Researchers at the HSE Centre for Language and Brain used eye-tracking to examine how bilinguals switch between languages in response to context shifts. Script differences were found to slow down this ...

Nushu emerged from the isolated villages of southern China and is the only language created and used exclusively by women. Today it is celebrated across China as a symbol of female empowerment, but ...

The late, great sinologist Simon Leys once pointed out a peculiar paradox. China is the world’s oldest surviving civilization, and yet very little material of its past remains—far less than in Europe ...

As a teenager, Kaoru Akagawa couldn’t read her Japanese grandmother’s letters, but she put it down to her unclear handwriting. Over a decade later, Kaoru realized her grandmother hadn’t been a poor ...

Over the past century, archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,600 Proto-Elamite inscriptions, but only about 43 in Linear Elamite, scattered widely across Iran. Illustration by Meilan Solly / ...

Language no longer defines Darshana Rajendran’s choices— she says an exciting script will always win her over. “For a while, I thought I would only take up work in a language if I was fluent in it.