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Photos and Videos

Three women sit together outdoors, smiling and laughing as they talk, with trees softly blurred in the background.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Tower of Babel
American Sign Language
Diagram of a human head in profile showing the location of vocal organs and possible places of articulation for speech sounds, with labels for lips, teeth, tongue, palate, uvula, pharynx, and vocal cords, and numbered regions corresponding to types of articulation such as bilabial, alveolar, and velar.
A diagram showing side views of the mouth and tongue positions for eight English vowel sounds: heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed, hood, and who'd, with each vowel illustrated in a separate labeled box.
Noam Chomsky wearing glasses and a dark sweater, looking slightly to the side during an interview.
Global use of the English language
Linear B
road sign in English and French, Canada
Map of Britain showing the distribution of Old English dialects, with regions labeled as Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish in green, and neighboring Celtic-speaking areas of Strathclyde, North Wales, and West Wales in orange. Red lines indicate language boundaries and gray lines mark dialect boundaries, with key towns and historical landmarks such as Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall also shown.
Collage spells African American English in cutout letters; at right, a large open mouth, a hand with megaphone, and chat bubbles with laptop.
How does the human brain process language?
What is simultaneous interpretation?
Learn about creativity and the influence of creativity in language
Distinctive features of Australia's Indigenous languages
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Topics
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Key People

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Saint Cyril
Christian theologian
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Saint Methodius
Christian theologian
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Ienăchiƫă Văcărescu
Romanian author
Noam Chomsky wearing glasses and a dark sweater, looking slightly to the side during an interview.
Noam Chomsky
American linguist
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
German-American philosopher
Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
German mathematician and philosopher
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Lorenzo Valla
Italian humanist
Max Müller
Max Müller
German scholar
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von
August Wilhelm von Schlegel
German scholar and critic
N.F.S. Grundtvig
N.F.S. Grundtvig
Danish bishop and poet
Ulfilas teaching Christianity to the Goths, early 20th-century illustration.
Ulfilas
bishop of the Goths
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Wilhelm von Humboldt
German language scholar
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Euthymius Of Tŭrnovo
Orthodox patriarch
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Roland Barthes
French critic
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Elijah Bokher Levita
Italian grammarian
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Adamántios Koraïs
Greek scholar
Schlegel, Friedrich von
Friedrich von Schlegel
German writer
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Alexandre de Rhodes
French missionary
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St. Isaac the Great
Armenian religious leader
William Carey
William Carey
British missionary

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