Babel is a quarterly language magazine that brings you state-of-the-art linguistic research in an accessible and vibrant format. Topics covered include the past, present and future of language, languages of the world, practical applications for linguistic research, explanations of linguistic theories and methods, book reviews, puzzles and much more. Written by linguists for the interested general reader, Babel: The Language Magazine brings linguistics to life.
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IRRESPONSIBLE MEDIA
The languages of the pre-Roman West • This year’s Babel Young Writers’ Competition winner, Jonathan Lucas looks at why and how Latin took over as the civic language of the Empire
Diary of a linguist
75 years of Ethnologue: Mimeographs to machines • From a 10-page guide with 46 languages read by dozens of people, to a 45,000-page website featuring 7,613 languages accessed by over 600,000 people each year, Stephen Jones outlines the past, present and future of Ethnologue
A multilingual hospital with the accent on care • Peter Trudgill on communication in a hospital with a plethora of languages, dialects and communicative styles
Joseph H. Greenberg (1915—2001) • David Carrasco Coquillat on the life and work of Joseph H. Greenberg, whose work on linguistic typology and language universals has informed the quantitative approach to linguistic diversity
GASCON • Mara Altuna delves into Gascon, a linguistic gem that is at risk of vanishing into the shadow of modern French
Infographic
Why are we so obsessed with people who sound ‘different’? • Victoria Beatrix Fendel looks at Aristophanic comedy and the case of Gerald from Clarkson’s Farm
KILL THE JOKE • Alice Haines on why we find rude jokes particularly funny
Breaking bread with the President: Politeness in American state dinner speeches • Christoph Schubert explores how US presidents use benevolent rhetoric to establish a good rapport with international partners
The word hoard • Our resident etymologist, Simon Horobin, on the language of hawking
Talking ’bout mAI generation
The princes and the [p] • Puzzled by plosives, foxed by fricatives, bamboozled by bilabials? Dom Watt is here to help you master the myriad squiggles and curlicues of the International Phonetic Alphabet
You and yours in Yandruwandha
What has rhetoric ever done for us? • ARISTOTLE’S ART OF RHETORIC
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