Research shows people who speak another language are more utilitarian and flexible, less risk-averse and egotistical, and better able to cope with traumatic memories

As elephants wander the African savannah, they might keep in touch with relatives by calling out their individual 'names'.

With few experts left in the world who understand this ancient form of writing, can AI step in to save the language?

Cursive is making a comeback. Relegated in 2006 to an optional piece of learning in Ontario elementary schools, cursive writing is set to return as a mandatory part of the curriculum starting in September.

It was only natural for Alexander Jones to feel thrilled when he saw a sixth-century palimpsest at the Ambrosiana library in Milan for the first time. It happened in 1984 when Jones was working on his dissertation using manuscripts in Italy. With the tools at his disposal, including a portable ultraviolet lamp and microfilm, he could only read a few lines. But Jones’ interest was piqued because there were pages of the text that no one had succeeded in reading.

Learning a language can be frustrating. There are many phone apps that promise to teach you a language but, for the most part, they really just teach you words. That’s useful, but to be conversational, you really need something better. There’s no shortage of quick introduction videos on YouTube and grammar lessons that can get you a crude start on a language, but it is a long way to get to conversational.

Let's take this writing bot for a spin down some twisty roads to see if it can pass itself off as a human literary voice. Maybe keep a bucket handy.

In the Middle Ages, the Roman alphabet and Norse runes lived side by side. A new doctoral thesis challenges the notion that runes represent more of an oral and less of a learned form of written language.

Colloquialisms such as barbie and smoko are like accents – part of the glue that sticks Australian English speakers together.

This quote is by the main character in the sci-fi novel The Widening Gyre by Michael R. Johnston. Writers like Johnston who invent alien profanity rely on their intuitions about what sounds offensive here on Earth. We wanted to explore whether there are universal sound patterns in profanity. So we designed a series of studies involving speakers of different languages and found surprising patterns in how swear words sound across the world.

Writers Ivo Victoria, Sarah Meuleman and Geert Buelens all found it liberating to move to the Netherlands. But it wasn’t long before they encountered the downsides of their destination country.

WHEN A BOOK of brazenly surrealistic poetry and prose was published in 1984, attributed to a mysterious figure named “Racter,” it was hard to know what to make of it. The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed was a fever vision of weirdness. “I need electricity,” declared the poet in a signature moment. “I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. / I need it for my dreams.”

According to the projections of The International Organization of La Francophone, the language of Molière will retain its status in the next half-century thanks to the demographic growth of Africa.

Speaking a second or even a third language can bring obvious advantages, but occasionally the words, grammar and even accents can get mixed up.

Many black South Africans associate the Afrikaans language with white-minority rule.

The name of the town comes from a misspelled Spanish name. The way people say it traces a long history of racializing Latinos in the U.S.

Many Ukraine citizens speak Russian as their first language. Volunteer organizations are helping them improve their Ukrainian and abandon “the occupiers’ language.”

I have a friend who speaks only in trite, pithy statements — “What goes around comes around.” “You should really think outside the box.” “Maybe you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” No? “Then it feels like a perfect storm.” God, they’re “such a cliché.”

If you want more people to read what you've written and to understand what you mean, the tips in this plain English writing guide will help.