The US academic and TV historian’s rejection of racial categories has drawn criticism from some but his sense of mischief and underlying belief in American decency remains undimmed

The first time I met Henry Louis Gates Jr raised more questions than it answered. It was the year 2000, I was still a teenager, and he – already a distinguished Harvard professor – was hosting a launch for his new BBC and PBS series Wonders of the African World.

I remember the occasion as a series of firsts – my first TV launch party, first documentary series I’d seen on African civilisations, first encounter with a real-life Harvard professor. I remember wondering whether the circumstances were normal. The venue was the British Museum, an institution that harbours a practically unprecedented quantity of colonial plunder. Was it, I wondered, a deliberately ironic choice? Were all Harvard professors as friendly and personable as Gates, whom everyone calls “Skip”, and was charmingly informal and kind? And perhaps most pressingly, was it normal for Harvard professor TV presenters to dress as Gates so memorably had, in shorts, socks, and a ranger’s hat?

The International Booker-winning translator takes a deep dive into the complexities of the role in her ambitious second novel

“Translators are like ninjas,” the Israeli author Etgar Keret wrote in 2017. “If you notice them, they’re no good.” The literary translation community must have felt delighted at this upgrade to their image: no longer dictionary dorks, but lithe, black-clad assassins! The thrilling story of ninja translators is yet to be told, but Jennifer Croft, an eminent translator whose English version of Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights won the International Booker prize in 2018, has put her own spin on the profession with this ambitious, fecund novel, her second after the autofictional Homesick (published in Spanish in 2014, then in English in 2019).

Croft has been fascinated by translation since she was a child, and this novel is a deep dive into the complexities and ambiguities of the role. A translator’s job is to render the original as faithfully as possible, yet they are also creating a new work of their own with every word they type. It’s an artistic paradox, the kind that can’t be represented straightforwardly in fiction. It needs something special – and Croft does not disappoint.

Readers respond to an article by Simon Jenkins on the use of violent terms to speak about the disease

Thanks to Simon Jenkins for his thoughtful article on the language of cancer ( Let King Charles’s illness finally change how we speak about cancer: it’s not about ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ a ‘war’, 16 February ). On getting my diagnosis of prostate cancer, my wife and I experienced a momentary sense of numbness. The consultant was reassuring, telling us he aimed to cure me. I was cured thanks to a proactive GP and an incredible NHS Cymru medical team.

My wife and I told anybody and everybody, and gave them the complete picture. We still do this to raise awareness. Once the ice is broken, even the most reserved of friends ask the inevitable questions about sex, continence and the examination. Some then get tested. If this saves one life, it is worthwhile. We use simple language. I had prostate cancer. I had surgery. I was cured. We never saw this as a battle, and this freed us from hushed-tone discussions and the use of euphemisms. It was liberating and reassuring.

The lads from Edgar Wright's 2013 sci-fi comedy World's End know when to start drinking and get "totally and utterly carparked." (credit: Universal Pictures)

British comedian Michael McIntyre has a standard bit in his standup routines concerning the many (many!) slang terms posh British people use to describe being drunk. These include "wellied," "trousered," and "ratarsed," to name a few. McIntyre's bit rests on his assertion that pretty much any English word can be modified into a so-called "drunkonym," bolstered by a few handy examples: "I was utterly gazeboed," or "I am going to get totally and utterly carparked."

It's a clever riff that sparked the interest of two German linguists. Christina Sanchez-Stockhammer of Chemnitz University of Technology and Peter Uhrig of FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg decided to draw on their expertise to test McIntyre's claim that any word in the English language could be modified to mean "being in a state of high inebriation." Given their prevalence, "It is highly surprising that drunkonyms are still under-researched from a linguistic perspective," the authors wrote in their new paper published in the Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association. Bonus: the authors included an extensive appendix of 546 English synonyms for "drunk," drawn from various sources, which makes for entertaining reading.

