There are numerous rankings of "difficult" (and "easy") languages to learn (note that we are talking about second-language learning here, not acquiring one's native tongue). Some such rankings are unofficial, like the Accreditedonlinecolleges.com ranking or the ranking at MyLanguages.org; others are official, for example the classification by DLI based on the number of hours needed to achieve a certain level. @FiorenzaMella

At the individual level, metaphors affect our thinking. This has been known at least since George Lakoff published the book "Metaphors We Live By" with Mark Johnson in 1980. Mr Lakoff is, of course, now known as a consultant trying to get Democrats to re-frame political issues in America. Specifically, he wants voters internalising a Democratic metaphor of society-as-family with a "nurturing parent" model of leadership. Republicans, he says, think society needs a "strict father". @FiorenzaMella

Jupiter is one of the planets in our solar system. Its beauty lies in its marble type appearance of different hues. @FiorenzaMella

A pair of robots has made up their own words to tell each other where they are and where they want to go. @FiorenzaMella

A recurring idea in popular discussions of languages – usually exotic or minority ones – is that they have “no word for X”, where X could be hello, tomorrow, burger, ten, accountability, robin, and so on. Sometimes it’s sheer fantasy, sometimes the language simply has (or has had) no need for the word (robins in the Arctic?), and sometimes it has other ways of conveying the idea – such as a longer phrase, a different kind of metaphor, or another syntactic category. The point is, it’s not as though there’s a nagging word-shaped gap there that makes it difficult for speakers of a language to communicate with one another, to make sufficient sense of their experiences, and to get through the day without falling apart. If there’s a need for a word, a word will arise. @FiorenzaMella

The amount of information carried in the arrangement of words is the same across all languages, even languages that aren’t related to each other. This consistency could hint at a single common ancestral language, or universal features of how human brains process speech. “It doesn’t matter what language or style you take,” said systems biologist Marcelo Montemurro of England’s University of Manchester, lead author of a study May 13 in PLoS ONE. “In languages as diverse as Chinese, English and Sumerian, a measure of the linguistic order, in the way words are arranged, is something that seems to be a universal of languages.” Language carries meaning both in the words we choose, and the order we put them in. Some languages, like Finnish, carry most of their meaning in tags on the words themselves, and are fairly free-form in how words are arranged. Others, like English, are more strict — “John loves Mary” means something different from “Mary loves John.” @FiorenzaMella

Life at Willow Manor: segue to spring : "The Picasso eye lodged in the bent branch like a scuttled vessel brooding in limbs of a giant sugar maple no longer disp..." @FiorenzaMella