grammar

The Death of the Latin Passive

Latin once expressed complex passive ideas with a single word, like amor for "I am loved". This post explores how…

6 months ago

Mozarabic: The Lost Romance Tongue

Journey back to medieval Spain to uncover the story of Mozarabic, the lost Romance language of Christians living under Muslim…

6 months ago

Papiamento: The Caribbean Creole

Journey to the ABC islands to discover Papiamento, the unique Creole language that sings with the rhythms of its history.…

6 months ago

The Word Inside a Word: Infixation

We all know about prefixes and suffixes, but what about the "word inside a word"? This fascinating linguistic process, called…

6 months ago

Germany’s Word-Engine: The Logic of Compounds

Go beyond the humor of long German words and discover the powerful logic that builds them. This article deconstructs the…

6 months ago

The Grammar of Haiku: More Than Just 5-7-5

Many writers know the 5-7-5 syllable count of haiku, but this is merely the surface. The true grammar of the…

6 months ago

Waking a Sleeping Language: The Myaamia Story

What happens when a language’s last fluent speaker passes away? For the Myaamia people, this was not an ending but…

6 months ago

Killing the Verb: How the Telegraph Changed Writing

The telegraph, with its per-word cost, forced writers to perform linguistic surgery, stripping sentences down to their bare essentials. This…

6 months ago

Building a Dictionary from Silence

Imagine a language that has never been written down, a rich tapestry of human thought existing only in sound and…

6 months ago

The Heritage Speaker’s Dilemma

You speak a language at home, a tongue filled with the warmth of family and the taste of tradition. Yet,…

6 months ago

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