Books & arts
25 October 2023
Gabrielle Carey gives us James Joyce in eighty-four bite-sized pieces
Books & arts
27 September 2023
Outsiders were the key to the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary
Books & arts
1 February 2023
The Gija Dictionary opens a window on the sophisticated culture of the people of the East Kimberley
Books & arts
5 August 2021
A computer scientist takes on artificial-intelligence boosters. But does he dig deep enough?
Books & arts
16 November 2020
Books | Is it only other people who use words offensively?
Books & arts
5 November 2020
Books | Are Australians unusually prone to bad language?
International
29 September 2020
Amid an economic boom, protests in Inner Mongolia reflect wider tensions
Books & arts
31 July 2020
Books | Are the limits of our language the limits of our world?
Recovered Lives
8 March 2019
Katipelvild Margaret (Pinkie) Mack (1858–1954), Yaraldi-speaking Piltindjeri clanswoman
Essays & reportage
8 February 2017
Beginning to understand an Indigenous language brought Lea McInerney a little closer to a deeper story
Podcasts
12 October 2016
Inside Language | Streams, brooks, creeks, rivulets – they’re not quite the same thing, are they?
Podcasts
28 September 2016
Inside Language | Kate Burridge and Peter Clarke discuss how and why we turn nouns into verbs into adjectives
Podcasts
14 September 2016
Inside Language | The little dot with the tail – where did it come from and where is it going? Peter Clarke talks to linguist Kate Burridge
Podcasts
25 July 2016
Inside Language | Peter Clarke and Kate Burridge look at those persistent expressions that reflect dead and dying attitudes
Podcasts
24 June 2016
Inside Language | Why does the perpendicular pronoun cause us so much trouble? Peter Clarke talks to linguist Kate Burridge
Podcasts
8 April 2016
Inside Language | It’s long been one of the sharper words in the language, but does it still pack a punch? Kate Burridge talks to Peter Clarke
Podcasts
28 March 2016
Inside Language | A surprising number of English words have completely different meanings in different contexts. Linguist Kate Burridge discusses why with Peter Clarke
Podcasts
12 February 2016
Inside Language | Disinterested or uninterested? Honing in or homing in? Kate Burridge and Peter Clarke look at the shades of meaning that might have had their day
Podcasts
5 February 2016
Inside Language | Following the release of the people’s choice for Word of the Year, Kate Burridge and Peter Clarke look at the words that came on…
Podcasts
17 January 2016
Inside Language | Is swearing losing its cathartic effect? Kate Burridge talks to Peter Clarke about taboo words
Podcasts
8 January 2016
Inside Language | Linguist Kate Burridge talks to Peter Clarke about how a jolly old time became the province of fraudsters and other dubious characters
Podcasts
7 January 2016
Inside Language | In the first in a new podcast series, linguist Kate Burridge talks to Peter Clarke about how we merge and lose sounds in spoken…
Books & arts
27 January 2015
Books | Steven Pinker’s latest book treads a fine line supremely well, says Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
28 March 2014
Not only is he an anti-Chomskyan, Philip Lieberman is also an enemy of evolutionary biology and pop neuroscience, writes Ben Eltham
Books & arts
28 April 2013
Duncan Hewitt reviews two witty new books about China’s faultlines and prospects
Essays & reportage
18 December 2012
In Brussels, it can seem like language is no barrier. But Belgium as a whole is divided and uncertain, writes James Panichi
National affairs
26 September 2012
A new parliamentary report challenges the thinking behind the downgrading of Indigenous languages in schools, writes Lisa Waller
Essays & reportage
16 April 2012
The Howard government made it harder for some nationalities to become citizens, and Labor has made it worse, writes Kerry Ryan
Essays & reportage
11 April 2012
A radical new explanation of how gender works in French
Books & arts
15 December 2011
Iain Topliss looks at why we don’t – and shouldn’t – speak the same language, and how Russian has no single word for blue