Historical Linguistics

The Logic of Back-Formation: From ‘Editor’ to ‘Edit’

Which came first: the editor or the edit? The answer reveals a fascinating linguistic process called back-formation, where we reverse-engineer…

6 hours ago

The Sound of a Valley: Dialect Leveling in Isolation

Ever wonder why people in isolated places like an Appalachian hollow develop such a unique way of speaking? It's not…

6 hours ago

Grammatical Viruses: The Spread of ‘-gate’

The suffix '-gate' has become a linguistic shorthand for scandal, but where did it come from? We trace its journey…

6 hours ago

The Failed Phoneme: When a Sound Dies at Birth

Ever wonder why you can say 'cheese' with ease but stumble over the 'ch' in the Scottish 'loch'? This isn't…

6 hours ago

The Lost Vowels of Proto-Semitic

How do you reconstruct the vowels of an ancient language when its descendants, like Hebrew and Arabic, were written without…

6 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

LTR vs RTL: Why We Read The Way We Do

Ever wondered why English is read left-to-right, but Arabic and Hebrew are read right-to-left? The answer is a fascinating journey…

7 days ago

Walls That Talk: Decoding Ancient Graffiti

Forget stuffy royal decrees. Ancient graffiti offers an unfiltered glimpse into the lives of everyday people, from lovelorn Romans to…

7 days ago

Sacred Tongues: Language & Religion

From the intricate vibrations of Sanskrit mantras to the linguistic inimitability of the Quran, a language can become more than…

7 days ago

Sumerian: The First Written Language

Explore Sumerian, the world's first written language and a fascinating linguistic isolate. Discovered on cuneiform tablets, this ancient tongue challenges…

7 days ago

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