Unlocking the Universe of Languages
Discover the linguistics behind Thaana, the unique writing system of the Maldives, where the alphabet is literally built from numbers. This article explores how Maldivian scholars engineered a script using…
English is the undisputed lingua franca of the European Union, but without the UK to police the grammar, it is evolving into a unique dialect known as Euro-English. From "discussing…
In the 17th century, Basque whalers and Icelandic farmers developed one of history's most unlikely languages: a pidgin combining the complex, isolated Basque language with North Germanic Icelandic. This article…
Long before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the Kingdom of Aksum produced the Ezana Stone, a trilingual monument inscribed in Ancient Greek, Sabaean, and Ge'ez. This article explores how…
Decades before Airbnb or Couchsurfing existed, Esperanto speakers built a global, offline hospitality network called Pasporta Servo. By using a "little yellow book" of addresses, travelers could stay for free…
For over two millennia, the Sinosphere was united by a written language completely divorced from spoken speech—a "Latin of the East" accessible only to the elite. This post explores the…
Japanese scholars spent centuries using Classical Chinese as their formal written language, despite the two languages having completely incompatible grammar structures. This post explores *Kanbun Kundoku*, the ingenious system of…
Explore how the vibrant film industry of Kano, known as Kannywood, serves as the primary engine for standardizing and spreading the Hausa language across West Africa. This article analyzes the…
While Turkish and Azerbaijani are mutually intelligible linguistic cousins, they are far from identical. This deep dive explores the defining features of Azerbaijani—from the ubiquitous "schwa" (ə) sound to the…
Unlike languages that evolve naturally, Modern Standard Hindi was deliberately "retro-engineered" in the 19th century to establish a distinct identity from Urdu. This post explores how scholars utilized "Tatsamas"—unmodified Sanskrit…
Yiddish presents a rare linguistic paradox: a Germanic language, close kin to English and German, written entirely in the ancient Hebrew script. This post explores the ingenious linguistics behind Yiddish,…
While most assume the Latin alphabet evolved directly from Greek, the true story features a vital middleman: the Etruscans. This post explores the linguistic detective story of how an ancient…
Discover the bizarre linguistic journey of the Liber Linteus, the longest surviving Etruscan text, which was cut into strips and used to wrap an Egyptian mummy. This post explores how…
Explore the history of the "Silver Bible", a 6th-century masterpiece written in silver and gold ink on purple vellum. We dive into the linguistic genius of Bishop Wulfila, who invented…
While most people know the word "curry" hails from India, few realize that everyday English words like "mango", "catamaran", and "teak" trace their roots back to the ancient Tamil language.…
For most of the 20th century, Cebuano, not Tagalog, held the title for the most native speakers in the Philippines, dominating the Visayas and Mindanao. We explore the history of…
Discover the fascinating linguistic history of the first European-recorded word list in the Philippines, compiled by Antonio Pigafetta during Magellan's 1521 voyage. This article explores how the Cebuano language has…
From the nursery to the design studio, Danish words like LEGO and Hygge have infiltrated the global consciousness, yet their linguistic roots remain largely unknown. This post deconstructs the etymology…
Unlike its southern relatives such as Cantonese, standard Mandarin has completely lost the "entering tone" and the clipped final stops (-p, -t, -k) which characterized Middle Chinese. This linguistic deep…
While Hindi and Urdu rely on completely different writing systems and divergent formal vocabularies—drawing from Sanskrit and Persian respectively—they share an identical grammatical skeleton known as Hindustani. This article explores…