diglossia

Retro-Engineering: How Sanskrit Shaped Modern Hindi

Unlike languages that evolve naturally, Modern Standard Hindi was deliberately "retro-engineered" in the 19th century to establish a distinct identity…

6 days ago

The Two Arabics: Understanding Diglossia

Arabic speakers live in a state of linguistic duality known as diglossia, navigating between the formal "Modern Standard Arabic" used…

6 days ago

From Maykop to Kfar Kama: The Global Journey of Adyghe

Discover the fascinating linguistic journey of Adyghe, a complex Northwest Caucasian language that traveled from the Russian city of Maykop…

6 days ago

One Language, 17,000 Islands: The Rise of Indonesian

Discover the fascinating linguistic history behind the world's fourth most populous nation. We explore how the 1928 "Youth Pledge" united…

6 days ago

Maltese: The Sole Survivor of Siculo-Arabic

Explore the fascinating history of Maltese, the only Semitic language in the European Union and the sole survivor of the…

6 days ago

The Irony of ‘Hindi’: A Persian Name, A Sanskrit Soul

The name "Hindi" is a Persian exonym meaning "of the Indus", yet the modern formal language is defined by a…

7 days ago

A Royal Tongue: The Golden Age of Telugu

Travel back to the 16th-century Vijayanagara Empire to discover why Emperor Krishnadevaraya famously declared Telugu the "greatest of the nation's…

1 week ago

One Language, Two Anthems: The Power of Bengali Poetry

Discover the unique linguistic phenomenon of Bengali, the only language in the world to claim the national anthems of two…

1 week ago

Ithaca & Ulysses: The Greek Diglossia Struggle

For over a century, Greece was locked in a fierce linguistic civil war between Katharevousa, an artificial "high" language of…

1 week ago

Guaraní: The Indigenous Language That Won

Unlike almost everywhere else in the Americas, the indigenous language of Paraguay, Guaraní, is spoken by the vast majority of…

1 week ago

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