The Lost Vowels of Proto-Semitic
How do you reconstruct the vowels of an ancient language when its descendants, like Hebrew and Arabic, were written without them? This linguistic detective story reveals how the chance survival…
Unlocking the Universe of Languages
How do you reconstruct the vowels of an ancient language when its descendants, like Hebrew and Arabic, were written without them? This linguistic detective story reveals how the chance survival…
Explore Sumerian, the world's first written language and a fascinating linguistic isolate. Discovered on cuneiform tablets, this ancient tongue challenges our understanding of grammar with its agglutinative nature and mind-bending…
Before the internet, before the printing press, there was papyrus. This humble reed from the Nile wasn't just ancient paper; it was a revolutionary linguistic technology that allowed Egypt to…
The world's first writing system, cuneiform, owes its distinctive wedge-shaped appearance to a surprisingly simple tool. This post explores how the physical act of pressing a reed stylus into wet…
Have you ever wondered why an 'A' looks the way it does? The answer lies not in linguistics, but in the physical tools that shaped it. This article explores how…