‘The ick’, ‘boop’ and ‘chef’s kiss’ added to Cambridge Dictionary
A phrase popularised by Love Island joins more than 3,200 other entries relating to online gaming, parcel thefts and more
June 2024
Ben Vautier obituary
French conceptual artist known for his work featuring handwritten texts with quirky messages that had mass appeal
Cornish language revives on back of psych-pop and Covid
Significant rise in number of people taking lessons amid surge in interest in language declared extinct a decade ago
Notes and queries
Which language is the most beautiful?
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
May 2024
Teacher finds stone with ancient ogham writing from Ireland in Coventry garden
Exclusive: Sandstone rock featuring language markings created 1,600 years ago to go on display at museum
April 2024
My 16-year-old does not own an iguana. But he’s hoping to convince the GCSE examiners that he does
Zoe Williams
Bait, ting, certi: how UK rap changed the language of the nation
Emergency funding saves Scotland’s Gaelic programme from cuts
Why I quit
I stopped apologising for my poor German, and something wonderful happened
Ying Reinhardt
March 2024
Fears for future of Gaelic language as community workers’ jobs under threat
Up to 27 Gaelic development officers based on Hebridean islands and in rural counties and cities to be laid off
February 2024
Other lives
Gery Bramall obituary
America's dirty divide
‘By preserving the language, you reinforce communities’: a school saving one of Louisiana’s oldest dialects
December 2023
The costs and benefits of English as a lingua franca
Letters: Readers respond to Michele Gazzola’s article on the dominance of the English language across the world
Can an app decide if a language lives or dies? Not if Welsh speakers have anything to do with it
Gwenno Robinson
Duolingo is ‘pausing’ its Welsh course despite high demand – we need robust forms of learning that aren’t driven by profit, says writer and documentary-maker Gwenno Robinson
English still rules the world, but that’s not necessarily OK. Is it time to curb its power?
Michele Gazzola
Folk music stars join protests over plans to axe Gaelic at Aberdeen University
Hallucinate, AI, authenticity: dictionaries’ words of the year make our biggest fears clear
November 2023
Gaelic Scrabble launched to help keep declining language alive in Scotland
Notebook
Much as it galls the French, English has become Europe’s cultural lingua franca
Tomiwa Owolade
October 2023
Italian and Polish GCSEs to go digital in 2026, says England’s largest exam board
AQA awaits regulator approval for on-screen assessment of reading and listening components