Schwa Fire is a digital publication focused on deep, engaging stories about the human part of the language world and the language part of the human experience. Each issue will feature several long articles, which will be text (think 3,000 to 5,000 words), multimedia (which means audio, audio with still images, or video that’s 8 to 15 minutes long), or graphics journalism.

Schwa Fire is a project of Michael Erard, who has been writing about language and languages for over a decade for publications like The New York Times, Science, Wired, New Scientist, and Slate. He’s written about “uh” and “um”; what it means when bonobos make slips; what the English of the future might look like; the discovery of “new” languages in southern China; what it means when we dream in foreign languages; language superlearners; and many other topics.

For a number of years, folks in the language blog world have talked about starting a popular language magazine. When those conversations started up again late last year, Erard realized he had a vision for what this could be. As a kid, he was interested in language but could find only technical books to read. Schwa Fire is for that kid — and for everyone who knows that language is fascinating and that it matters to everyone.

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