Two Tongues, One Soul: The Hindi-Urdu Divide
While speakers from Delhi and Lahore can converse with ease, their national languages, Hindi and Urdu, are officially distinct. This post delves into the shared history of Hindustani and the…
Tag: hindi
The Dravidian Language Family: A South Indian Enigma
Venture beyond the familiar Indo-European languages and discover the ancient Dravidian family of Southern India and Sri Lanka. From the tongue-curling retroflex sounds of Tamil to the "glued-together" grammar of…
How to Own Without ‘Have’: The Be-Languages
In languages like English, you 'have' a book. But in Russian, Irish, or Turkish, you would say "to me there is a book". This fundamental grammatical difference explores the world…
Why Does ‘Mom’ Sound the Same Everywhere?
From Mandarin's 'māma' to Swahili's 'mama', the word for 'mother' is strikingly similar everywhere, but it's not a linguistic coincidence. This universal term arises from the "Nursery Word" phenomenon, where…
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 linguistic puzzle. From Arabic's consonant-only script to Hindi's consonant-vowel units,…
English Words of Suprising Origin – Part I
The English language is a kaleidoscope of cultural influence, where words from different corners of the world have found a home. With its global reach,...