This week we are coming at you with a mythological creature we all know and love: the dragon. When we say “all,” we mean that (pretty much) literally. It turns out that the dragon is one of the most universal creatures that exists in folklore, and so we will spend some time talking about why, as well as dive in deeper to some of our personal favorite legends of dragons. While dragons take different shapes and have varying perceptions in our cultures, they are widespread and have amazing staying power. Let’s talk about dragons, baby!

For Language News, we discuss some fascinating research that has allowed geneticists to examine ancient genotypes from the steppes region, and compare this DNA to modern people. It turns out, people who speak Indo-European languages (including Farsi, Hindi-Urdu, Russian, French, English, etc.), the largest language group, have much more steppe DNA than other people in the nearby regions, such as speakers of non-Indo-European languages in Southern India. This leads researchers to conclude that people of the steppes spread West to Europe, and were separate populations with very different languages from their neighbors. Read the full article here: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/ancient-dna-study-resolves-indo-european-language-origins-194722598.html

More resources we used:

Comparing the word for dragon in various languages
Theories about the widespread myth of dragons
More about the story of Bida
More about Chinese dragons
More about Welsh dragons here and here
More about Quetzalcoatl
Want to know about more dragon legends? Check out these lists: this one and this one

Thanks for listening, everyone. If you haven’t, make sure to send us your Lost in Translation in our contact section. Until next week!

The post Episode 54: Dragons! first appeared on Language Nerds Do Earth.