Sam QuillenPolyglot Politicians: How Many World Leaders Speak English?At a joint press conference in 2019, US President Donald Trump declared, as he often does on such occasions, that his Indian counterpart…6 min read·Mar 31, 2024--1--1
Sam QuillenWhat Are Language Families? Part III: Unusual CousinsA significant majority of human beings today speak languages that fall into the Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, or Afro-Asiatic language…6 min read·Mar 6, 2024--1--1
Sam QuillenWhat Are Language Families? Part II: Hereditary MessinessOf the 7,000 or so languages that exist in the world today, most belong to larger families. In Part I, we explored how this works through…6 min read·Feb 1, 2024--3--3
Sam QuillenWhat Are Language Families? Part I: The Indo-European ConnectionSpeakers of most of the world’s languages are at least vaguely aware that their tongue is related to some others. For people in the West…4 min read·Jan 24, 2024--1--1
Sam QuillenHow Did People Communicate at the First Thanksgiving?This time of year, American newspapers are awash with editorials on how to talk about touchy topics with family members at Thanksgiving…5 min read·Nov 20, 2023--1--1
Sam QuillenWar of Words: How Language Shapes the Israel-Palestine ConflictNote: Wherever there is conflict, language is a contentious issue. In my capacity writing about linguistics, I strive to limit myself…5 min read·Nov 1, 2023--10--10
Sam QuillenWhy the Calendar Is Still PaganSince the dawn of language, people have come up with a lot of different ways to talk about weather and the passage of time. A few of them…5 min read·Sep 28, 2023--1--1
