John McWhorter

Just as important as the word you're saying is the tone in which you're saying it. But some languages depend on tone much more heavily than English does. Why? How did they emerge, and why did they only cluster in certain places?

Turn now to a topic linguists get asked about a lot: the use of "like" in conversation among young people. As Professor McWhorter reveals, this popular pet peeve is actually a highly ritualized form of acting and a perfect example of pragmatic particles, which convey attitudes toward what's being said.

The idiosyncrasies that show up in DNA allow us to trace back to common ancestors, much like language traits allow us to chart language-family relationships. Take a look at the concept of glottochronology and see what linguistic theories have been confirmed by genetics in places like Europe, India, and Polynesia.

Chinese is one branch of the Sino-Tibetan family and the other branch, Tibeto-Burman, consists of around 400 languages spoken in southern China, northeastern India, and Burma. Look at features of languages from both branches and see what linguists can assume about the proto-language from which they may have sprung.

The languages of Polynesia are estimated to be some of the newest languages in the world, emerging only in the last millennium. Look back to the earliest cultures of the Polynesian islands to see how the languages likely originated and were disseminated, branching into separate sub-groups like Oceanic and the three that are all spoken on the small island of Formosa.

Consider the "accidental" letters "Q" and "Z." Look back to the Phoenician alphabet to better understand why English doesn't really need a "Q," and consider how English acquired the letter "Z" through Latin by way of Greek. Also, discover why "Z" sits at the very end of the alphabet.

Take a convoluted trip through the history of the letters "U," "V," and "W" and see how they connect to the letter "F." From ancient Greek to the medieval period and beyond, these letters illustrate how the creation of an alphabet is a messy, nonlinear process with numerous twists and turns along the way.

Cuneiform is the earliest surviving form of writing and dates to 3500 BCE. Trace the origins of this writing system by examining why it developed, how it evolved from accounting pictograms to a more complex system, and how it helps us better understand ancient history. Also consider how cuneiform influenced the emergence of other writing systems.

"Why does a letter like ""C"" operate the way it does? Go back to the ancient world of the Etruscans to trace its earliest origins. Get a clearer picture of the ways that the sounds of letters transform over time. Also, consider the nature of spelling systems and how they often stay the same while other elements of the language change over time."

Americans have been taught that double negatives are a grammatical no-no. But they're actually used in most of the world's languages. So who's right? And does the substitute "any" (e.g., "not going anywhere" versus "not going nowhere") solve the problem, or just make it more awkward? Find out here.