Language and linguistics

Language learning: Haggis, neeps et pommes de terre

Language learning: Babies and sound perception

Infants's ability to distinguish sounds diminish as they learn their native languages(32)

Names in translation: Another cock-up

Another high-profile nomenclature embarrassment(26)

Announcements: Posting slowdown

A housekeeping note(26)

Foreign languages and thinking: Oprima dos for better cognition

A study finds that subjects make more rational choices when tested in a foreign language(89)

Business English: Useful, yes. But mandatory?

English should be encouraged, not forced, upon employees of multinational companies(82)

Rhyming slang: Obscure by design

Ads in Cockney argot miss the fact that it's supposed to be confusing(20)

Serious business: Breaking out the big puns

Playing with words and sounds gave us alphabets, and is a delightfully democratic bit of humour(20)

Journalese: A strange English dialect

A foreigner makes clear to our correspondent how hard it is to read English journalism, as opposed to plain English(41)

Swearing and slang through the ages: The word on the street

An old dictionary of vulgar slang is less out of date than it seems(3)

Modern languages: Mother tongue

The latest push to prevent the British becoming ever more monolingual(27)

Dictionaries: The arch-archivist

The world's greatest collector of dictionaries(23)

Weights and measures: Imperial language, please

Good old English expressions under threat from the metric system(47)

Keyboards and vocabulary: Hunting for the right words

Names: What's wrong with the "Democrat Party"

It's not ungrammatical. It's discourteous(47)

The history of recording: The earliest recorded sounds

The voices of 1885 are being heard for the first time in the modern era(10)

Language attitudes: No words for individual rights

Reversing cause and effect to show that English enlightens Indians(33)

Sound change: One more thought on "my plezh"

Spanish in America: Enough English for public office?

What can be learned from the case of the Arizona woman who doesn't speak English well enough to run for city council?(98)