Unlocking the Universe of Languages
Excorporation is a rare linguistic process where a grammatical piece, once bound inside a larger word, "escapes" to become an independent word itself. We explore this fascinating phenomenon, using the…
What do the 's' in 'cats', the 'en' in 'oxen', and the vowel change in 'feet' have in common? They are all allomorphs—different forms of the same unit of meaning,…
Why can you count 'chairs' but not 'furniture'? This linguistic puzzle is explained by the mass-count distinction, a fundamental rule that shapes how we talk about everything from objects to…
How do we know who "he" is in the sentence "John said he was tired"? While English leaves it ambiguous, many languages have a secret weapon: logophoricity. This fascinating grammatical…
Ever wondered why 'you' is the same whether you're doing the action or receiving it, unlike "I" and "me"? This phenomenon, called case syncretism, is a fascinating story of grammatical…
Ever wondered why you can't say "one rice" in English or "one bread" in Chinese? This post dives into the fascinating world of measure words, or classifiers, exploring how these…
In most languages, color is purely descriptive, but in some systems, it plays a grammatical role. This post explores how Cued Speech uses a "color-coding" analogy with handshapes to distinguish…
Ever get confused when a sentence has too many "he"s or "they"s? Some languages have a brilliant built-in solution for this narrative headache. Discover obviation, the "fourth person" pronoun system…
In many languages, pronouns are simple stand-ins like 'I' or 'they'. But in Wolof, a major language of West Africa, pronouns are powerhouses that also tell you *when* an action…
In English, we say 'my house', but Finnish takes a more intimate approach. Instead of a separate word for 'my', ownership is baked directly into the noun as a suffix,…
Most languages count one and many, but what about a number for precisely two? Discover the "grammatical dual", a lost feature of Old English that survives in languages like Slovene…
In Quechua, it’s grammatically impossible to state a fact without also specifying how you know it. This fascinating system of "evidentiality" uses suffixes like -mi (for direct experience), -si (for…
Are Korean and Japanese related languages? While they feel incredibly similar to learners, the answer from linguists is "no." This uncanny resemblance isn't due to a shared family tree, but…
Every time we speak, we make a choice about how we relate to reality. This fundamental distinction is captured in many languages through a grammatical concept known as mood, specifically…
You know the passive voice, but have you ever heard of its bizarre mirror image? The antipassive construction, found in many of the world's ergative languages, flips grammar on its…
Reduplication isn't just baby talk like 'bye-bye' or 'choo-choo'. This surprisingly common linguistic tool is used across the world's languages to do everything from forming plurals and changing verb tenses…
When you ask, "Do you speak English?", what is the word 'do' really doing? This seemingly simple word is actually a linguistic fossil, the ghost of a once-mighty action verb.…
You've heard that Slavic languages are impossible, but is that the whole story? We break down the truth behind the notoriously difficult grammar, from noun cases to verb aspect, and…
Tired of staring at endless declension charts? Slavic cases don't have to be a nightmare. This guide ditches the old methods and introduces a simple 'job-based' approach to help you…
For English speakers learning a Slavic language, the lack of words for 'a/an/the' can be a shock. These languages don't need articles because they use a powerful combination of a…