Languages of the World

The One-Letter Word: The Story of ‘O’

Did you know one of the most powerful words in the English language is just a single letter? From ancient…

4 weeks ago

The Chinook Jargon: Language of the Pacific Fur Trade

For over a century, a unique pidgin language connected Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Asians along the Pacific Northwest coast. Known…

4 weeks ago

When Siblings Lie: Germanic False Friends

English and German are sibling languages, but like any family, they have their misunderstandings. This article explores "false friends"—deceptive words…

4 weeks ago

The Mountain of Tongues: The Caucasus Sprachbund

The Caucasus region, a "Mountain of Tongues", is home to a dizzying array of unrelated languages. Yet, through centuries of…

4 weeks ago

The Language That Clings to the Past: Sorbian

Deep within modern Germany, a Slavic language called Sorbian holds onto a grammatical feature lost by almost all others: the…

4 weeks ago

Glagolitic: The Lost Slavic Alphabet

Before the familiar Cyrillic script dominated Eastern Europe, there was another, more mysterious alphabet designed for the Slavic people. We…

4 weeks ago

The Mind That Became an Adverb

Discover the fascinating story of how Romance languages created their adverbs. The Latin word for "mind", *mens*, gradually fused with…

4 weeks ago

The Power of ‘-ito’: Romance Diminutives

Discover how a simple suffix like -ito or -ino can transform a word's meaning in Romance languages. This deep dive…

4 weeks ago

Mozarabic: The Lost Romance Tongue

Journey back to medieval Spain to uncover the story of Mozarabic, the lost Romance language of Christians living under Muslim…

4 weeks ago

The Subjunctive’s Shadow World

For many language learners, the subjunctive is a grammatical nightmare. But what if it's not just about rules? This post…

4 weeks ago

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