Articles by James Fite

Have you ever wondered how a big granite mountain in South Dakota became one of the world’s most recognizable memorials? Mount Rushmore, located in the Black Hills, is more than just a popular tourist attraction; it’s a feat of 20th-century… Read More

When you hear the word Arabic, or something spoken in that language, you likely think of Middle Eastern deserts or Arab nations. That isn’t wrong – but it isn’t the whole picture. From coffee to cotton, algorithms to algebra, to… Read More

If you’ve been keeping up with Liberty Nation Gen Z’s language series, you probably already know English is a Germanic language, not a true child of Latin. But did you know that speakers of Old English wrote in runes rather… Read More

There’s an old saying: “All roads lead to Rome.” Today it’s figurative, meaning that there are many ways to achieve the same goal. In AD 1175, French theologian and poet Alain de Lille wrote: “Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula… Read More

Languages such as Sumerian, Aramaic, and Egyptian allowed civilizations to grow into kingdoms and even empires. Greek did that and more: It helped formalize thinking itself, becoming the foundation for how ideas are built, tested, and recorded for posterity. In… Read More

Sumerian and Cuneiform may have come first – by about 300 years – but if there’s an ancient language and writing system everyone has heard of, it’s Egyptian and Hieroglyphs. In fact, one could call Egyptian “the other first language.”… Read More

Whether it’s the every-four-year presidential election or the so-called “midterms” that fall every two years between them, or even odd-year elections that barely make the news, the general election in November is usually the one most of the nation pays… Read More

If Sumerian was the language of the first civilizations and Akkadian of the first empire, then Aramaic can best be described as the first worldwide language. It may not get quite the same amount of attention as Greek or Latin… Read More

The first fully developed writing system appeared in history along with the oldest known spoken language – but it lasted much longer. The earliest known language is Sumerian, and the wedge-like characters the Sumerian people scratched onto clay tablets were… Read More

What was the first language? The answer to that question is difficult at best and perhaps impossible at worst. But historians have some good guesses. We simply can’t know or really describe any spoken language before writing started – no… Read More

Have you ever wondered why we say cows and pigs roam the pastures, but they’re beef and pork on the plate? How about why we treat various animals differently when it comes to plurals – three birds, two fish, and… Read More

Just after 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, April 25, a private tutor from California who had traveled to Washington, DC, tried to kill President Donald Trump and members of his administration. This year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was the first… Read More