Languages of the World

Keening: The Irish Vocalization of Grief

Explore the "Caoineadh", the traditional Irish vocal lament, through the lens of linguistics and oral history. This article breaks down…

1 week ago

Kulning: The Swedish Art of Herding Calls

Explore the acoustics and phonetics behind Kulning, the hauntingly high-pitched Swedish herding call. This article delves into how women historically…

1 week ago

Hanacaraka: The Legend Behind Javanese Script

Unlike the arbitrary order of the Latin ABCs, the Javanese script (Hanacaraka) is organized into a perfect poem recounting a…

1 week ago

Cypriot Syllabary: Greece’s Forgotten Script

Before the Greek alphabet conquered the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus used a unique, puzzle-like script derived from the Bronze…

1 week ago

Tic-Tac: The Hand Signals of Bookmakers

Explore the fascinating "closed kinetic system" of Tic-Tac, the dying sign language of British racecourse bookmakers. This article analyzes how…

1 week ago

The Dragoman: Polyglot Diplomats of the Ottoman Empire

Explore the fascinating history of the Dragoman, the polyglot intermediaries who held the keys to communication between the Ottoman Empire…

1 week ago

King Njoya’s Dream: The Bamum Script Revolution

Discover the remarkable true story of King Ibrahim Njoya of Cameroon, who invented a writing system from scratch in the…

1 week ago

E-Prime: What Happens When We Delete “To Be”?

Uncover the fascinating linguistic constraint of E-Prime (English Prime), a version of English that completely eliminates the verb "to be."…

1 week ago

The Debitive Mood: Why Latvian Has a Special Way to Say “Must”

Unlike most European languages which rely on modal verbs like "must" or "have to", Latvian utilizes a unique grammatical feature…

1 week ago

The Slavic Oddity: Why Bulgarian Has No Cases

While most Slavic languages are infamous for their complex systems of noun cases, Bulgarian stands out as a unique linguistic…

1 week ago

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