Linguistic Typology

The Agglutination Barrier: Why AI Chokes on Words

Ever wonder why your AI translator can handle "I love you" but butchers a single complex word in Turkish or…

4 months ago

The Grammar of “Chit-Chat”: Reduplication

From the simple 'bye-bye' in English to the Indonesian *wiku-wiku* (very fast), repeating words is a powerful tool found in…

4 months ago

How to Own Without ‘Have’: The Be-Languages

In languages like English, you 'have' a book. But in Russian, Irish, or Turkish, you would say "to me there…

4 months ago

Beyond Nominative: 10 Coolest Grammatical Cases

If you think cases are just for Latin or German, think again. This listicle dives into ten of the most…

4 months ago

My Hand, My Self: Inalienable Grammar

In English, you can talk about "a hand" as a detached object. But in many languages, the rules of grammar…

4 months ago

A World Without ‘P’: Phonemic Gaps

Did you know that some languages get by perfectly without sounds we consider fundamental, like the 'p' in 'puppy'? This…

4 months ago

A Thousand Grains of Rice: The World of Classifiers

Why can you say "three dogs" in English, but speakers of Chinese, Japanese, and Mayan languages must use a special…

4 months ago

How to Count Without Numbers

What if you couldn't say "one", "two", or "three"? For anumeric cultures in the Amazon and beyond, this is a…

4 months ago

Can a Language Have No Adjectives?

How would you describe a "big red ball" in a language with no words for "big" or "red"? Many languages…

4 months ago

Parsing the Unparsable: The Dhaasanac Language

Journey to the Omo Valley to meet the Dhaasanac people of Ethiopia, whose language defies easy categorization. Instead of marking…

4 months ago

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