LingoDigest

Hawaiian and the Phonemic Principle

With only eight consonants and five vowels, the Hawaiian alphabet is a perfect example of the phonemic principle, where each…

1 month ago

The Yi Script: China’s Living Logogram

While most of China uses Chinese characters, the Yi people of the southwest have their own unique writing system with…

1 month ago

Pashto’s Split Ergativity

Ever thought the 'subject' of a sentence was a fixed, simple concept? In Pashto, the grammatical role of the 'doer'…

1 month ago

The Georgian Consonant Clusters

Georgian is famous for jaw-dropping consonant clusters like `gvprtskvni` ("you peel us"), which seem to defy the rules of pronunciation.…

1 month ago

The Altaic Debate: A Family Feud

Are Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese distant cousins? The Altaic hypothesis proposes they descend from a single ancient tongue, but…

1 month ago

The French R: An Aristocratic Sound?

The guttural French "R" is one of the most iconic sounds in the world, but it's a surprisingly recent development.…

1 month ago

The Three Genders of Dyirbal

Ever heard of a language that groups women, fire, and dangerous things into a single grammatical category? Dive into the…

1 month ago

The Great ‘Bet/Vet’ Split in Hebrew

Ever stumbled over whether to say 'bet' or 'vet' in Hebrew? This seemingly random choice is a window into a…

1 month ago

Tone vs. Intonation Explained

Ever wondered why saying 'mā' in Mandarin can mean 'mother' while 'mǎ' means 'horse'? Or how the exact same words,…

1 month ago

The ‘We’ of Two vs. The ‘We’ of All

Most languages count one and many, but what about a number for precisely two? Discover the "grammatical dual", a lost…

1 month ago

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