The Best Articles in Language
The most useful articles and videos in Language from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Language Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Language by Refind users in 2023 so far.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
Future of Language w/Casper Grathwohl
EPISODE 86: Are you a language geek? This week's guest shares a fascinating perspective- from the rise of English as the world's 'lingua franca', to 'endange...
Why we say “OK”
“OK” is thought to be the most widely recognized word on the planet. We use it to communicate with each other, as well as our technology. But, it actually started out as a language fad in the 1830’s.…
Lessons from Auschwitz: The power of our words
Classical music mastermind Benjamin Zander concluded his 2008 TED Talk by recounting the heartrending story of an Auschwitz survivor and her brother. This short animated piece highlights that story,…
How to ...?
How to Win at Wordle (Without Cheating)
Solve these puzzle questions to level up your Wordle game.
How To Know If You're An Interrupter Or A 'Cooperative Overlapper'
This conversational habit seems like interrupting but it's actually not.
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Language on Refind.
English in the Real World
As impressive as his conversance with English history is Garner’s awareness of present-day trends. The “like” entry notes not only traditional uses of...
Language for Life
The resurrection of Carne-Ross’s book should give a little bit of hope
J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy Tales, Language, the Psychology of Fantasy, and Why There’s No Such Thing as…
“Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.”
An Apex of Babble
I grew up in a community where the phenomenon of speaking in tongues (called glossolalia by linguists) is more than just some loaves-and-fishes Sunday School curiosity.
A Day in the Life: A Literary Translator
‘Sometimes it can look like spending six hours searching for 10 words.’
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Language—all under 10 minutes.
Want to sound and feel more confident? Ditch these 11 phrases from your vocabulary, say psychologists
The words we use can have a powerful effect on our moods and confidence. Here are some negative phrases to ditch if you want to think more positively, according to behavioral scientists, researchers…
How our brains cope with speaking more than one language
Speaking a second or even a third language can bring obvious advantages, but occasionally the words, grammar and even accents can get mixed up.
«our languages aren't just static throughout our lives but shifting, actively competing and interfering with each other.»
Learning Language is Harder Than You Think
Sure, kids imitate their parents, but that’s just a small part of the story
You Don’t Think in Any Language
by David J. Lobina (This is Part 2 of a brand new series of post, this time about the relationship between language and thought; Part 1 is here) A provocative title, perhaps, and perhaps also…
«The point I want to make in this post is that no-one thinks in any natural language; not in English, or Italian, or whatever, but in a language of thought, an abstract, unconscious and moreover inaccessible, conceptual representational system of the mind»
“Think LOL but more obscure”; Pentagram’s Michael Bierut designs The FBI Guide to Internet Slang
Also featuring two custom typefaces from Matt Willey, the project is based on an official 83-page glossary put together by the FBI to help decipher the most obscure social media chatter imaginable.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Language.
Past Lives of the Paragraph
Making a new paragraph is as easy as drawing a thin line in the margin.
«eachers was so many years behind the practice of the writers. Edwin Herbert Lewis, A History of the English Paragraph (1894) [T]here is no such thing as a paragraph. That is, there is no item in an outline, no branch of a tree, no unit of discourse that consistently corresponds to a block of text delimited by a blank line or an indentation. Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style (2015)»
Nomen est omen
On nominative determinism and the power of names
AI And The Limits Of Language
An artificial intelligence system trained on words and sentences alone will never approximate human understanding.
DALL·E: Creating Images from Text
We’ve trained a neural network called DALL·E that creates images from text captions for a wide range of concepts expressible in natural language.
Language, Lost And Found
Bengali was the language of home and of intimacy. Yet somewhere along those years, with a sigh drowned out by babel, the language left me.
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Language, including:

Grammar Girl is also @grammargirl@zirk.us
Mignon Fogarty. Podcaster. Language lover. NYT bestselling author. Quick & Dirty Tips founder. @grammargirl@zirk.us
Aeon+Psyche
Aeon is a magazine of ideas and culture. Psyche is our sister magazine focused on the human condition. Visit http://aeon.co and http://psyche.co for more.
The Pudding
The Pudding is a digital publication that explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. Email us: sup@pudding.cool Support us: http://patreon.com/thepudding
Literary Hub
A daily literary website highlighting the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and criticism.
Nautilus Magazine
Experience science, don't just read about it. Deep, undiluted, narrative storytelling brings science into the most important conversations we are having today.
Publications
We monitor hundreds of publications, blogs, newsletters, and news sources in Language, including:
Visual Capitalist
Data-driven visual content focused on global trends, investing, technology, and the economy.
Aeon+Psyche
Aeon is a magazine of ideas and culture. Psyche is our sister magazine focused on the human condition. Visit http://aeon.co and http://psyche.co for more.
MIT Technology Review
Our in-depth reporting on innovation reveals and explains what’s really happening now to help you know what’s coming next. http://technologyreview.com/newsletters
Big Think
Learn from the world’s greatest thinkers. Join us on https://www.youtube.com/c/bigthink.
Literary Hub
A daily literary website highlighting the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and criticism.
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks 5 links from around the web for every user, tailored to the user’s interests. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
- Our algorithm processes 100k+ new links every day and uses external signals to find the most relevant ones, focusing on timeless pieces.
- Our community of active users gets 5 links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, add to reading list, save to «Made me smarter», «More/less like this», etc.
- Our algorithm uses these internal signals to refine the selection.
- In addition, we have expert curators who manually curate niche topics.
The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Which sources does Refind monitor in Language?
We monitor hundreds of sources in Language, including Visual Capitalist, Aeon+Psyche, MIT Technology Review, Big Think, Literary Hub, and many more.
Who are the thought leaders in Language?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Language, including Grammar Girl is also @grammargirl@zirk.us, Aeon+Psyche, The Pudding, Literary Hub, Nautilus Magazine.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
Can I submit a link?
Indirectly, by using Refind and saving links from outside (e.g., via our extensions).
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When you’re logged-in, you can flag any link via the «More» (...) menu. You can also report problems via email to hello@refind.com
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