By the sixteenth century, Europeans had begun to notice similarities between European, Indian, and Iranic languages. An English Jesuit missionary, Thomas Stephens, in 1583 pointed out the similarities…

I love busting out a French subjunctive in pursuit of better restaurant service, so it’s a joy to discover there’s a neuroscientific upside to being multilingual, says Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world — and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language — from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian — that suggest the answer is a resounding yes. “The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is,” Boroditsky says. “Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000.”

Moving to Mexico can’t help but change you as a person, translating you into a different version of yourself, writes Dr. Mark Arcuri.

Dear Heloise: King Alfred the Great would never have said “you” to one person, since this was the plural form, and “thou” was the singular form. (This can be compared to the German “du” and the Spanish “tu.”) After the French-speaking Normans in 1066 forced a two-tier society on England, they demanded that they should be addressed with the plural pronoun, while they addressed the conquered natives with the singular (which explains why the plural “are” is still used with “you”). Examples of changes could be multiplied.

Ask a Guugu Yimithirr speaker to shift along the bench and you will not hear anything about your left or your right. You will hear a compass point. Move a