Stories and guides about languages, ciphers, and translation.
George R.R. Martin wrote about 56 Dothraki words. HBO needed a language actors could perform for years. Here's how David J. Peterson turned a handful of names into a real language — how long it took, how many words it has, and the rules that make it sound real.
Millions of people type sentences into Klingon, Yoda, and Elvish translators every year. It isn't about learning a language — it's about stepping inside a story for a few seconds. Here's the psychology behind it.
"Bantha poodoo!" Huttese is the language of Jabba the Hutt, Greedo, and Tatooine's criminal underworld. Here's a guide to Huttese words, phrases, pronunciation, and where the language came from — plus whether you can actually learn it.
Warp, tribble, redshirt, Kobayashi Maru, Qapla' — Star Trek has its own vocabulary. Here's a beginner-friendly glossary of the Star Trek terms every fan should know, including the alien words that crossed over into real life.
Writing was invented independently at least three or four times in human history. Here's a guide to the world's oldest writing systems — cuneiform, hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, and Mesoamerican scripts — plus what came before writing, and the scripts nobody can read yet.
Oxford once chose 😂 as its Word of the Year, and someone translated Moby-Dick into emoji. But is emoji a language? Here's what linguists say, how emoji became a global communication system, and what emoji can and can't do.
Type a sentence, get it back in Cockney, Southern, Geordie, or Pirate. Accent translators are silly, shareable, and surprisingly revealing about how we hear language. Here's why they're so popular — and how to use them with a light, respectful touch.
Adult cats rarely meow at each other — they mostly meow at humans. So what would a real cat language look like? Here's what science says about cat communication, and how the internet already invented cat languages from LOLcat to UwU.
Play someone a clip of Welsh, Klingon, and Simlish and ask which ones are real. Most people guess wrong. Here's what our brains actually listen for — and why invented languages can fool us so easily.
"Resistance is futile." "Exterminate!" "I'm sorry, Dave." Robot voices in fiction follow clear patterns — flat tone, precise wording, and no small talk. Here's how to sound like a robot, where robot voices came from, and fun ways to turn text into machine speak.
You don't need a linguistics degree to invent a language — you need seven decisions made in the right order. Here's the step-by-step method the pros use, with examples from Klingon, Dothraki, and Elvish.
"I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?" In 2007, a photo of a smiling cat launched one of the internet's most influential meme languages. Here's how LOLcat speak works, how it spread, and how it paved the way for Doge, UwU, and modern meme slang.