Case Syncretism: When Grammar Gets Efficient

1 month ago

Ever wondered why 'you' is the same whether you're doing the action or receiving it, unlike "I" and "me"? This…

One Slice, One Loaf: The Logic of Measure Words

1 month ago

Ever wondered why you can't say "one rice" in English or "one bread" in Chinese? This post dives into the…

The Grammar of a Bluff: Linguistics at the Poker Table

1 month ago

Beyond the cards and chips, the poker table is a battlefield of language where every action is a speech act.…

Reading Without Breaks: The Cognitive Cost of Scriptio Continua

1 month ago

Ancient scripts were often written as an unbroken stream of letters, a practice known as scriptio continua. This placed an…

The Physics of the Tongue: A Muscular Hydrostat

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Your tongue performs incredible feats of precision for speech, all without a single bone. Discover the fascinating science of the…

The Adlam Script: A Modern Alphabet for an Ancient People

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For centuries, the Fula language, spoken by over 40 million people, lacked its own native script. In the 1980s, two…

The ‘Gavagai’ Problem: How We Map Words to Reality

1 month ago

Imagine a speaker in a new language points to a rabbit and says "gavagai." How do you know if it…

How a Phoneme is Born

1 month ago

Language sounds are always in flux, but where do new ones come from? This article explores the fascinating linguistic process…

The Case for Compounding

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Behold the German word Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän. Far from being a chaotic jumble of letters, this linguistic titan is a masterclass in…

The Semiotics of a Warning Siren

1 month ago

Ever wonder why a rising and falling wail universally signals an emergency? This post breaks down the semiotics of warning…

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