Unlocking the Universe of Languages
Exploring articles in Linguistics
Deep in the Amazon, linguist Daniel Everett encountered a language that seemed to break all the rules. His claim that Pirahã lacks recursion—a feature once thought to be the bedrock…
Far from being simple pantomime, sign languages are a testament to the human brain's linguistic ingenuity. These visual-gestural systems possess all the grammatical complexity of spoken languages, from their unique…
Every two weeks, a language dies, taking with it a unique way of seeing the world. Meet the "Language Catchers," modern-day linguists racing against time with digital tools and deep…
Imagine a language that vanished over 5,000 years ago, leaving behind no written records. This is Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the mysterious ancestor of English, Russian, Hindi, and hundreds of other tongues.…
The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary relied on thousands of volunteers, but none were as brilliant or enigmatic as Dr. W.C. Minor. From his cell in the Broadmoor Asylum…
Do you see the same "blue" as a Russian speaker, who has two distinct words for the color? The fascinating link between language and color perception reveals that our vocabulary…
Go beyond familiar consonants and vowels on a journey into the world's phonetic rarities, from the sharp clicks of Southern African languages to the whistled messages that travel across entire…
An accent refers to a particular way of pronouncing a language, strongly associated with geographical region, social class, or ethnic group. Accents have long been...
Imagine a world without language – without English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, or even sign language. It’s an intriguing and almost inconceivable notion, as language is...
A unique and beguiling topic in myth, literature, and sometimes even in serious scholarly pursuits, the ‘Language of the Birds’ is often referred to as...
The Great Vowel Shift, a term coined by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, is a pivotal moment in the annals of English language history. This...
Language is a fascinating and complex system of communication that is as diverse as the human race itself. It serves as a window into the...
English is a peculiar language in many ways, and one of its most baffling features is the inconsistency between pronunciation and spelling. It often leaves...
Among the many charming anecdotes in the world of linguistics, the ‘Eskimo Snow Words’ story holds a position of considerable prominence. A tale as beguiling...
The story begins in a place shrouded in antiquity, a fertile landscape between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the cradle of civilization itself – ancient...
If you’ve ever been in awe of the world’s many languages, fascinated by the complexities and the beauty they carry, and dreamed of using this...
Language, a cornerstone of humanity, is at the heart of our communication, culture, thought processes, and identity. Its complexity and richness are evidence of our...
In the world of linguistics, one of the most intriguing and debated theories is that of linguistic relativity, commonly referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis....