A new linguistic study sheds light on the nature of languages spoken before the written period, using computational modeling to reconstruct the grammar of the 6500-7000 year-old Proto-Indo-European ...

A new linguistic study sheds light on the nature of languages spoken before the written period, using computational modeling to reconstruct the grammar of the 6500-7000 year-old Proto-Indo-European ...

Have you ever wondered how Australia’s many Indigenous languages relate to one another and how far back the connections go? The Australian continent has been settled by Indigenous people for at least ...

Hausa is the most widely known Chadic language, spoken by some 80 million people or more. It’s harder to grasp the history of other, unwritten Chadic languages. Irene Becker/Contributor/Getty Images ...

MOTHER. There can scarcely be a more emotive word in the English language. We can imagine children howling it as they wake from nightmares, and centenarians whispering it on their death beds. A 2004 ...

Corrections & clarifications: An earlier version of this story contained inaccurate or incomplete facts about the history of language. Language is an essential part of human communication, allowing ...

The diversity of human languages can be likened to branches on a tree. If you’re reading this in English, you’re on a branch that traces back to a common ancestor with Scots, which traces back to a ...

A team of researchers is using a novel technique to comb through the data and to reconstruct major branches in the linguistic tree. The diversity of human languages can be likened to branches on a ...