English has more phonemes than many languages, with around 44, depending on which variety of English you speak. It has an unusually large set of vowel sounds – there are around 11. According to WALS, most spoken languages only have between five to six vowel sounds.

People across the world describe their thoughts and emotions, share experiences and spread ideas through the use of thousands of distinct languages. These languages form a fundamental part of our humanity. They determine whom we communicate with and how we express ourselves.

Stylistics is a broad term to cover the 'how' texts are put together. Into this 'bag' we can put any of the following and others you might think of.

Cultivating and sustaining hope, then, requires that we gather evidence from our own lives, history and the world at large and use that evidence to guide our plans, pathways and actions. Hope also requires that we learn to use this data to effectively calibrate progress – no matter how small.

Researchers have shown how creative thinking can be cultivated by simple habits like exercise, sleep, and reading. But another catalyst is unplanned interactions with close friends, casual acquaintances, and complete strangers. With the closure of coffee shops – not to mention places like bars, libraries, gyms, and museums – these opportunities vanish.

Amusement and pleasant surprises – and the laughter they can trigger – add texture to the fabric of daily life. Those giggles and guffaws can seem like just silly throwaways. But laughter, in response to funny events, actually takes a lot of work, because it activates many areas of the brain: areas that control motor, emotional, cognitive and social processing.

Sometimes papers have to be long. But often they don't, and the problem is usually long introductions and conclusions that go far beyond the needs of the paper.

In April, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary did something unusual. For the previous 20 years, they had issued quarterly updates to announce new words and meanings selected for inclusion. These updates have typically been made available in March, June, September and December.

Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet? As it turns out, we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.

Children’s social worlds have been upended by the suspension of school and extracurricular activities due to the pandemic. Many older children and adolescents have been able to maintain their friendships over social media. But, for younger children, this approach is less likely to be available to them and less likely to meet their social needs

Human societies are so prosperous mostly because of how altruistic we are. Unlike other animals, people cooperate even with complete strangers.

Trump’s incessant (pathological) lying has invigorated the fact-checking business exponentially, but the free market has also allowed a partisan fact-checking backlash that uses the label of “fact check” to legitimize fake news and outright lies.