Linguistics

Turkey’s Alphabet Revolution

Explore one of history's most radical linguistic reforms: Turkey's 1928 Alphabet Revolution. At the direction of Atatürk, the nation abandoned…

4 months ago

The Balkan Sprachbund: A Linguistic Melting Pot

What happens when unrelated languages live side-by-side for centuries? In the Balkans, languages as different as Albanian, Greek, and Romanian…

4 months ago

The Great Germanic Sound Shift

Long before English vowels did their famous shuffle, a far more ancient and dramatic event rocked its linguistic family tree.…

4 months ago

The Grammar of Nicknames

Ever wonder why William becomes Bill, but not Willam? Or how a Russian Aleksandr affectionately becomes Sashenka? Nicknames follow a…

4 months ago

The Language of Scent

We can recall scents with startling clarity, yet we struggle to describe them, a phenomenon known as the olfactory-verbal gap.…

4 months ago

Mapping the Land with Language

Imagine a world without 'left' or 'right,' where every instruction and description is given in cardinal directions. For speakers of…

4 months ago

The Comma That Rules a Nation

The U.S. Second Amendment's meaning hinges on a single, hotly debated comma. This grammatical ambiguity has fueled a centuries-long battle…

4 months ago

How Your Brain Reads This Sentence

The seemingly simple act of reading this sentence is a neurological miracle, a high-speed dance between your eyes and your…

4 months ago

The Language of Two Souls: Michif

Discover Michif, one of the world's most unique mixed languages, spoken by the Métis people. A fascinating blend of French…

4 months ago

The Grammar of Swearing

Far from being linguistic sludge, swearing is a surprisingly sophisticated system that follows its own intricate grammatical rules. Profanity is…

4 months ago

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