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Appalachian English: It’s Not “Bad” Grammar, It’s History

Far from being a sign of poor education, Appalachian English is a complex, rule-governed dialect rooted in Elizabethan history and…

5 days ago

Incubus: The Horror Cult Classic Filmed in Esperanto

Explore the bizarre history of *Incubus* (1966), the horror cult classic starring William Shatner that was filmed entirely in Esperanto.…

5 days ago

Inside Kannywood: The Engine of a West African Lingua Franca

Explore how the vibrant film industry of Kano, known as Kannywood, serves as the primary engine for standardizing and spreading…

5 days ago

From Chutzpah to Glitch: The Yiddish Words You Already Speak

While everyone knows "bagel", few realize that technical terms like "glitch" and emotive words like "schlep" are Yiddish loanwords that…

6 days ago

Kinesics: Reading Body Motion

Ray Birdwhistell’s theory of Kinesics challenges us to analyze body language with the same grammatical rigor we apply to spoken…

6 days ago

Scat Singing: The Syntax of Jazz Vocals

Louis Armstrong didn't just make noise; he used phonemes to imitate instrumental timbre and rhythmic syntax, creating a "shadow language"…

6 days ago

Billion vs. Milliard: The Long Scale Confusion

When is a billion not a billion? This article explores the linguistic tug-of-war between the "Short Scale" (used in the…

6 days ago

The Greenberg Controversy: Lumpers vs. Splitters

Joseph Greenberg shocked the linguistics world in 1987 by claiming all Native American languages belonged to just three families, sparking…

1 week ago

From ‘Meat’ to ‘Flesh’: Semantic Narrowing

Have you ever wondered why candy is sometimes called a "sweetmeat", or why we "starve" from hunger but the word's…

1 week ago

The Buffalo Sentence: Grammar Pushed to the Edge

This post breaks down the famous linguistic puzzle: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." We explore how a…

1 week ago

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