Languages of the World

The Typo That Became a Word: The Story of ‘Syllabus’

Ever wondered where the word 'syllabus' comes from? The answer is a fascinating journey involving ancient Roman scrolls, a 15th-century…

4 months ago

The Ket Language: Siberia’s Last Echo

Deep in the Siberian wilderness, the Ket language is the last of its kind, a linguistic island with a mind-bendingly…

4 months ago

The Pitch-Accent Puzzle of Japanese

In Japanese, a single word like `hashi` can mean 'bridge' or 'chopsticks' based on a subtle change in melody. This…

4 months ago

The Haida Language: A World of Its Own

Journey to the coast of British Columbia to discover X̱aad Kíl, the Haida language. A true linguistic isolate with a…

4 months ago

The One-Letter Word: The Story of ‘O’

Did you know one of the most powerful words in the English language is just a single letter? From ancient…

4 months ago

The Chinook Jargon: Language of the Pacific Fur Trade

For over a century, a unique pidgin language connected Indigenous peoples, Europeans, and Asians along the Pacific Northwest coast. Known…

4 months ago

When Siblings Lie: Germanic False Friends

English and German are sibling languages, but like any family, they have their misunderstandings. This article explores "false friends"—deceptive words…

4 months ago

The Mountain of Tongues: The Caucasus Sprachbund

The Caucasus region, a "Mountain of Tongues", is home to a dizzying array of unrelated languages. Yet, through centuries of…

4 months ago

The Language That Clings to the Past: Sorbian

Deep within modern Germany, a Slavic language called Sorbian holds onto a grammatical feature lost by almost all others: the…

4 months ago

Glagolitic: The Lost Slavic Alphabet

Before the familiar Cyrillic script dominated Eastern Europe, there was another, more mysterious alphabet designed for the Slavic people. We…

4 months ago

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