Have you ever dreamed of being able to speak dozens of languages? A new book, Babel No More by journalist Michael Erard, traces the history of people who can do just that: hyperpolyglots, people who speak 11 or more languages.

Obviously, hyperpolyglotism is a trained skill. No one just wakes up speaking multiple languages, but there may be factors that make CONTINUE READING »

Earlier this week NPR’s All Things Considered announced what they called the 2011 Banished Words of the Year. Compiled by a former journalist at Lake Superior State University in Michigan, the list is an inversion of the 2011 most important words list. Rather than words that accurately describe the past year’s events, the Banished Words are terms that were misused, overused or generally useless, to paraphrase the original title of the list. CONTINUE READING »

Tonight’s meteor shower has an anachronistic name. It was originally named after the constellation Quadrans Muralis, discovered by Jerome Lalande in 1795. Well, “discover” may be the wrong word. Today, the International Astronomical Union no longer recognizes this constellation, rather the stars that were a part of it are now considered to be parts of other, more widely recognized constellations. Lalande named the constellation “Quadrans Muralis” after an instrument he created CONTINUE READING »

Autocorrect is almost as old as personal computers. Even some of the earliest word processors had a spellcheck feature that suggested alternative words if a word you typed did not appear in its internal dictionary. Certainly, today, autocorrect has a come a long way since the Cupertino effect. What’s the Cupertino effect? Well, in its early days, word processors would replace the word “cooperation” with “Cupertino” (the city in Northern California where Apple and other computer CONTINUE READING »