberdeen may be in Scotland, but its name derives from the Welsh for river mouth. Why?

Pet names, known technically as hypocoristics, often use abbreviation, rhyming, and vowel changes to express familiarity and fondness

The verb ‘to ask’ may have already been transposed in the past, but it took a lot longer for it to be used as a noun

Oxford University Press’s word of the year suggests social media has become a drug-like distraction from the world

The pronunciation of his name has always been debatable, but its origin seems clear enough – and it’s not from the Huguenots

Sometimes when you leave the mistakes in, conversation can become even more picturesque

Trump is descended from immigrants and has a multilingual family. Why is he not more tolerant of bilingual arrivals?

Many languages, including English, contain loan words ‘borrowed’ from other languages. But there is one notable exception – Icelandic

This ethnic group of Afro-Indian origin have their own language, derived from French after their ancestors were brought to the islands as slaves

The ‘trollification’ that happens on X, Elon Musk’s online hellhole, deserves a definition

Discussions on whether there are any famous Belgians often throw up the same names – but very rarely is Beethoven one of those suggested

Our English language was brought to us across the North Sea by boatmen landing on the east coast

What links Philip Glass, Volodymyr Zelensky and Giuseppe Verdi?

Contronyms – words like ‘sanction’ and ‘cleave’ – are a puzzling phenomenon in English, in that they have two opposite meanings

The word repechage was heard regularly at this summer’s Olympics, but its modern usage bears little relation to its original meaning

Why does the Sri Lankan cricket squad have a player with such an English-sounding surname as Mathews?

Despite leaving for Santander, Britain and all its quirks will not leave me

President Erdoğan wants English speakers to pronounce his country’s name differently. Will he succeed?

Flemish physician Jan Baptist van Helmont was the first to recognise gases other than air, and coined the word ‘gas’, from the Greek ‘chaos’

Where is Han Solo when you need him?

Reports about the Olympic Games in Paris illustrate the differences in sporting language between American and British English

What do you get when you mix Ancient Greek with Scottish Gaelic? An almost flightless mountain bird

Many slang and everyday Latin words, rather than upper-class vocabulary, shaped modern languages such as French and Spanish

My relentless pursuit of French fluency and European belonging has had its ups and downs but I realise I am making progress

In medieval times a ford over a stream would have been somewhere to play, and this is reflected in their names

One of the most famous questions in English literature is often misunderstood by modern readers

Would the world be a simpler and more economical place if we all spoke the same language?

Foreign language teaching in Britain is on the decline, which risks making the country more cut-off and inward-looking than ever before