There is a long tradition of coming up with colorful expressions for drunkenness in the English language, with the Oxford English Dictionary listing a usage as early as 1382: "merry," meaning "boisterous or cheerful due to alcohol; slight drunk, tipsy." Another OED entry from 1630 lists "blinde" (as in blind drunk) as a drunkonym. Even Benjamin Franklin got into the act with his 1737 Drinker's Dictionary , listing 288 words and phrases for denoting drunkenness. By 1975, there were more than 353 synonyms for "drunk" listed in that year's edition of the Dictionary of American Slang . By 1981, linguist Harry Levine noted 900 terms used as drunkonyms.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Linguistic diversity on Earth is far more profound and fundamental than previously imagined. But it’s also crumbling fast

At the heart of linguistics is a radical premise: all languages are equal. This underlies everything we do at the Endangered Language Alliance , an eccentric extended family of linguists, language activists, polyglots and ordinary people, whose mission is to document endangered languages and support linguistic diversity, especially in the world’s hyperdiverse cities.

Language is a universal and democratic fact cutting across all human societies: no human group is without it, and no language is superior to any other. More than race or religion, language is a window on to the deepest levels of human diversity. The familiar map of the world’s 200 or so nation-states is superficial compared with the little-known map of its 7,000 languages . Some languages may specialise in talking about melancholy, seaweed or atomic structure; some grammars may glory in conjugating verbs while others bristle with syntactic invention. Languages represent thousands of natural experiments: ways of seeing, understanding and living that should form part of any meaningful account of what it is to be human.

Enlarge / A greater honeyguide (credit: Keabetswe Maposa )

With all the technological advances humans have made, it may seem like we’ve lost touch with nature—but not all of us have. People in some parts of Africa use a guide more effective than any GPS system when it comes to finding beeswax and honey. This is not a gizmo, but a bird .

The Greater Honeyguide (highly appropriate name), Indicator indicator (even more appropriate scientific name), knows where all the beehives are because it eats beeswax. The Hadza people of Tanzania and Yao people of Mozambique realized this long ago. Hadza and Yao honey hunters have formed a unique relationship with this bird species by making distinct calls, and the honeyguide reciprocates with its own calls, leading them to a hive.

Because the Hadza and Yao calls differ, zoologist Claire Spottiswoode of the University of Cambridge and anthropologist Brian Wood of UCLA wanted to find out if the birds respond generically to human calls, or are attuned to their local humans. They found that the birds are much more likely to respond to a local call, meaning that they have learned to recognize that call.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Readers assist a letter writer asking for the correct punctuation for addressing letters to Butchers Road in Canning Town, London

In answer to the question posed by Linda Rhead ( Letters, 20 November ) as to what is the best form of Butchers (Butcher’s/Butchers’) Road, it is not the first option, as Butchers is a plural noun: lots of Butchers. As the word is followed by road, road is the noun and Butcher’s/Butchers’ describes the noun and is therefore an adjective. The adjective will contain the apostrophe to show who owns or belonged to the road.

One needs to know the number of butchers to use the apostrophe correctly. Was it one butcher or more than one butcher? Some research is required.
Linda Teague
Cowbridge, Glamorgan

In a major review of the language, ‘career women’ are now paired with ‘career men’ and manslaughter is a linguistic offence

The Danish language does not officially carry a male equivalent for the (often pejorative) term “career woman” or a female equivalent for the male-gendered noun “financier”.

But after a major review of all keywords ending in - mand (man), - kvinde (woman) and - person (person), soon the terms karrieremand (career man) and finanskvinde (female financier) – as well as many new gender-neutral terms – will officially join the ranks of the Danish spelling dictionary, the Retskrivningsordbogen .

Annotations in eighth-century manuscript point to work of revered English monk, scholar and saint

His life of service through scholarship earned him the title “venerable”. He is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the post-Roman world, and acknowledged as a saint in the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican traditions.

Now a leading academic believes she has identified an example of the handwriting of Bede, the medieval theologian revered as the father of English history, along with his “lost” Old English translation of the St John’s Gospel.