historical linguistics

Designing a Keyboard for Efficiency

The QWERTY keyboard you use every day wasn't designed for speed; it was engineered to prevent jams in 19th-century typewriters.…

1 week ago

Cheshirization: The Vanishing Vowel

Named after the Cheshire Cat, Cheshirization is a fascinating phonological process where a vowel vanishes but leaves a ghostly trace…

1 week ago

The Case of the Stolen Letter: Compensatory Lengthening

In the history of language, sounds can vanish without a trace. Or can they? This post explores compensatory lengthening, the…

2 weeks ago

Counting People in Japanese: The ‘Nin’ Counter

Learning to count in Japanese means mastering counters, and the one for people holds a fascinating secret. While most numbers…

2 weeks ago

A Guide to Sino-Tibetan Languages

Journey into the Sino-Tibetan language family, a vast linguistic world of over 400 languages spoken by 1.4 billion people. From…

3 weeks ago

France’s Base-20 Math Problem

Why do the French say 'four-twenties' for 80? This linguistic quirk is a fascinating relic from a base-20 counting system…

3 weeks ago

Waking a Sleeping Language: The Myaamia Story

What happens when a language’s last fluent speaker passes away? For the Myaamia people, this was not an ending but…

3 weeks ago

Recreating Ötzi the Iceman’s Voice

Scientists have peered into the life of Ötzi the Iceman, learning what he ate and how he died. Now, thanks…

3 weeks ago

The Language of the Stars: Decoding Astronomy

Have you ever wondered why the star Betelgeuse has an Arabic name but sits in a Greek constellation? The night…

3 weeks ago

The Siberian-American Language Bridge

Could a nearly extinct language from Siberia be related to Navajo and other Native American languages? The fascinating Dené-Yeniseian hypothesis…

3 weeks ago

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