Language Families

The Two ‘Haves’ of Irish: Possession as a State

Unlike English, the Irish language doesn't have a single verb for "to have." Instead, to say "I have a book",…

8 hours ago

The Sound of Size: Consonant Gradation in Finnish

Ever notice how Finnish words seem to change their consonants for no reason? This isn't random linguistic magic; it's a…

8 hours ago

The Birth of Grammatical Gender in PIE

Why is a table feminine in French? The answer is thousands of years old and has little to do with…

7 days ago

Finland’s “Possessive Suffixes”

In English, we say 'my house', but Finnish takes a more intimate approach. Instead of a separate word for 'my',…

7 days ago

Why Tocharian Was an Anomaly

Imagine discovering a lost language in Western China that looks far more like Latin or Irish than its immediate neighbors,…

7 days ago

OCS: The First Slavic Literary Language

Before there was Russian, Polish, or Bulgarian, there was their common literary ancestor: Old Church Slavonic. Discover the story of…

7 days ago

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…

7 days 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'…

7 days 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…

7 days 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.…

7 days ago

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