Historical Linguistics

A Computer Learns ‘Amo, Amas, Amat’

Long before AI could write a poem, the pioneers of computational linguistics took on a monumental task: teaching a room-sized…

2 months ago

The Keyboard That Looked Like a Piano

Before QWERTY conquered the world, the first typewriter prototype had keys arranged in two simple rows like a piano. This…

2 months ago

The Scholar Who Built a National Epic

Meet Elias Lönnrot, the 19th-century Finnish physician who traveled thousands of kilometers on foot and ski to collect the fading…

2 months ago

The Sound Forged by Fire: Welsh’s ‘LL’

The Welsh 'll' is more than just a tricky sound for language learners; it's a voiceless fricative with a deep…

2 months ago

How ‘Spinster’ Became an Insult

The word 'spinster' didn't always evoke images of a lonely old maid. It originally meant a woman who spun thread…

2 months ago

The First Family of Esperanto

L. L. Zamenhof may have invented Esperanto, but he didn't bring it to life alone. This is the story of…

2 months ago

The Dictionary’s Phantom: Story of ‘Dord’

What happens when a word that doesn't exist appears in the dictionary? For thirteen years, the non-word 'dord' lived in…

2 months ago

When Grammar Breaks Free: A Look at Excorporation

Excorporation is a rare linguistic process where a grammatical piece, once bound inside a larger word, "escapes" to become an…

2 months ago

Gradual vs. Abrupt Creolization

How are new languages born from scratch? This article explores the fascinating debate over creolization, contrasting the "abrupt" theory, where…

2 months ago

Mednyj Aleut: A Hybrid Tongue

Mednyj Aleut is a rare "mixed language" from the Commander Islands that defies typical linguistic classification. It was created by…

2 months ago

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