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Dead Language Society

deadlanguagesociety.com

English is weirder than you think. A weekly dive into the hidden history of everyday words. Click to read Dead Language Society, by Colin Gorrie, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.

HistoryScience

’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
123 from 28 Dec 2022 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (55 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 45

  1. Can you understand English’s closest relatives?
  2. Languages don’t change due to laziness (except when they do)
  3. How the internet killed the paragraph
  4. How to teach yourself linguistics
  5. “Corn” is a weird word
  6. What have the Normans ever done for us?
  7. Against Cicerofishing
  8. My kingdom for a *h₁éḱwos!
  9. Medieval beach reads
  10. Does your name belong in the Odyssey?
  11. I’m writing a book!
  12. The fatal letter
  13. “Weird” is a weird word
  14. The long shadow of the Celtic languages
  15. Why the word “mead” shows up in Chinese
  16. Why we love 19th-century writing
  17. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Book Club 4. 1998–2530
  18. When will Modern English end?
  19. There’s no such thing as g-droppin’
  20. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Book Club 3. 1126–1997
  21. How to read Beowulf (and actually enjoy it)
  22. English has no future
  23. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Book Club 2. 491–1125
  24. The ancient logic of “snuck”
  25. Why you’re not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition
  26. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Book Club 1: 1–490
  27. The Canterbury Commute
  28. How to pronounce Middle English
  29. Why you should read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  30. A bluffer’s guide to etymology
  31. Why the verb “to be” is so irregular
  32. The age when English could do anything
  33. No, Shakespeare didn’t invent those words
  34. Why English spelling actually does make sense
  35. Leave the em-dash alone
  36. Why the worst idea in linguistics won’t die
  37. How far back in time can you understand English?
  38. What happens when languages collide?
  39. 1066 didn't change English (but 1250 did)
  40. Etymology is a growth industry
  41. What if Beowulf had been written by Shakespeare?
  42. Scots, English, and the linguistic uncanny valley
  43. Were Old Norse and Old English a single language?
  44. The dead language tier list
  45. Why people fail at learning languages

2025 67

  1. “Christmas” is a weird word
  2. European languages are exotic
  3. Beowulf Book Club 6: 2592–3182
  4. How debt shaped the way we speak
  5. The wild world of grammatical gender
  6. Beowulf Book Club 5: 1963–2591
  7. Why people feel entitled to correct your grammar online
  8. The English language’s wild century
  9. The origin of nothing
  10. How the letter E almost ruined English poetry
  11. What is a Hallow, anyway?
  12. How to end a sentence with style
  13. “God” is a weird word
  14. How iambic pentameter really works
  15. Beowulf Book Club 4: 1396–1962
  16. How rhyme works (and why)
  17. The hidden logic of nicknames
  18. The beginner’s guide to Early Modern English
  19. What people get wrong about Elizabethan English
  20. When did English become English?
  21. Sing, sang, sung and other linguistic fossils
  22. Beowulf Book Club 3: 916–1396
  23. “Big” is a weird word
  24. The strangest letter of the alphabet
  25. A detective’s guide to English place names
  26. The Celtic roots of English
  27. No, that word doesn’t come from an acronym
  28. The ancient poetic law that explains basically everything
  29. Beowulf Book Club 2: 400–915
  30. Is Beowulf based on true events?
  31. The case for Middle English
  32. Modern English doesn’t come from “Old English”
  33. “Boy” is a weird word
  34. Why you speak more Latin than you think
  35. How to write poetry like Tolkien
  36. How the alphabet began
  37. Why ChatGPT writes like that
  38. How the Anglo-Saxons learned languages
  39. Beowulf Book Club 1: 1–399
  40. How to get started with Old English poetry
  41. How the Industrial Revolution changed English
  42. Could Beowulf see blue?
  43. Why English doesn’t use accents
  44. “Dog” is a weird word
  45. How to reconstruct dead languages
  46. What came before English?
  47. Don’t read Heaney’s Beowulf
  48. Why English spelling will never make sense
  49. The lost letters of the English alphabet
  50. The first English-speaking pope
  51. How the Goths changed the fate of Europe
  52. The king named ‘Little Daddy’
  53. Never trust your father's brother
  54. The strange death of English ‘R’
  55. Do Americans really speak like Shakespeare?
  56. The ancient art of beating about the bush
  57. “She” is a weird word
  58. Why you (kinda) speak like a Viking
  59. The 1000-year-old riddles we still can't solve
  60. How the Black Death reshaped English
  61. When poetry didn’t rhyme
  62. The economics of dragon slaying
  63. When English worked like Latin
  64. Where monsters come from
  65. The invention that ruined English writing
  66. Beowulf and other losers
  67. The Frankish paradox

2024 8

  1. Enthusiasm for learning “dead” languages is more alive than ever
  2. A complete curriculum for learning Old English
  3. Potential "Controversies" in Ōsweald Bera
  4. Ōsweald is here!
  5. The power of narrative in language learning
  6. How to unlock ancient languages by being a fish out of water
  7. How is a story about a talking bear supposed to teach me Old English?
  8. The Winged Schwa is Back

2023 2

  1. Classical Chinese poetry: a guide for the curious
  2. Runes 101

2022 1

  1. Return of the Schwa