Media Lengua: The Split-Brain Language
Journey to the highlands of Ecuador to discover Media Lengua, a remarkable "split-brain" language that combines the grammar of indigenous Quechua with the vocabulary of Spanish. This process of relexification…
Tag: areal linguistics
Go Buy Bring Come: The Logic of Serial Verbs
In languages from Thailand to Ghana, you can say "go buy bring the book" and be perfectly grammatical. This fascinating feature, known as a serial verb construction, strings verbs together…
The Language of Sensation: Exploring Ideophones
We all know onomatopoeia, but many languages have something far richer: ideophones. These "adverbs of the senses" don't just mimic sounds; they paint vivid pictures of sights, textures, and feelings.…
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 started borrowing each other's grammar, creating a unique "Sprachbund"—a linguistic…