When asked about the greatest innovation of humans, people often say language or fire. A new paper suggests these innovations ...

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Languages around the world differ greatly in how many grammatical distinctions they make. This variation is observable even between closely related languages. The speakers of Swedish, Danish, and ...

In 2017, the United Nations recognized September 23rd as the International Day of Sign Languages. The theme for the 2026 ...

A new study links a particular gene and a protein variant found only in humans to the origins of spoken language. Researchers used CRISPR gene editing to replace the NOVA1 protein found in mice with ...

A computational analysis has highlighted the poorly understood relationships and elusive histories of modern sign languages worldwide, revealing two major sign language families shaped by geopolitical ...

The origins of human language remain mysterious. Are we the only animals truly capable of complex speech? Are Homo sapiens the only hominids who could give detailed directions to a far-off freshwater ...

A story that has long been repeated is that Bangla derives from Sanskrit. The truth—the satya, sachcha, shacha, hacha or hasa—is much more complicated.