Lexicon Valley

A grueling, painful, lifelong joy of studying Russian was sparked by Anna Karenina. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

From vowelless words to complex poetry, Berber to Somali. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

Deconstructing a single line of dialogue from Netflix's "The Crown." Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

Why are so many of the languages of Southeast Asia "like Chinese"? Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

English is full of redundancies—so why are we bothered by only a select few? Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

John McWhorter teases his new book about off-color English expressions, starting with c!#k. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

A single word—take "self," for example—reveals the thorny nature of literary translation. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

Don't be fooled into thinking that English is a typical language. It's not. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

For many languages, the idea that the subject belongs up front is plain backwards. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

How did a word meaning "with bread" come to sprout its corporate connotation? Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley