Month: September 2026

We’ve written before about various indigenous languages, and how often they diminish or perish in the face of the globalisation of a small number of languages. But sometimes there is a little good news.

In Australia, where there are about 250 distinctive indigenous languages, the indigenous language Bunurong hasn’t been spoken fluently for about a hundred years, although it was once spoken over a broad territory. Today, a Bunurong community group, led by community elder Gail Kunwarra Dawson, is working with a language group that includes members of the community of all ages and linguists, to bring the language back to life. With the help of nineteenth-century sources and linguistic know-how, they are creating a dictionary of words that will make it easier for people to translate from English into Bunurong and vice versa.

Reviving indigenous languages doesn’t mean not speaking English or another global language. Obviously, that’s essential for indigenous people to participate in economic and social life. It’s about embracing cultural identity and, beyond that, embracing bilingualism and the ability to move fluently between different linguistic and cultural environments. We can’t undo the injustices of the past, including the suppression of many indigenous languages around the world, but we can all work towards a more inclusive linguistic environment in the future!

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Every family, no matter what language or languages they speak at home, also has its own mode of communication. In linguistic terms, this is known as a ‘familect.’ It refers to variations of pronunciation and grammar, and even unique words, which are only used, and sometimes only understood, within the family in question.

So how do familects evolve? One major source are a child’s mispronunciations or made-up words that were cute, and that everyone else in the family adopted too, for use at home. Here at 101translations, one of our families has a storage space that’s been known as ‘the nusing cupboard’ since a super-cute little boy started calling it that because ‘it’s where we keep the things we nuse.’ That was nearly twenty years ago, and while the little boy has changed a lot, the name of the cupboard has stayed the same.

While familects often start to fade as children grow up, leave home, and start families of their own, sometimes words, phrases, and idiosyncratic grammar get passed down through the generations, and even spread from one nuclear family unit to a slightly broader community, perhaps including close relatives and/or friends.

Similar things can happen with language in other environments in which people spend a lot of time together, such as close friendship groups in adolescence and early adulthood, and even offices.

Using a shared ‘special’ variant of the local language is not just a way of communicating, it’s also a deeply bonding experience that makes family members feel closer.

Can you think of any special familectal terms that only you and your loved ones use?

We’d love to hear about them!

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Recently at 101translations, we found ourselves discussing words that are simply fun to say out loud. One that caught our attention was ‘quiz’. It’s short, snappy, and somehow manages to contain both a Q and a Z – which got us wondering: where did such an unusual word come from?

As it turns out, the story behind quiz is quite a curious one.

The word first appeared in written records around 1780, but its true origins remain unknown. Many linguists believe it began as student slang. At first, quiz referred to an odd or eccentric person, or even a prank or deception. Over time, its meaning shifted to “questioning” or “examining closely” before evolving into the sense we know today: a test of knowledge. By the mid-1800s, it was even appearing in the works of authors such as Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen.

There’s also a famous legend behind the word. According to the story, in 1791 a Dublin theatre owner named Richard Daly bet that he could invent a brand-new word and have it enter everyday language within 24 hours. To prove his point, he supposedly hired local children to chalk the nonsense word quiz on walls across Dublin overnight. By the next day, curious locals were asking what it meant, and the word quickly spread.

It’s a brilliant story, but almost certainly just that. Researchers have found no evidence that Daly’s wager ever happened, and since quiz had already appeared in print before 1791, the tale doesn’t quite add up.

Still, it’s a great bit of table quiz trivia.

Just don’t be surprised if someone tries to tell you the Richard Daly story as fact!

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What do boats have to do with language?

A lot!

Human beings have been using boats to travel for at least 50,000 years. That’s 50,000 years of fishing, sailing, exploring, and migration. And among the many things ancient peoples brought with them on their boats were, of course, the languages that they spoke.

The oldest actual boat ever found is about 7000 years old, so how do we know that people were using boats long before that? That’s simple: we know, for example, that human beings have been living in Australia for at least 50,000 years, and the only way their ancestors could have arrived was by boat. They would have needed a rich vocabulary to plan and embark on journeys, and the creative and intellectual impetus to name and analyse the things they encountered when they arrived at new locations.

Researchers have various tools at their disposal to figure out the likely routes these ancient seafarers took: the archaeological record, DNA and, sometimes, languages. For example, the Polynesian languages spoken in the various islands of the area provide vital clues and how, when, and by whom various places were settled by seafarers of old.

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People who work with language often focus on meaning and accuracy, but language has another, more ephemeral and subjective quality that is also worth considering: euphonia, a word that comes from ancient Greek, combining ‘eu,’ which means ‘good’ and ‘phōnē,’ which means ‘sound’ or ‘voice.’

Language that is experienced as pleasing to the ear is described as ‘euphonious.’ This can encompass poetic techniques such as alliteration (the combination of words beginning with the same sound), rhyme, and things such as the sound of a particular person’s voice. In audio works such as podcasting, radio, audio books, and so on, euphonia is often especially important.

Most people agree on certain voices and sounds as being particularly euphonious (even if they might not know the word!): Frank Sinatra, the sound of light rain against the window, the swish of gentle waves against sand, and so on. We all react more positively to information and experiences that we experience as euphonious, which is why it’s so important, for example, for things like prerecorded warnings (think ‘mind the gap’ on the London tube) to be spoken by actors with voices generally experienced as pleasant.

Clearly, euphonia can also be quite a subjective quality, because we can react differently to different sounds depending on the firsthand experiences we have had with them, although there are many sounds that most people experience as pleasant, making them part of the toolbox of advertisers and others who seek to communicate with, and influence, the masses.

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Miyuki Ono is a Japanese science fiction writer who came to the public eye with a novel, Pure, about a woman who had to eat men in order to get pregnant.

That sounds like a very unfriendly way to ensure the continuation of the species, if you ask us!

As interesting as the plotline was the author’s approach to the issue of translation. Although Japan publishes about 13,000 books every year, only a tiny fraction is translated into English, and even fewer into other foreign languages. Japanese publishers, and their overseas counterparts, just aren’t convinced that the market is big enough to justify printing lots of copies in languages other than Japanese.

Instead, Miyuki Ono worked with her translators to release her novel in English in the form of an NFT, or non-fungible token, a unique digital identifier recorded on a blockchain that certifies ownership and authenticity. This bypasses expensive printing costs and allows profits to go to the author and her translator. The hope is that this will create a larger market for Japanese books overseas, increasing their profile and making Japanese literature more accessible to a wider reading public.

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Every language has its quirks. One of the issues with modern English is its curious lack of the second person plural, which can give rise to confusion when it’s not clear whether the speaker is referring to one or more people.

Also lacking in modern English is a word to mean ‘the two of us.’ But in the English spoken about 1000 years ago, there was a word that meant just that: ‘wit’, which meant ‘we two,’ and was accompanied by other terms relevant to twos, including ‘unker’ (‘our’ for two people) and ‘git’ (‘you two people’). These words have not been used since about the thirteenth century.

What happened? Because language tends to retain the simplest form, these words may have faded out of use because there were other viable alternatives, like ‘we,’ which can be used for two or more people. Because of the waves of conquest and migration in England from the Middle Ages onwards, English also changed dramatically, in response to exposure to other languages and changing social mores.

And maybe the English also became less romantic than before? The idea of a word that means ‘just the two of us’ suggests a level of intimacy that’s hard to capture in modern English. Perhaps this is one archaic usage we should bring back.

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