What is your beautiful brain up to as you comprehend language?
Read moreAllusionist 43: The Key part II - Vestiges
If you don't have a Rosetta Stone to hand, deciphering extinct languages can be a real puzzle, even though they didn't intend to be. They didn't intend to become extinct, either, but such is the life (and death) of languages.
Read moreAllusionist 42: The Key part I - Rosetta
Languages die. But if they're lucky, a thousand-odd years later, someone unearths an artefact that brings them back to life.
Laura Welcher of the Rosetta Project shows us the Rosetta Disk, a slice of electroplated nickel three inches in diameter that bears text in 1500 languages for future linguists to decipher. Ilona Regulski of the British Museum describes how its namesake, the Rosetta Stone, unlocked hieroglyphics.
Read moreAllusionist 41: Getting Toasty
When you choose to spend the winter in Antarctica, you'll be prepared for it to be cold. You know that nobody will be leaving or arriving until springtime. And you're braced for months of darkness. But a few weeks after the last sunset, you might find you can't even string a sentence together.
Read moreAllusionist 40: Olympics
On your marks...
Get set...
GO!
It's the Etymolympics, where the gymnastics should be gymnaked and the hurdles are a bloodbath.
Read moreAllusionist 39: Generation What?
Which are you: Millennial, Generation X, Baby Boomer, Silent Generation, an impressively young-looking Arthurian Generation? Or are you an individual who refuses to be labelled? Demographer Neil Howe, author Miranda Sawyer and Megan Tan, the host of Millennial, consider whether the generational names are useful or reductive. Or both.
Read moreAllusionist 38: Small Talk
"How are you?"
"Oh, fine - and you?"
"Yeah, not bad. Nice day today, isn't it?"
"Yes, it was a bit chilly this morning, but now the sun's come out..." [Continue until
Small talk is usually not conveying much vital information, nor is it especially interesting. But beneath that comfort blanket of tedium lies a valuable social function.
Read more
