The Language Closet

As we have mentioned several times on this website before, the Austronesian people groups are known for their seafaring traditions, which allowed them to expand from present-day Taiwan into the vast seas and oceans, bringing their languages and cultures w…

Let’s face it, we all have been quite literally lost in translation in some point(s) of our lives.

If you pull up maps of the comprehensibility of the various Spanish varieties, you might come across some examples of a certain long and thin country being highlighted and classified as ‘incomprehensible’.

Scattered in small speaking communities across Northeast Asia, there are around a dozen extant languages that make up an obscure language family.

Just a few weeks ago (late-August 2026), I came across an article by The Economist which covered the Guaraní language, also known as Avañe’ẽ, which is one of the official languages of Paraguay alongside Spanish.

There is a Chinese saying which goes 天不怕，地不怕，就怕温州人说温州话, which translates to ‘Fear not the heavens, fear not the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou resident speaking Wenzhounese’.

It is pretty safe to say that censorship is a controversial issue, as it can limit what can be said and expressed in public and private spaces, including the internet.

For many languages with official status, more often than not, there would be some sort of standardisation of that particular language, at least to that country itself.

Over these past two months, we have discussed extensively the impact generative AI has on how we write, speak, learn, and teach.

I cannot believe that I have to state the obvious here, but yes, human connection trumps the illusion of one done through interaction with chatbots.

Disclaimer: The language-learning application covered in this review features AI-generated assets and outputs pretty heavily.

To introduce the second month of our mini series in the influence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in languages, from how we speak and write, to how we learn languages, I want to introduce you to some literature concerning the use of chatbots…

In late-2025, denizens of the Internet noticed a pattern in how punctuations are used by large language models (LLMs) when generating their responses to a given prompt.

Over the course of human history, several paradigm shifts have occurred to change how we communicate with one another.

Well, today’s little post is just about to make me feel old and aged.

In recent years on this website, we have given a pretty critical eye on the use and prevalence of large language models (LLMs), more often realised as generative artificial intelligence (GAI), in academic literature that I tend to surround myself with at…

Traditionally, language teaching and learning occur in a classroom setting, where an educator would facilitate and deliver a lesson, and getting the students to practice speaking with one another.