Field Linguistics

The Man Who Mapped India’s Languages

In 1894, one man embarked on a seemingly impossible quest: to map every language on the Indian subcontinent. Discover the…

6 days ago

Tech for Documenting Language

Forget the weathered notebook and tape recorder. Modern linguists are deploying a high-tech toolkit to document endangered languages, using portable…

6 days ago

Constructing a Field Dictionary from Scratch

Imagine being the first outsider to document a language with no written form. How would you create its first-ever dictionary?…

1 month ago

How Do Linguists Map a Dialect?

Dialectology is the geography of language, revealing the hidden maps drawn by our words. From old-school fieldwork with clipboards to…

5 months ago

How Do You Learn a Language With No Writing System?

Imagine learning a language with no alphabet, no dictionary, and no textbooks. This is the challenge for field linguists who…

5 months ago

The World’s Most Dangerous Job? High-Risk Linguistics

When we think of a linguist, we picture quiet libraries, not active conflict zones. But for a small group of…

5 months ago

Building a Dictionary from Silence

Imagine a language that has never been written down, a rich tapestry of human thought existing only in sound and…

5 months ago

Kusunda: The Ghost Language of Nepal

Once believed to be extinct, the Kusunda language of Nepal is a true linguistic ghost, with no known relatives in…

5 months ago

Learning from Zero: The “Monolingual Method” and the Art of Linguistic Fieldwork

Imagine trying to learn a language with no textbook, no translator, and no shared vocabulary. The monolingual fieldwork method is…

5 months ago

The First-Contact Linguist: The Ethical Tightrope of Studying a Previously Uncontacted People’s Language

What are the ethical responsibilities of a linguist who is the first outsider to document a language from a previously…

5 months ago

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