Are Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese distant cousins? The Altaic hypothesis proposes they descend from a single ancient tongue, but…
Ever heard of a language that groups women, fire, and dangerous things into a single grammatical category? Dive into the…
Ever wondered why saying 'mā' in Mandarin can mean 'mother' while 'mǎ' means 'horse'? Or how the exact same words,…
Most languages count one and many, but what about a number for precisely two? Discover the "grammatical dual", a lost…
Imagine a language where "I don't hear very well" isn't a sentence, but a single, perfectly grammatical word. Welcome to…
Every time we speak, we make a choice about how we relate to reality. This fundamental distinction is captured in…
You know the passive voice, but have you ever heard of its bizarre mirror image? The antipassive construction, found in…
Reduplication isn't just baby talk like 'bye-bye' or 'choo-choo'. This surprisingly common linguistic tool is used across the world's languages…
Have you ever heard a vowel that wasn't spelled, like the "a" in the Irish word *uisce* (ish-ka)? This phenomenon,…
You've heard that Slavic languages are impossible, but is that the whole story? We break down the truth behind the…
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