Unlocking the Universe of Languages
How different are two dialects, really? Linguists can now answer that question with surprising precision. Discover the methods used to quantify the "lexical distance" between language varieties, including the powerful…
Could a nearly extinct language from Siberia be related to Navajo and other Native American languages? The fascinating Dené-Yeniseian hypothesis proposes a direct linguistic link across the Bering Strait, telling…
Ever tried to speak your third language, only for a word from your second language to slip out? This phenomenon, known as L2 to L3 interference, is a common hurdle…
** Have you ever wondered why *shirt* and *skirt* sound so similar? They are "etymological doublets"—words from the same root that entered English via different paths, diverging in form and…
Ever wonder how linguists estimate when languages like Spanish and French split from their common ancestor? The answer lies in a controversial method called glottochronology, which acts like a "carbon…
How can linguists be so certain that English and ancient Sanskrit are cousins, while neighboring Finnish is a total stranger? It's not guesswork—it's a rigorous scientific process called the comparative…
Long before English vowels did their famous shuffle, a far more ancient and dramatic event rocked its linguistic family tree. This was the Great Germanic Sound Shift, a systematic chain…
While most languages belong to vast family trees, some stand utterly alone. These linguistic isolates, like the mysterious Basque of Spain or the endangered Ainu of Japan, have no known…
Have you ever felt lost reading a contract full of words like "aforesaid" and "notwithstanding"? This is "legalese," a unique linguistic fossil born from a historical mixture of Law French,…
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,…
Long before refrigeration, salt was a mineral so valuable that Roman soldiers were paid in it, giving us the word "salary." This single commodity seasoned our language as much as…
Imagine a language that vanished over 5,000 years ago, leaving behind no written records. This is Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the mysterious ancestor of English, Russian, Hindi, and hundreds of other tongues.…
As a native English speaker, you may often find yourself at ease with a number of Spanish words due to their striking resemblance to their...