Long before AI could write a poem, the pioneers of computational linguistics took on a monumental task: teaching a room-sized…
Excorporation is a rare linguistic process where a grammatical piece, once bound inside a larger word, "escapes" to become an…
What do the 's' in 'cats', the 'en' in 'oxen', and the vowel change in 'feet' have in common? They…
Ever wondered why 'you' is the same whether you're doing the action or receiving it, unlike "I" and "me"? This…
Behold the German word Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän. Far from being a chaotic jumble of letters, this linguistic titan is a masterclass in…
Ever wondered why your French friend says "email" but calls a skyscraper a "gratte-ciel"? Languages borrow from each other in…
Have you ever wondered why English grammar seems simpler than Latin or German? This phenomenon, known as grammatical evaporation, is…
Which came first: the editor or the edit? The answer reveals a fascinating linguistic process called back-formation, where we reverse-engineer…
Ever wonder why scientists use a "dead" language to name living things? Scientific Latin is more than just a tradition;…
The suffix '-gate' has become a linguistic shorthand for scandal, but where did it come from? We trace its journey…
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