Language Log
-
A short history of ‘India’ versus ‘Bharat’
-
Italy wants its businesses to stop using English. Will it succeed?
-
Kannad, Keral, Karnatak: Why do Hindi speakers ‘mispronounce’ South Indian names?
-
How a unique Tamil dialect survived among a fishing community in Sri Lanka
-
Meet the young Indians who are bringing an Adivasi language into the digital age
-
From love songs to kurta ads, Urdu is popular with Indians. Why do Hindutva backers hate it so much?
-
How the Mesopotamian word for ‘elephant’ indicates Dravidian language existed in Indus Civilisation
-
Hindi might not be the national language – but it is growing rapidly across India
-
An American teacher’s online Malayalam lessons have won her a following even in Kerala
-
Why is India obsessed with English-medium education – when it goes against scientific consensus?
-
How a Bihari lost her mother tongue to Hindi – but is now trying to get it back
-
We’re on ‘coronacation’ while we wait for ‘lexit’: How coronavirus is changing our language
-
A limited vocabulary hinders your ability to express emotions – and to understand them
-
Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’: How to decode the story’s linguistic secrets
-
Want to build a language from scratch? Start with the question who will speak it, and why
-
Twitter is helping the ancient Scots language thrive (and garner attention)
-
The haleem debate: Why some Indian Muslims are renaming the Ramzan delicacy ‘daleem’
-
Shaheed and martyr are religious terms. Should they be used for Indian soldiers killed in battle?
-
No Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan? Implemented fully, BJP’s Hindutva renaming will wipe out a lot of India
-
Unsolicited advice to writers: Why you should learn to love the full stop.
-
Surging Hindi, shrinking South Indian languages: Nine charts that explain the 2011 language census
-
What Malay works from Patani tell us about the literary and cultural heritage of Southeast Asia
-
Why do human beings speak so many languages?
-
The rise of Hinglish: How the media created a new lingua franca for India's elites
-
The man behind a 9,000-page, eight-volume Kannada dictionary that took 54 years to write
-
Biggest BBC World Service expansion in 40 years aims to extend British soft power
-
Bongo, Bangla and Bengal: A short guide to the confusing world of Bengali nomenclature
-
Podcast: Several Indian languages face the risk of dying. Here's what we stand to lose
-
No longer lost for words: How researchers rediscovered the mother of all mother tongues
-
How exactly does the Indian media define a terrorist?
-
If the name 'Bombay' was erased for being a relic of colonial rule, why do we still use 'India'?
-
Why are Indian Muslims using the Arabic word ‘Ramadan’ instead of the traditional 'Ramzan'?
-
How common Malayalam slang words evolved from foreign languages
-
In defence of English: Blame the Indian education system, not the language
-
The death of Urdu in India is greatly exaggerated – the language is actually thriving
-
Why the cow is considered holy in Hinduism
-
Why dogs and puppies are swear words in India: A short guide to Hindi profanity for the BJP
-
Stop outraging over Marathi – Hindi and English chauvinism is much worse in India
-
Why Hindi needs to discard Devanagri and adopt the Roman script
-
Fact check: India wasn't the first place Sanskrit was recorded – it was Syria
-
Why are Indian Muslims using the Arabic word ‘Ramadan’ instead of the traditional 'Ramzan'?
-
Video: an animated map shows how Sanskrit may have come to India
-
You’ve been using your favourite emojis all wrong (which shows how important they've become)