Stories and guides about languages, ciphers, and translation.
"Much wow." "sUrE yOu DiD." "Nobody: / Me:". Memes follow grammatical templates just like sentences do. Here's how meme grammar works — templates, slots, deliberate errors, and typography — with examples from Doge, Mocking SpongeBob, Ermahgerd, and more.
Cuneiform was pressed into clay with reeds; hieroglyphs were carved and painted as pictures. Both began around the same time, 1,000 miles apart. Here's how they worked, how they differ, and how scholars finally learned to read them.
AI can generate a thousand alien words in a second. But a language is more than words — it needs history, culture, and a reason to exist. Here's what AI does well, where it fails, and what it means for Klingon-level conlangs.
Google Translate supports well over 200 languages, but not Klingon, Elvish, or Dothraki. Here's why big translation engines skip fictional languages, the one time Klingon made it into a major translator, and where fans go instead.
One Elvish word — "mellon" — opened the Doors of Durin in The Lord of the Rings. Here's how to say "friend" in 20 fictional, historical, and slang languages, and why friendship words reveal so much about a culture.
Klingons and Dothraki famously have no word for "thank you". Other fictional cultures have beautiful ones. Here's how to say thanks in 20 languages from movies, TV, games, and history — and what the missing words reveal.
"This is the Way." The Mandalorians live by a warrior code and speak their own language, Mando'a. Here's a guide to the Resol'nare, essential Mando'a words, and how Karen Traviss built the most complete language in Star Wars.
Padawan, nerf herder, beskar, kyber, parsec — Star Wars has a vocabulary all its own. Here are 20 essential Star Wars words, what they mean, and where they came from, including a few that entered real-world English.
Two warrior cultures, two fierce-sounding languages, two very different designs. We compare Klingon and Dothraki on sounds, grammar, vocabulary, and history to answer the fan debate: which one is actually more complex?
R2-D2 never says a word, yet audiences understand him perfectly. Here's how Ben Burtt created R2's beeps, how droids communicate in the Star Wars universe, and whether a real R2-D2 could ever exist.
Superman has Kryptonian. Wakanda speaks isiXhosa on screen. Groot has three words. Here's a tour of the real and imagined languages of superheroes — and what language your favourite hero would speak if they had one.
"I have a bad feeling about this." "Laugh it up, fuzzball." "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Here are the funniest lines in Star Wars history, why they work, and how they sound in Yoda speak, Huttese, and other galactic styles.