Linguistic Typology

The Future Tense That Never Was: How Languages Without a Future Tense Shape Planning and Perception

Did you know that many languages, like Mandarin Chinese and Finnish, get by perfectly well without a grammatical future tense?…

4 months ago

I Heard, I Saw, I Inferred: The Linguistic World of Evidentials

In English, we use optional phrases like "I heard" or "I saw" to show how we know something. But in…

4 months ago

The Pressure-Cooker Consonants: An Introduction to Ejectives

Ejectives are a fascinating category of consonants found in languages from the Caucasus to the Americas. Made by building up…

4 months ago

The World’s Lego Languages: How Agglutination Builds Meaning Brick by Brick

This article explores the world of agglutinative languages like Turkish, Finnish, and Swahili, where long, complex words are built by…

4 months ago

The World in a Different Order: How Subject-Object-Verb Languages Challenge Our Linguistic Assumptions

For most English speakers, "The dog chased the cat" is the only logical way to say it. But what if…

4 months ago

The Alphabet That Isn’t: Unpacking the Logic of Abugidas and Abjads

Most of us learn the ABCs and assume all writing works this way, but that's just one piece of the…

4 months ago

Clicks, Pops, and Whistles: A Journey into the World’s Rarest Speech Sounds

Go beyond familiar consonants and vowels on a journey into the world's phonetic rarities, from the sharp clicks of Southern…

4 months ago

What is the Easiest Language to Learn?

Learning a new language can be an exciting venture, a mental workout, and a ticket to understanding a different culture.…

2 years ago

What is the Hardest Language to Learn?

The question, "what is the hardest language to learn?" has been a topic of curiosity for many and remains a…

2 years ago

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