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.
Why does this nonsense phrase appear in so many old newspapers?
Check out my PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/dimestoreadventuresHUGE thank you to my PATREON SUPER SUPPORTERS:BIG SUMCarson WWesley SnipesChristopher KuklaK...
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.
What Emojis Can’t Express: How Handwriting Reveals Our True Selves
When I was in fifth grade, our class was joined by a boy who had the most exquisite handwriting. It was astonishing to watch, and worse, he had no idea how good he was at it. Penmanship in elementa…
12 Ancient Greek Terms that Should Totally Make a Comeback
Eudaimonia, Arete, and much more...
Life After Language
In October 2013, I wrote a post arguing that computing was disrupting language and that this was the Mother of All Disruptions. My specific argument was that human-to-human communication was an ove…
Beamer, Dressman, Bodybag
On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish & global Englisch. « My own language, made camp. »
This Ancient Language Has the Only Grammar Based Entirely on the Human Body
An endangered language family suggests that early humans used their bodies as a model for reality
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Language—all under 10 minutes.
Your brain wires itself to match your native language
MRI scans of nearly 100 native speakers of either German or Arabic revealed differences in how the language circuits of their brains are connected.
Give Up Seventy Percent Of The Way Through The Hyperstitious Slur Cascade
Shared by 473, including Steven Pinker
«hyperstition is a belief which becomes true if people believe it’s true»
The End of the English Major
Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened?
Words Don’t Matter
We have power over words, not vice versa.
«The impact of the former, as potentially harmful as it may seem, lies purely in the mind of the listener. Not so for physical violence»
A Reading List About the Neuroscience of Reading
Shared by 340, including Albert Ràfols
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Language.
Baroque, Purple, and Beautiful: In Praise of the Long, Complicated Sentence
The meter-tall stone that has come to be called the Mesha Stele, its smooth, black basalt carved some sixteen centuries before it was unearthed from the packed, red sand of Dhiban, Jordan in 1868, …
Why we can dream in more than one language
Sleep has a more powerful role in language-learning than was previously thought. What does this reveal about our night-time brain?
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)»
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.”
Nomen est omen
On nominative determinism and the power of names
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.
Literary Hub
A daily literary website highlighting the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and criticism.
The Pudding
The Pudding is a digital publication that explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. Email: sup@pudding.cool Support: http://patreon.com/thepudding
Nautilus Magazine
Cutting-edge science, unraveled in award-winning journalism by the very brightest living thinkers. Click the link to subscribe to the newsletter.
Publications
We monitor hundreds of publications, blogs, newsletters, and news sources in Language, including:
Literary Hub
A daily literary website highlighting the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and criticism.
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
Noema Magazine
Exploring the transformations sweeping our world. Published by @berggruenInst. Pitch us: edit@noemamag.com
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. 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 the most relevant links every day, tailored to their interests. They provide feedback via implicit and explicit signals: open, read, listen, share, mark as read, read later, «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 Literary Hub, Visual Capitalist, Aeon+Psyche, MIT Technology Review, Noema Magazine, 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, Literary Hub, The Pudding, 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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