Tag: bantu languages

Categories
Morphology Linguistic Typology Linguistics Psycholinguistics

The Language of Sensation: Exploring Ideophones

Estimated read time 6 min read

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. Dive into the world of Japanese kirakira (sparkling) and Zulu bhuqe (collapsing in exhaustion) to discover a whole new layer of linguistic expression.

Categories
Evolutionary Linguistics African Languages History Geography

The Great Bantu Migration: How a Language Family Shaped Half a Continent

Estimated read time 6 min read

Over several millennia, a wave of migration spread a single language family from West-Central Africa to cover nearly the entire southern half of the continent. This was the Bantu Expansion, a monumental human journey pieced together not from ruins, but from linguistic breadcrumbs. By comparing shared vocabulary for farming, cattle, and iron, linguists have mapped how the ancestors of Swahili and Zulu speakers reshaped a continent.